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Notable & Quotable: No Turning Back
Bryan Anderson’s life changed with a boom on Oct. 23, 2005, in downtown Baghdad, Iraq. The improvised explosive device sent a stream of molten metal through his Humvee, and both his legs were severed and cauterized in a flash. His left hand and a chunk of his right disappeared in the explosion.
A U.S. Army sergeant at the time, he remembers it all in excruciating, vivid detail, up until the time he was put into a helicopter for transport to medical care. Then, he blacked out, and didn’t wake up until a week later in Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., with his mother looking into his eyes. “Mom?” he asked. “What’re you doing here?” His mother explained he had been in an “accident,” and she stayed with him for a year while he recovered.
In his book “No Turning Back,” Anderson recounts his amazing journey from being critically wounded to becoming critically alive, aware and fulfilled. It is an inspirational book, worthy reading for anybody, particularly people working in rehabilitation or providing HME goods and services to patients like Anderson.
Anderson tells his story through the writing of David Mack, who transforms Anderson’s memoir into a credible work of narrative journalism. The story flows from Anderson being critically injured, through rehabilitation and then triumph in recovery. The book reflects Anderson’s upbeat philosophy, and is peppered with his memorable quotes. For example, this is what Anderson thinks about what happened to him in Iraq:
“Bad things happen to us. It’s a fact of life. No one’s immune. … For me it was getting blown up; for somebody else, it might be losing a job, or a loved one dying, or a house burning down. There are things we can’t avoid, at least not forever. We can’t always control what happens to us. The only thing we can control is how we react to it. We can choose to lie down and die, or we can choose to go on living.’’
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