I DREAM OF THINGS THAT NEVER WERE

In this debut memoir, a quadriplegic recounts the serious injury that changed his life in ways that he never could have imagined.

As a teenager in Oceanside, New York, Kunken relieved stress through sports, especially football. But it was during a game at Cornell University in 1970 that he injured his spinal cord and broke his neck. The 20-year-old spent months lying in hospital beds, with medical professionals refusing to explain the full extent of his physical trauma. It turned out that he was paralyzed and would need a wheelchair, likely for the rest of his life. While he nearly gave up hope at times, Kunken was determined to return to college (“I needed to go back to school and get the best education possible if I was going to have any chance of making something out of my life”). With a personal attendant assisting him (Kunken could only partially move his left arm), he graduated from college and even earned two master’s degrees. Then he opted to go to law school and faced a host of new challenges when he became an assistant DA in the Nassau County District Attorney’s Office on Long Island. He started to focus on his love life after he met a woman he envisioned a future with—including children. The author meticulously details his months spent in hospitals and what’s now called the Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine. He skillfully illuminates various procedures, physical therapies, and such diagnosed conditions as a neurogenic bladder. He likewise doesn’t skimp on later specifics about his grade point averages and court cases. The prose is refreshingly candid, and intriguing passages linger on recurring problems he ran across. Kunken, for example, recounts how he endured doctors with appalling bedside manners and hired myriad personal attendants who didn’t work out, including one who stole from him. On the other hand, he praises his supportive friends and family, particularly his older brother, younger sister, and motherly aunt. Such figures often crop up in the author’s huge selection of personal photographs showcasing his early life, his hospitalization and treatment, and his growing family.

A remarkably frank, comprehensive, and eye-opening account of triumphing over hardship.