And welcome to Forum 360.

Our program with a global outlook on topics and a local view.

Today we're talking about a situation that involves physical paralysis.

And we're talking especially interesting our local view, we have a doctor who grew up in Hudson, Ohio, and he decided to venture into emergency medicine.

Went to medical school in Saint Louis, Missouri and Washington University.

And he came back to Ohio residency at Akron General Medical Center and also worked in Alliance, Ohio, and at Summa in Akron.

So we have today, our guest is Doctor Jason Kolb, and he is an author— Doctor Kolb, good to have you with us.

- Thank you.

I am really honored.

Excited to be here.

- Forum 360 always is interested in author's.

He just wrote a book that came out called, Down the Mountain.

And subtitles skiing, suffering and sufficient grace.

It talks about his faith based reasoning, how he got involved in returning to, I guess you could say as much of a normal life as— And I am so impressed.

God has been good.

- Amen.

- Doctor Jason Kolb is a medical doctor.

Doc, tell us a little bit about your youth when you started in skiing, I guess it goes back to 1985.

- Yeah.

- You started skiing in the early, through church groups.

- I did.

Our church had a ski club and we joined.

I was in fifth grade.

I remember that because my brother was in seventh grade and he had knee trouble, like a growth spurt thing.

And so he couldn't ski that first year.

But after that, like, my brother and I were inseparable on the slopes.

- Did you have any famous, like, Jean Claude Kelly or who was your famous?

Did you have any mentors in the professional skiing world?

- I really didn't.

Yeah, I just skied I didn't watch it that much.

- Gotcha.

Okay.

And then 1990s, we'll fast forward a little bit.

You go on trips with church groups, men's groups, and... One of our friends who was involved in it was Pastor Knute Larson, who was considered the pastor for Akron.

And it was a close knit fellowship.

And all of a sudden, you were doing these annual trips.

- Yeah.

So, I mean, I started skiing at Boston Mills and then graduated to Western New York, East Coast, ski with my family, some, out west.

But then right around age 40, I got invited to this annual ski trip with Pastor Larson and some other guys from church.

They had been doing it for about 30 years and we would go to Colorado to Copper Mountain.

- Now, if I recall, there was what you called a watershed event in your life.

Here you had been an ER doctor, you were taking care of patients at various hospitals in Starke and Summit County.

And this is a watershed event that occurred.

And tell us a little bit about the date and when this occurred.

- Yeah.

So it was on that ski trip with those guys on a Sunday morning right before lunch, we were— The mountain is huge and we were on the other side of the mountain getting ready to head back for lunch.

I was just with two guys and skiing at high speed.

I made a wrong turn and I had a catastrophic accident where I went over a manmade drop, wasn't exactly a cliff as my recollection.

It wasn't well marked.

And I turned, flew over that and woke up from my concussion knowing I had life altering injuries.

- You almost diagnosed yourself there on the mountain because you knew that you were at T10, thoracic nerve area.

- Yeah.

- The T10 vertebrae.

Tell us about what you knew and how you felt that, because you knew exactly where you could not feel your body.

- Yeah, Bill I feel like in that moment, it was the first of many of God's graces that I experienced throughout this journey.

I was unconscious for just a few minutes and woke up very confused, as one does after a concussion.

And my friend asked me who had come to my side.

He said, Jason, can you feel your legs?

And I remember slapping my thigh, I couldn't feel it.

So now it's dawning on me that something serious had happened.

I took my gloves off and I unzipped my coats, and I started feeling down my chest.

And when I got to my belly button, I lost sensation.

And somehow I remember back from medical school that the belly button is level of T10.

And so in that moment I feel like for my medical training and God's grace, I just recalled that that was T10 and I was a paraplegic and I, I just had radical acceptance.

- Kind of resolve the fact that you knew that having had read about it or patients that have had that type of injury that it was serious.

And then there was injury to your chest, your ribs, correct?

- Yeah.

So it turns out I broke 14 ribs, 11 on the right side, three on the left, and I broke my sternum.

And so I couldn't feel anything from my belly button down.

But from my belly button up, I had severe pain, shortness of breath.

I knew I was in trouble.

- It's amazing how difficulties occur.

You often used in the book, which I admired.

You used King David and Psalms because, you know, he went through so many difficult times.

Also Prophet Isaiah and Jeremiah.

And so you looked at some of the early, believers in God, but let's go to the chapter that you wrote about safekeeping.

Tell us about how you felt safe knowing that there was community around you.

There was immediately the ski patrol, that Copper Mountain was able to help.

- Yeah.

- Tell us about that.

- Well, I mean, you bring up a good point, and that is you can't suffer alone because that multiplies your pain.

You suffer in community, and your pain is divided up and your brothers and sisters carry that burden.

But I had fantastic care from the ski patrol.

Other than a neck brace, that was a little too tight.

And, you know, I resolved from the moment that I recognized that I was going to become a patient, that I would be a good patient.

And I did try my best, but I was surrounded by friends on the trip.

One of the guys on our trip was a retired spine surgeon.

So he helped not only me navigate, what was going on, but he communicated a lot to my family and everyone from the ski patrol to the paramedics to the ER doctors that are... - It was in Summit County, Colorado, which is Breckenridge area.

- Yes, but they also are part of the big staffing company that I worked for.

- It’s amazing, so you had ER doctors that were involved in your, in your company and colleagues.

- Yeah, literally and figuratively my colleagues.

- That's amazing.

You knew that you wanted to get to a level one trauma center.

And you're— Summit County is not too far from Denver.

- Yeah.

- And there was a hospital there, Saint Anthony's which is level one.

Tell us about getting there due to the weather conditions, when you read the book, you realize that you couldn't take a helicopter, which is a life flight.

So you had to be transported by van or by ambulance.

- Yeah.

- How did that turn out?

- Well, so they took me to the closest hospital there in the mountains.

And Denver's maybe 50 miles away.

And they stabilized me and that first ER, got some basic x rays, intubated me for what turned out to be, I think, a two hour trip, two hour plus trip to Denver by ground.

It was Sunday afternoon.

That's when all the weekenders head back to Denver.

It's time to go back to work.

So, I-70 is just packed with cars.

- Right, I remember driving it.

- Yeah, and the medics told me if they do lights and sirens, that actually slows them down because everyone's trying to merge and so... - A lot of panic.

- Yeah.

I don't remember anything from that trip because I was sedated and on a ventilator.

- And your friend who is the retired surgeon was Doctor Smith, I believe.

So he was able to go with you?

- He was with me the whole way.

- Amazing.

Now you got to Saint Anthony's, the hospital that handles cases like this.

- Yeah.

- In Denver.

What happened at that point?

Because you were going to have to have surgery.

- Yeah.

So, I went to the E.R.

there.

They were waiting for me.

The neurosurgeon kind of evaluated my injuries.

They were able to get some CAT scan and I think even MRI.

And he took me to surgery that night, and I think, I think he planned for a couple of hours, and it turned out to be, like a 4 or 5 hour procedure to realign my spine to stabilize it with rods and to repair the very fragile tissue around the spinal cord so that the fluid wouldn't constantly leak and form an abscess, so, tedious work.

And I'm so grateful he did a fantastic job.

- Then you were talking a little bit earlier about, we were talking about, getting family together and friends together.

And your wife Amy, who, you during medical school came back to Ohio and started a relationship with your future wife then.

And then she became your wife, and you had family.

And Amy had to get to Denver.

She was concerned about the flight to Denver.

And there's this interesting story about after you were evaluated and your friends got a hold of her, that you knew she would be coming to your rescue in a sense, you know, a family.

- Yeah.

So on that Sunday, Amy was actually flying home from a weekend getaway in Florida with our daughter.

And so my friends had the terrible burden of having to call her and tell her what had happened.

And so she got the news on the tarmac at Cleveland airport.

And as it turns out, she never even left the airport.

Friends arranged for her to have a flight to Denver that same day.

- Wow.

And that's again God working in her life too.

Now, you sustained this injury, but, what happened after that Craig Rehab Hospital, which was also a Denver area hospital.

Because you’re going to need rehab.

And how long did you think you'd have to be?

Did they say you're going to have to be in this rehab for how long?

- Yeah.

I mean, you would think as a physician I'd have a better handle on this.

I really didn't know.

And I just embraced the role of a patient and let them, you know, kind of guide my recovery.

But I ended up spending eight weeks at Craig Rehab Hospital in Denver, which, a fantastic experience.

A world class hospital dedicated to spinal cord injury and traumatic brain injury.

So my time there was just really profound.

- You're a paralyzed man.

You were a physician who has often treated people with either paralysis or partial paralysis or other severe injuries.

And now you're a patient.

What is that like?

What was your thoughts?

You know, I am now the patient I'm going to be taken care of.

I want to take care of people.

- It's probably every ER doctor's worst fear is to leave your shift at the hospital and then come back as a trauma patient.

So I kind of had enough knowledge to know what was going to happen to me at that initial ER visit.

In the mountains there, the trauma evaluation, and it was, Bill, a surreal experience to, to hear them going through their trauma protocol that I had done to hundreds of patients.

So to be on the other side of the gown was... Yeah, I mean, it was surreal.

- It's very, traumatic and it's... - Yeah.

And so I had enough knowledge to understand the language, but, even the medics on the way to that first hospital, you know, they recognize the severity of my injuries as well.

And we're wondering, should we give you this medicines called transgenic acid or TXA, it's for internal bleeding, and I, I just said, guys, follow your protocol.

- Right.

So don't make exceptions, do what you think.

- Yeah.

I'm not a decision maker now.

I'm receiving care and... Yeah.

- I want to say that there are other things we're going to talk about.

The helper.

We're on PBS Western Reserve, and you talk about, Fred Rogers, who was on WQED in Pittsburgh, one of our sister stations to the East.

And tell me a little bit about how he helped you think about some of the things going on here in your life.

- Yeah.

So I co-wrote the book.

I had a collaborator, and she's the one who thought that would be a good analogy of how, you know, Fred Rogers would say, when you're scared, look for the helpers, right?

And so, I mean, I had a lot of helpers.

I had physical therapists, I had occupational therapists, I had recreational therapists.

So Craig Hospital has therapists dedicated to getting paralyzed patients back to activities that they enjoy.

So I was just surrounded by helpers.

And then here at home when I was in Craig, I had helpers that were looking for an adaptive van for me that were remodeling my home so I could get in and function at home.

And so I was just surrounded by people.

- So the people helped.

- Yeah.

- That's again our local view.

This is Forum 360.

I'm your host, Bill Steven Saus.

And with us is Doctor Jason Kolb.

And Doctor Kolb has been a very, amazing author.

He wrote with the as he mentioned earlier, Trish Higher wrote the book, Down the Mountain, Skiing, Suffering, and Sufficient Grace.

And so it's a pleasure to have Jason Kolb with us here.

An emergency medical physician.

Again, he's been working with Sumo for many years.

Prior to that, he worked in Alliance and did his residency at Akron General in Akron.

Tell us about how this, again affected your family.

Beyond Amy, your kids, they're so supportive.

- Yeah.

So we have four children.

They were age about 20 to age 12 at the time of my accident, two and a half years ago.

And I, you know, they all responded differently, and a lot of it was beneath the surface.

My one son said, “I want to be angry about this, but dad's not angry.

So it's hard for me to be angry.” - Wow.

Speaking of the anger and self-control, your older brother had an accident again out in the Breckenridge area at Keystone.

- Yeah.

- And you were there and, it was a confrontation, in a sense.

- Yeah.

It was the most bizarre incident on the mountain.

Even though my accident was a little bit strange.

My brother, two years prior had been the victim of an assault on the mountain after accidental collision with another snowboarder.

Five minutes later, the snowboarder found him and plowed into him as hard as he could, broke his arm.

- Like a revenge, like a road rage.

- It was a road rage incident— - On the slopes of Keystone.

- Just another surreal event.

I followed the the snowboarder all the way down the mountain.

I made a big ruckus until I got some guest services people and the wheels of justice turned slowly.

- Right.

- But, over a year later, we stood in the courtroom and had a chance to speak to the perpetrator.

It was a profound experience that I recount in the book.

- But you showed forgiveness and you expressed that.

- Only because I, I've been forgiven.

- Right.

Exactly.

- Can I forgive others?

That's the model.

- All right.

And Doctor Jason Kolb, we're going to ask you to maybe talk a little bit about medical practice and how it was before the accident, coming back to Summa.

And what did your colleagues say?

And how did they try to realign your professional duties.

- Yeah.

So before my accident, I was just clinically practicing emergency medicine physician, working shifts in the emergency department, doing some administrative stuff to doing some teaching.

Since my accident, I'm permanently disabled from the standpoint of the practice of emergency medicine, but Summa and then my actual employer, US Acute Care, have been so kind to me and kept me on doing administrative stuff.

- Very good.

- And teaching.

So I still do that.

And then I picked up some additional teaching at the medical school in Rootstown at NEOMED.

And I love that.

- Yeah.

So you can still impart wisdom plus, especially when it comes to paraplegic injuries, for patients, you're immediately able to talk firsthand.

- Yeah.

- And not just by the book.

You can give practical information.

Now, let’s get back to the house.

The friends and your wife, Amy and her family were able to help adjust things around the house.

You lived in Kent?

- Yes.

- Now and, the basic tasks, getting dressed, getting involved in wheelchairs, working with the special van that you have, which is a Toyota van.

So tell us a little bit about that.

- Yeah.

So— - Changing your lifestyle.

- Yeah.

Well, think about this, Bill.

I mean, we had a contractor who dropped what he was doing and came to our house and had it remodeled by the time I got home.

Two months.

I would bet if you wanted your kitchen remodeled, that they'd be scheduling you next year.

So the big part was the bathroom.

I have a roll in shower now, so I transferred to another chair that's made to get wet and, I can do that on my own.

But I would say it took me about a year to physically recover, you know, not only was I paralyzed and I have to use my arms now to do anything, these ribs took, you know, several months to heal and to build up the strength just to be able to function.

I would say it took me about a year to recover.

- Asking the a couple of other questions.

Would you say that you would do this all over again?

I know that was a point you wanted to bring out.

- Yeah.

That's right.

In the introduction to the book, I did write that, and I do stand by that.

And it sounds strange and it even sounds strange when I say it, Bill, but the perspective on life is so different and better now.

I feel like things were good before my accident at age 49.

Life was good.

Yeah, I had meaningful work, we've been married for almost 25 years at the time, had four kids that were doing well.

And then I break my back and I'm paralyzed and life changes in an instant.

But when you're lying on your back with a broken back, the bottom of a mountain, there's things in your perspective that change about what's really important.

And it's relationships and now I have time.

I have more time for people, and I have this perspective that life is short and I want to spend my time doing meaningful things.

- I found that there's so many amazing stories that are incorporated in the book.

Your friendship with your friend John.

Yeah.

- That is an amazing friendship.

- Yeah.

- He was there with you also at the accident?

- Yeah.

And again, I think God ordained that John— He was skiing behind me, maybe 30 yards.

He saw me make the wrong turn.

He knew it.

He was at my side even before I woke up.

And to have a friend like that and many, many others to was like such a blessing.

- Do you have, and this is a question that I hear from other people that have been injured also military.

When your dad was— When he was... Your late father was in Vietnam and was injured.

- Yeah.

- And was shot.

And is the post-traumatic stress.

So do you have, dreams or problems thinking about these things that bring you anxiety?

You know, what happened to you?

- I don't and it's not because I'm a great guy or that I have this really strong intestinal fortitude.

I mean, God and his grace has protected me from any post-traumatic stress.

- Okay.

- What I actually have had, is post-traumatic growth.

And I think that’s possible when we go through a traumatic experience to grow from it.

And I'm not looking down on anybody that experiences post-traumatic stress.

My wife, Amy, has been very transparent about her journey with post-traumatic stress over my injury.

- Right.

- But I want to say there's an opportunity for growth through that trauma.

It's almost like pruning a tree.

It's that little bit of trauma makes the tree flourish.

- Eventually it will flourish.

- Yeah.

And so I want to testify that it's possible.

- Wow.

And leaning on support you talk about again support from your family, support from fellow doctors and nurses and therapists.

Today it’s been a couple years now after because it was in in early 2023, that the injury occurred at Copper Mountain.

And so as you look back, things that have changed, support, what now are you looking— What now do you really feel you need in support that you, that you grew to enjoy?

- Yeah.

- Or appreciate?

- I feel like I've been so well supported.

I don't really feel like I have any additional needs right now.

The church community, the school community, family have been so supportive.

I want to say the country like the American with Disabilities Act, I think it just had its 30 year anniversary.

So grateful to live in a country where there's provided ramps.

- Exactly.

- And parking and airplanes helped me get on that— You know, the staff helped me get on and off the airplane, so I really just have gratitude.

For everything that I've received.

- Well, I know you grew up here in Hudson.

And you saw how communities like the Hudson community helps others.

Our HCTV is our home studio, and, we want to thank the folks here in Hudson for starting you out and getting you started.

You talked about some of the authors you appreciate.

C.S.

Lewis was one of the, Professor Lewis.

- Yeah.

- And from England, whose wife had a traumatic cancer that he went through, that are... What are some of the books you appreciate today, like, C. S. Lewis?

- Yeah, I mean, I love all C. S. Lewis, I love The Chronicles of Narnia.

I love, he wrote s book called, Mere Christianity, which was basically transcripts of radio that he had done.

- He did during World War Two.

- Yeah.

And he's a famous saying he says, “Pain is God's megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” And so, like, I feel like I was walking with God before my injury, but, this traumatic experience has made that relationship even more intimate.

- You also talked about Rabbi Harold Kushner, who from Boston area who wrote his book about suffering, why good people suffer.

- Yeah, that's the hardest question, Bill.

If there is a good God, why does suffering happen?

And that's, a huge topic.

And it's one that I talk about in the book.

- I like, Prophet Isaiah.

He said, I delight— Delight greatly in the Lord, my soul rejoices in my God, for he has closed me with the garments of salvation.

So you can trust God and just as the prophets did, and we ask one question more, down the mountain.

How can we get the book, Down the Mountain, Jason?

- Yeah, it's available on Amazon in paperback or hardcover.

It's available as an e-book on Kindle.

And I recorded it as an audible book— or an audiobook, and that's available on Audible.

- This is a wonderful time to read the book.

And we hope that Docotr Jason Kolb will be able to meet others in this community.

- Yeah.

Definitely.

- Here in the Western Reserve, our public television area and on our Rubber City radio stations.

If you have any questions, you can always look it up at the Jason Kolb dot com.

- Yeah.

D-R Jason Kolb, drjasonkolb.com.

- Thank you for being with us on Forum 360.

And we appreciate it.

Forum 360 is brought to you by John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Akron Community Foundation, Hudson Community Television, the Rubber City Radio Group, Shaw Jewish Community Center of Akron, Blue Green, Electric Impulse Communications, and Forum 360 supporters.