Saw Murderball last night.  It's a documentary on Quadruplegic Rugby players.  It's fascinating, entertaining and moving without being the least bit maudlin.  It follows the members of the US Quad Rugby team to the Olympics in Athens in '04 and the head coach of Canada's Olympic team, who played for the US til he 'betrayed his country' and went to coach Canada. 
  It's a frank look at the lives of these young athletes and make no mistake, they are athletes.  They are all impaired in all four limbs, some with no movement in their hands, some with a little bit of finger control.  One young man lost all four limbs to menengitis when he was nine and uses his elbows as hands.  All of them talk about how they were injured and how hard it was to come to grips with the new terms of their lives and every single one of them is happy to have survived and revels in life as it is.  One of them even said that he had done more since his injury than he ever had before.  My son noticed that they all had hot girlfriends.

I couldn't help but remember the national debate that raged last year over Terri Schiavo; how so many people were  quick to declare that they wouldn't want to live under those circumstances.  Well, no one ever wakes up in the morning and decides to become impaired today, but the truth is we don't know how we'll feel about anything until it happens.  The will to live is very strong and Murderball is the story of some people refuse to lie down and play dead just because society says they should want to.  

 

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