When Life Runs You Over
Before and after. Often this pairing of words is reserved
for revealing a transformation that improves. For Cyndi
Masters, her before-and-after story left her worse for
wear physically, but with stunning changes within.
By: Shannon Leonard-Boone
ON FEBRUARY 1, 1998, Cyndi lay suspended in the
moments between her before and after. Her body lay
sprawled in the middle of Interstate 65 with blood filling
her mouth and nose, and traffic headed her way.
She had welcomed that unusually warm day for a chance to ride her beloved Harley
FLH. She hadn’t been on the highway long, cruising about 65 or 70 miles per hour,
when a car unexpectedly moved over into her lane.
The emergency lane ahead was blocked. There was nowhere for her to go. As the car
struck Cyndi, she was launched into the air and landed on the hood of another car. She
rolled off and under the car. Its left front tire ran over part of her head and chest.
She struggled to breathe and felt herself slipping away, thinking this was what it was like
to die. There on the ground she had what she calls a spiritual experience, in which she
felt as if she was “wrapped in a big old blanket of love.” Her fears subsided as she
realized what mattered most — to live, love and be loved.
“That’s really, to me, what’s the most important,” she says.
After she was transported to the hospital, doctors scurried to save Cyndi. She arrived
with collapsed lungs, crushed ribs, her heart shifted to the left, the right side of her face
ripped and serious spinal cord and head injuries. Doctors weren’t sure she would
survive, or if she did, whether she’d ever walk again.
Then 34 years old, Cyndi fought her way back. And each day she’s lived purposefully
and joyfully with an intense gratitude that comes from knowing how close she came to
losing her life.
Shortly after the accident her friends began to flock to her bedside and filled her room
with flowers. After numerous surgeries and extensive rehabilitation, Cyndi’s friends
followed her home, always there to assist her with meals, household chores, and to
help her walk and regain her strength.
Dr. Veronica Kavorkian was a resident in the University of Louisville ambulatory care
building when she met Cyndi, and helped her with some medical referrals. She said
Cyndi was still dealing with the aftereffects of the accident, but was surprisingly direct
and self-assured.
Kavorkian said Cyndi’s determination is unshakable, with a positive attitude that keeps
her marching forward instead of crumpling under the strain. “I really don’t know what it
is because it is really beyond what anybody else has,” Kavorkian said about Cyndi’s
resoluteness of spirit.
The owner of a specialty advertising and publishing company before the accident,
Cyndi was unable to work for many months and eventually had to sign up for food
stamps and disability. “I absolutely lost everything,” she said. “I had to learn that my
self-esteem didn’t come from any material thing.”
Sometimes friends would bring people by who were feeling a bit sorry for themselves,
but after meeting Cyndi with her decisively sunny personality which still shone despite
the hardships, they came away inspired. It helped Cyndi, too, she says, because as
long as she was contributing something, she knew she still had value even in her
seemingly helpless state.
The accident wasn’t Cyndi’s first hurdle in life — she grew up in a series of foster
homes and orphanages. And yet her trials weren’t over. Two years after the accident, a
baseline mammogram showed something wasn’t quite right and a few months later a
lump was detected in her breast. Cyndi was diagnosed with not one, but two types of
breast cancer, and it had spread to her lymph nodes.
Cyndi said she briefly let herself be angry at the diagnosis, and at God. “I spent one
day feeling sorry for myself,” she said. As she listed her personal woes, wondering how
much more she could take, she said she heard her words echo back into her mind…the
accident…cancer…not as sources of suffering, but of wisdom.
“I got a sense of gratitude and that was it,” she said of her dark mood lifting that day.
She successfully underwent surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy and has been
cancer-free for more than five years. She keeps regular mammogram appointments
and checkups with her oncologist.
After the accident, Cyndi had trouble remembering what she’d read from one
paragraph to the next due to short-term memory loss. That has improved over time,
and she has learned coping strategies, such as surrounding herself with great
employees and using her PDA to record information she needs to remember.
During both her recoveries, Cyndi used her computer as a portal to the world outside
and realized what business potential the Internet held.
In 2000, she co-founded Digital Business Solutions, a Louisville-based interactive
graphic and web design software development company, which she solely owns today.
The firm has 10 employees and a nationwide client base as well as international clients
in China, England and Canada.
Carol Serrone met Cyndi shortly after the accident and said for one person to have
gone through so much and keep a sense of dignity and grace is unbelievable. And to
do that while starting and managing a business — unfathomable. Motivated by Cyndi’s
example, in 2003, Carol started her own Cincinnati-based consulting firm. Cyndi was
ready to help her with marketing and business strategies and connected Carol with
people who could help her business take root. Carol said she believes Cyndi’s strong
spiritual foundation, the warmth and openness of her spirit that attracts a strong
network of friends, and pure determination have gotten her over the health hurdles.
“I just think she’s an inspiration to a lot of people, and just the way she lives her life is
inspiring,” Carol said.
Now 42, Cyndi realizes she doesn’t look like she used to, has some limitations and
chronic pain, but refuses to live her life in a fog of prescription narcotics. She chooses
instead to busy herself with her career and volunteers with a host of organizations
including the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, Maryhurst, Volunteers of
America and works one-on-one with people who have drug and alcohol dependencies.
“If I think about it, I couldn’t move,” she says of her physical pain. “But if I’m busy
thinking about other people and what I can do for them…I don’t hurt as much.”
Cyndi said her life’s goals are to “stay in the day,” help others, and always have a
dream — in her case, to write a book about her experiences and practical ways to cope
with chronic pain.
Cyndi says there’s just no room for focusing on what’s wrong in her life, and she
doesn’t consider herself unlucky, nor does she fear the future. She chooses, instead,
to see the gifts in all challenges. As she jokes that she’s exceeded her lifetime quota
for misfortune, Cyndi says her life is better now than it has ever been. “I want to be
here,” she said. “That is what I have learned probably more than anything else.”
How Cyndi Copes with the Pain:
• Hot water is therapy. If I can get into hot water first thing in the morning, it will help me
get moving and get me through the rest of the day.
• Stay in the day. I can’t afford to think about ‘What if I feel this way for the rest of my
life or even the rest of the week.’ If I stay in the moment, I can handle anything for that
moment or that day.
• Exercise is the last thing I want to do when I am in pain. If I can move long enough to
allow my endorphins to kick in,
I get much reprieve. Stronger muscles relieve the stress on my bones and joints.
• One of the mantras I live by is “The dog that wins is the one you feed”(This is actually
going to be the subtitle for my book). If I focus on my pain, it grows and gets the best of
me. If I focus on positive things, I hurt less and get to be present for my life.
• Help someone else. If I focus on being helpful to someone else (great or small
gestures) I am not focusing on myself and my pain. I get a sense of value and take the
attention away from any of the thoughts of worthlessness that often accompany
debilitating pain.
• Stay away from sugar. Sugar increases my joint pain.SHANNON LEONARD-BOONE is
a freelance writer from Elizabethtown, Ky.
Before and after. Often this pairing of words is reserved
for revealing a transformation that improves. For Cyndi
Masters, her before-and-after story left her worse for
wear physically, but with stunning changes within.
By: Shannon Leonard-Boone
ON FEBRUARY 1, 1998, Cyndi lay suspended in the
moments between her before and after. Her body lay
sprawled in the middle of Interstate 65 with blood filling
her mouth and nose, and traffic headed her way.
She had welcomed that unusually warm day for a chance to ride her beloved Harley
FLH. She hadn’t been on the highway long, cruising about 65 or 70 miles per hour,
when a car unexpectedly moved over into her lane.
The emergency lane ahead was blocked. There was nowhere for her to go. As the car
struck Cyndi, she was launched into the air and landed on the hood of another car. She
rolled off and under the car. Its left front tire ran over part of her head and chest.
She struggled to breathe and felt herself slipping away, thinking this was what it was like
to die. There on the ground she had what she calls a spiritual experience, in which she
felt as if she was “wrapped in a big old blanket of love.” Her fears subsided as she
realized what mattered most — to live, love and be loved.
“That’s really, to me, what’s the most important,” she says.
After she was transported to the hospital, doctors scurried to save Cyndi. She arrived
with collapsed lungs, crushed ribs, her heart shifted to the left, the right side of her face
ripped and serious spinal cord and head injuries. Doctors weren’t sure she would
survive, or if she did, whether she’d ever walk again.
Then 34 years old, Cyndi fought her way back. And each day she’s lived purposefully
and joyfully with an intense gratitude that comes from knowing how close she came to
losing her life.
Shortly after the accident her friends began to flock to her bedside and filled her room
with flowers. After numerous surgeries and extensive rehabilitation, Cyndi’s friends
followed her home, always there to assist her with meals, household chores, and to
help her walk and regain her strength.
Dr. Veronica Kavorkian was a resident in the University of Louisville ambulatory care
building when she met Cyndi, and helped her with some medical referrals. She said
Cyndi was still dealing with the aftereffects of the accident, but was surprisingly direct
and self-assured.
Kavorkian said Cyndi’s determination is unshakable, with a positive attitude that keeps
her marching forward instead of crumpling under the strain. “I really don’t know what it
is because it is really beyond what anybody else has,” Kavorkian said about Cyndi’s
resoluteness of spirit.
The owner of a specialty advertising and publishing company before the accident,
Cyndi was unable to work for many months and eventually had to sign up for food
stamps and disability. “I absolutely lost everything,” she said. “I had to learn that my
self-esteem didn’t come from any material thing.”
Sometimes friends would bring people by who were feeling a bit sorry for themselves,
but after meeting Cyndi with her decisively sunny personality which still shone despite
the hardships, they came away inspired. It helped Cyndi, too, she says, because as
long as she was contributing something, she knew she still had value even in her
seemingly helpless state.
The accident wasn’t Cyndi’s first hurdle in life — she grew up in a series of foster
homes and orphanages. And yet her trials weren’t over. Two years after the accident, a
baseline mammogram showed something wasn’t quite right and a few months later a
lump was detected in her breast. Cyndi was diagnosed with not one, but two types of
breast cancer, and it had spread to her lymph nodes.
Cyndi said she briefly let herself be angry at the diagnosis, and at God. “I spent one
day feeling sorry for myself,” she said. As she listed her personal woes, wondering how
much more she could take, she said she heard her words echo back into her mind…the
accident…cancer…not as sources of suffering, but of wisdom.
“I got a sense of gratitude and that was it,” she said of her dark mood lifting that day.
She successfully underwent surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy and has been
cancer-free for more than five years. She keeps regular mammogram appointments
and checkups with her oncologist.
After the accident, Cyndi had trouble remembering what she’d read from one
paragraph to the next due to short-term memory loss. That has improved over time,
and she has learned coping strategies, such as surrounding herself with great
employees and using her PDA to record information she needs to remember.
During both her recoveries, Cyndi used her computer as a portal to the world outside
and realized what business potential the Internet held.
In 2000, she co-founded Digital Business Solutions, a Louisville-based interactive
graphic and web design software development company, which she solely owns today.
The firm has 10 employees and a nationwide client base as well as international clients
in China, England and Canada.
Carol Serrone met Cyndi shortly after the accident and said for one person to have
gone through so much and keep a sense of dignity and grace is unbelievable. And to
do that while starting and managing a business — unfathomable. Motivated by Cyndi’s
example, in 2003, Carol started her own Cincinnati-based consulting firm. Cyndi was
ready to help her with marketing and business strategies and connected Carol with
people who could help her business take root. Carol said she believes Cyndi’s strong
spiritual foundation, the warmth and openness of her spirit that attracts a strong
network of friends, and pure determination have gotten her over the health hurdles.
“I just think she’s an inspiration to a lot of people, and just the way she lives her life is
inspiring,” Carol said.
Now 42, Cyndi realizes she doesn’t look like she used to, has some limitations and
chronic pain, but refuses to live her life in a fog of prescription narcotics. She chooses
instead to busy herself with her career and volunteers with a host of organizations
including the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, Maryhurst, Volunteers of
America and works one-on-one with people who have drug and alcohol dependencies.
“If I think about it, I couldn’t move,” she says of her physical pain. “But if I’m busy
thinking about other people and what I can do for them…I don’t hurt as much.”
Cyndi said her life’s goals are to “stay in the day,” help others, and always have a
dream — in her case, to write a book about her experiences and practical ways to cope
with chronic pain.
Cyndi says there’s just no room for focusing on what’s wrong in her life, and she
doesn’t consider herself unlucky, nor does she fear the future. She chooses, instead,
to see the gifts in all challenges. As she jokes that she’s exceeded her lifetime quota
for misfortune, Cyndi says her life is better now than it has ever been. “I want to be
here,” she said. “That is what I have learned probably more than anything else.”
How Cyndi Copes with the Pain:
• Hot water is therapy. If I can get into hot water first thing in the morning, it will help me
get moving and get me through the rest of the day.
• Stay in the day. I can’t afford to think about ‘What if I feel this way for the rest of my
life or even the rest of the week.’ If I stay in the moment, I can handle anything for that
moment or that day.
• Exercise is the last thing I want to do when I am in pain. If I can move long enough to
allow my endorphins to kick in,
I get much reprieve. Stronger muscles relieve the stress on my bones and joints.
• One of the mantras I live by is “The dog that wins is the one you feed”(This is actually
going to be the subtitle for my book). If I focus on my pain, it grows and gets the best of
me. If I focus on positive things, I hurt less and get to be present for my life.
• Help someone else. If I focus on being helpful to someone else (great or small
gestures) I am not focusing on myself and my pain. I get a sense of value and take the
attention away from any of the thoughts of worthlessness that often accompany
debilitating pain.
• Stay away from sugar. Sugar increases my joint pain.SHANNON LEONARD-BOONE is
a freelance writer from Elizabethtown, Ky.
