Challenge accepted: Nurse’s heroic journey of strength, optimism and resilience | News, Sports, Jobs

“Challenge accepted,” she said.

Aug. 5 started like any other Thursday for Nash. She worked a regular day as a cardiology nurse at the MercyOne Iowa Heart Center in Marshalltown. After her shift, she ran home to grab a few things and headed out for a family gathering at a pond. The late summer heat and humidity made it the perfect day to be around the water. She climbed up to a landing where the zipline began, and that’s where her memory of the accident ends.

“I’ve been told I swung off the platform too hard, causing my legs to fold up and the line to jump, pulling the handle I was hanging on to out of my hands,” Nash said. “I pulled myself into a pike position and fell 15 feet, landing right on my back.”

Those around her helplessly looked on in absolute silence. Nash tried to pull herself into a seated position and failed. She fell back to the ground and cried as her boyfriend Jordan and his family called 911 and began to pray over her.

Photo by Austin Chadderdon — Nash and her boyfriend Jordan Doud will celebrate their two year anniversary in February. Doud was with Nash the day of her accident and assisted in making the 911 call.

In the ambulance, she cycled through the same four questions: What happened? Where are we going? Where’s Jordan? And did someone call my mom?

Time Stood Still

Mackenzie and her boyfriend Jordan started dating right as COVID-19 lockdowns were hitting Iowa. Without anywhere to go or anything to do. they made a very 2020 pandemic courtship move.

“We found a list of the Marvel movies in chronological order and watched all 22 of them together,’ she said.

They spent 2,872 minutes, or just under 48 hours, watching the 22 films that had been released at that point.

Nash’s favorite character is Iron Man. Tony Stark hardly needs a synopsis, but for the uninitiated, he is a weapons and technology billionaire playboy turned superhero after an explosion lodged metal scraps into his body. He awoke from the explosion with an electromagnet connected to a battery in his chest to keep the shrapnel from flowing to his heart. Once he escaped, he developed a small and durable power source called an Arc Reactor so he didn’t have to haul the battery around. Ultimately, that Arc Reactor powered his famous Iron Man suit and turned him into the man who could save the entire galaxy with the snap of his fingers.

Audiences love these origin stories, as billions of dollars and decades of films prove. Nash loves them too, and now she has a powerful story of her own to tell, a real life lesson that draws a connection to fictional characters like Tony Stark.

Robin Rosenberg wrote a Smithsonian Magazine article titled “The Psychology Behind Superhero Origin Stories: How does following the adventures of Spider-Man and Batman inspire us to cope with adversity?” She argues that origin stories don’t just show how a person gains the ability to fly or climb walls. Conversely, they “show us not how to become super but how to be heroes, choosing altruism over the pursuit of wealth and power.”

Nash didn’t have to overcome the self indulgent tendencies that Tony Stark did. She was already a nurse dedicating her career to helping people. Her tool of choice isn’t a battery powered heart–it’s perspective and empathy.

“There’s a reason I was given this battle,” Nash said. “Whether it’s to reach out to other people, or to prove something to myself, there’s a purpose to it. I plan to discover that purpose and use it to its fullest extent.”

The photo to be featured in Madonna Rehabilitation Hospital’s 2022 calendar. The picture will be paired with September which is National Spinal Cord Injury Awareness Month.

In February, Mackenzie and Jordan will celebrate their two year anniversary, and Nash says that she would not be where she is without him. A lot has changed since their isolated, intimate and once in a lifetime COVID courtship, but life doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Things happen at random, by chance or through another possibility — a new life’s purpose.

A New Reality

When Nash arrived at the Emergency Room it was determined that she had sustained a compression fracture to the bottom of her thoracic spine at the level of T11-T-12 vertebrae. The fracture punctured her spinal cord in two places resulting in the need for emergency surgery. Doctors performed a T10-L2 fusion to stabilize the area around the fracture using rods and screws as well as a T11-T12 decompression to repair it. The surgery was successful in stabilizing Mackenzie’s injuries but left her with no movement or sensation from her mid-thighs down.

After a week in the trauma unit at MercyOne in Des Moines, Mackenzie spent the next week on the floor she’d worked on for years as a registered nurse. Nash then moved to Madonna Rehabilitation Hospitals in Lincoln, Neb., for intensive therapy.

“When I arrived there, my therapists estimated I’d be there for six weeks to receive inpatient therapy. I refused to accept that,” she said.“A couple of good friends of mine were getting married at the four week mark of my time there, so leaving Madonna in time to make it to the wedding became my new goal.”

And she achieved that goal.

She worked for hours every day in physical, occupational and recreational therapy to help build up core strength and adapt to life in a wheelchair — everything from bathing, dressing, accessing a grocery store, laundry room and kitchen to driving a car with hand controls.

On Sept. 18, just 44 days after being paralyzed from the hips down, she and Jordan were at her friend Channing’s ceremony. Nash wore a pretty pink dress and a huge smile.

This wasn’t a surprise to Nash because she did exactly what she set out to do, but she surpassed the expectations of Brianna Eaves, a therapist at Madonna.

“She wanted to be as self-sufficient as possible and not rely on other people to help her out. She’s just a motivated person,” Eaves said.

Nash went bowling with her boyfriend Jordan at Wayward Social just over two months after her spinal cord injury. She has continued her active and fun life and said she doesn’t feel like she’s had to say no to anything.

Making the best of difficult situations with resilient determination has allowed Nash to adapt and progress in her recovery, but every process became more involved.

“There are very few things that haven’t been affected by my injury,” she said. “I can’t jump into my car and go over to a friend’s house anymore, and now I have to wonder if I can even get into said friend’s house from my wheelchair.”

There’s no other way to put it: adjusting to everyday life has been hard. Her time management skills have been put to the test because everything takes twice as long. She has come to terms with the fact that many things she tries to do will result in running into something, knocking something over or dropping something.

Both the physical and mental recovery have been “messy and complicated.” From the moment she was told she may never walk again, the phrase “challenge accepted” has been a constant motivator.

“I feel like I’ve maintained that mindset throughout this entire journey,” she said. “There hasn’t really been a time in therapy, at home, or at work where I’ve shied away from doing something because I wasn’t sure how it would go. I’ve clinged to the belief that the only way “out” of this is forward, and that’s been my mantra before every new thing.”

At On With Life in Ankeny Nash uses a standing frame to gain strength and balance as part of her outpatient rehabilitation process.

Optimism, Wisdom and Faith

Life can change in an instant, as Nash can attest, but she also confirms the concept of a silver lining — some new perspective that turns an unimaginable situation into a new opportunity.

There’s a reason audiences love superhero movies, and it seems to be more than just the visual pageantry and spectacle of it all. Writer and director Tennyson E. Stead defined the term spectacle as “the effect of watching a person do something we didn’t actively realize people could do.”

It seems that’s exactly what Mackenzie Nash’s superpower is–showing each friend, family member and patient that they’re capable of their own big screen heroics. She can’t snap her fingers and save the entire galaxy or make the conditions that her patients carry go away. A large part of her role is educating them on what to expect prior to procedures, and her experiences are helping her relate on a deeper level.

On Nov. 3, Nash was celebrating a day of flowers, cards, hugs and food as she went back to work for the first time since the accident. Eight days later, she was told that her employer would no longer be able to accommodate her disability in her current position and that she was being put on leave until they could find another option.

Nash picks up her car after it had been modified for her use. She learned how to operate the car using hand controls at Madonna Rehabilitation Hospital in Lincoln, NE.

At that time, she was wondering if it would make sense to go ahead with a story as the initial press release that was issued was about her returning to work. But Nash’s answers to difficult questions are a step beyond optimism, and her absence of silence and retreat makes it apparent that the human body and a particular occupation are just small pieces of what makes a person.

In her Nov. 8 blog post, Nash was celebrating and her excitement came through in her exclamation filled writing. She celebrated her 29th birthday a few weeks ago and received an outpouring of love and well wishes. She and Jordan had some fun for Halloween and dressed up as Lieutenant Dan and Forrest Gump. Nash is a huge Iowa Hawkeye fan and looks forward to going to the last game of the season with Jordan. The university easily accommodated them by switching their general tickets to handicap accessible seats.

Looking forward, Nash will be stepping into the spotlight. She will be in Madonna Rehabilitation Hospital’s 2022 calendar for the month of September, which is Spinal Cord Injury Awareness month. She also announced that she applied for the Miss Wheelchair Iowa 2021 pageant taking place on Dec. 10.

“This is a little bit out of my comfort zone, but I feel like it’s a great opportunity to raise awareness for spinal cord injuries and network and meet people who also have physical disabilities,” she said.

Nash would be filthy rich if she had a dollar for every time she asked herself, “Why me,” but she’s learning to trust the road that’s ahead of her. Before her accident, she would get in touch with her faith when things got hard or pray for family members if they asked for it, but she didn’t do the same when things got better or were going well.

Nash at her friend Channing’s wedding with boyfriend Jordan 44 days after a zipline accident that fractured her back. She was released from inpatient rehabilitation two weeks sooner than her therapists expected to meet this personal goal she had set for herself.

“This experience has really put my faith on the front burner. I’ve prayed when I’ve been struggling but have also been thanking God when things are going well and progressing,” she said.

With her themes of “challenge accepted” and “the only way out it forward,” she has more goals on the horizon like getting married, having kids and advancing in her career, all things that she feels are very possible. She even hopes to walk down the aisle at her wedding someday, but she’s accepting of the shape she’s in right now.

“I’ve also adapted the ‘prepare for the worst, hope for the best’ mentality,” she said. “Despite all the changes, I haven’t felt like I’ve “missed out” on anything or had to say no to anything going on in my life since I’ve been home, and I’m so thankful for that. Looking at the big picture, I’m very fortunate.”

Expectedly, Nash has her off days with moments when she breaks down in tears and screams “Why did this happen to me?” During these times, she lets herself feel those emotions, works through them, then focuses back to moving forward.

“I’ve become very focused on the quality of my life as opposed to big life experiences,” she said. “This has shown me who in my life is truly there for me and willing to jump in and help. I’ve got some amazing friends and family, and without them, I would not be where I am today.”

Mackenzie Nash received 45 staples in her back immediately after emergency surgery to repair and stabilize a compression fracture in her back that punctured the spinal cord.

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