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Like Any Normal Day: A Story of Devotion
A profound, powerful narrative of a golden boy's tragedy, a woman's unlived life, and a brother's complicated devotion In the mid-1970s, brothers Buddy and Jimmy Miley were close, both on the verge of impressive athletic careers. A promising high school quarterback, Buddy's potential was cut short by an injury that left him quadriplegic. Immobile and imprisoned in his body for decades, Buddy would watch life pass by from his wheelchair, living at home under his mother's and brother's care, and wondering what his life could have been. Buddy and Jimmy visited special hospitals and traveled to Lourdes in search of a miracle, never losing hope as they searched for a cure. But as Buddy suffered increasing pain, and also realized that he would never be able to walk again€”and never prove himself capable of being loved by Karen, a woman he'd first met in high school€”he asked Jim
272 pages, Hardcover
First published April 24, 2012
6 people are currently reading
371 people want to read
About the author
Mark Kram Jr.
5 books12 followersWork by Mark Kram Jr. has appeared in The Best American Sports Writing (Houghton Mifflin) six times: 2011, 2008, 2005, 2003, 2002 and 1994. The Society of Professional Journalists honored him with the 2011 Sigma Delta Chi Award for feature writing. The Associated Press Sports Editors have awarded him first place prizes for feature writing in 2008 and for explanatory reporting in 2009 and 2010. With the Philadelphia Daily News since 1987, he has worked previously at the Detroit Free Press and the Baltimore News American. Additionally, he contributes the “American Read” essay for Business Day Sports Monthly in Cape Town, South Africa. He is also a former contributing writer for Philadelphia Magazine. He is the son of the late Mark Kram, an acclaimed writer for Sports Illustrated and the author of a controversial book on the rivalry between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, Ghosts of Manila. Kram Jr. attended the University of Maryland, College Park and graduated from Loyola High School, Baltimore. He lives in Haddonfield, NJ with his wife and two daughters.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 69 reviews
April 22, 2012
I won this book from a contest on Goodreads.
When Albert Miley was a young man, his biggest thrill was to play football which he excelled at and when he had boys of his own, he passed this passion on to them. Of his three sons, Buddy was the one who definately had it in him to make it to the pros along with his younger brother, Jimmy. Buddy was 17 years old when he was playing in a high school team in Pennsylvania in 1973 when he was hit, hard, and Buddy landed on his neck. The injury resulted in Buddy left as a quadriplegic and in constant agonizing pain. For two decades Buddy lived in this motionless tomb of a body with horrific pain until he approached his brother, Jimmy to ask for his assistance to end his living hell once and for all.
This was a gut wrenching story of how in just a split second one's whole life can take a horrible turn for the worse. My tears flowed freely for the family and friends that strugled to give Buddy the comfort he so deserved through his ordeal. A true testimate to the absolute love and devotion of those individuals who did whatever they could for Buddy, right to his very last day. One of the most moving stories I've ever read that I will surely remember forever.
When Albert Miley was a young man, his biggest thrill was to play football which he excelled at and when he had boys of his own, he passed this passion on to them. Of his three sons, Buddy was the one who definately had it in him to make it to the pros along with his younger brother, Jimmy. Buddy was 17 years old when he was playing in a high school team in Pennsylvania in 1973 when he was hit, hard, and Buddy landed on his neck. The injury resulted in Buddy left as a quadriplegic and in constant agonizing pain. For two decades Buddy lived in this motionless tomb of a body with horrific pain until he approached his brother, Jimmy to ask for his assistance to end his living hell once and for all.
This was a gut wrenching story of how in just a split second one's whole life can take a horrible turn for the worse. My tears flowed freely for the family and friends that strugled to give Buddy the comfort he so deserved through his ordeal. A true testimate to the absolute love and devotion of those individuals who did whatever they could for Buddy, right to his very last day. One of the most moving stories I've ever read that I will surely remember forever.
June 30, 2013
Being from the same town, and knowing several people profiled in this book, I was fairly knowledgeable regarding the Buddy Miley story. That being said, I learned a lot of details about the tragic injury that clarified all that Buddy had to endure. It is a very sad and inspiring story. Buddy's mother Rosemarie is indeed a living Saint. No doubt, anyone who was blessed to come across Buddy became touched by his bravery.
August 31, 2012
http://philadelphiareviewofbooks.com/...
The ultimate irony of Jack Kevorkian’s life must be the nature of his death.
On June 3, 2011, Kevorkian died of pulmonary thrombosis, a blood clot in the lungs, at William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Michigan. Geoffrey Feiger, Kevorkian’s longtime lawyer and advocate, told The New York Times in 1995, “He’ll lie and say he isn’t. But he is. He’s scared to death (of death).” Kevorkian lived to the age of 83, but none of his ancestors made it past 70, and the thought of dying a slow, painful death in the hands of the medical system disgusted him. A descendant of Armenians who fled genocide at the hands of the Ottomans in the second decade of the 20th century, Kevorkian famously dressed in thrift shop clothes, ratty cardigans and ill-fitting suits. He often assisted suicides in a bed in the back of his white 1968 Volkswagen bus, or on the red couch in his one-bedroom apartment in suburban Detroit. A lover of fine arts and classical music, and a painter and composer in his own right, Kevorkian played the role of the gruff defender of terminal patients’ right to die, while in private his friends remarked on the warmth and compassion he expressed.
In a symposium on medical ethics published in Harper’s Magazine in 1990, Kevorkian said, “First of all, the word “soul” has no place in this discussion. No invented human abstraction of a theological nature will solve anything. It only obscures the issue. You mention a soul, but no one knows anything about it; it’s absolutely ethereal. Body parts are property. The person owns them and has the absolute right over what will be done with them in every situation.” This staunch secularism and inability to bend in his atheistic language and his willingness to buck the prevailing system got him in more trouble than the suicides he assisted.
Jessica R. Cooper, the judge to finally convict Kevorkian of murder in 1999, after a two-day trial, told Kevorkian, “You had the audacity to go on national television, show the world what you did and dare the legal system to stop you. Well, sir, consider yourself stopped.” The previous year, 60 Minutes broadcast a videotape of Kevorkian assisting in the suicide of Thomas Youk, a patient with Lou Gehrig’s disease. Unlike many of Kevorkian’s other procedures, in this case the patient did not press a button to start the injections of potassium chloride from the Thanatron. Instead, Kevorkian injected the patient himself. “They must charge me; either they go or I go. If they go, that means they’ll never convict me in a court of law,” he told Mike Wallace during the interview accompanying the footage.
In many other forums through the years, he expressed these same cavalier sentiments, telling Feiger, before an earlier trial, “I want to be convicted!” He never expressed his real sentiments, and his real purpose in assisting suicides in such a public manner, better than Feiger did for him, in his opening statements in the same case.
“Humanity and compassion are on trial. You will be deciding one of the great issues in the struggle for human rights….His intent is never to kill someone, but only to reduce suffering. That is Dr. Jack Kevorkian. That is the man who stands charged before you. You will decide how much suffering all of us must endure before we go into that good night –some of us, not so gently.”
Finally, though, in 1999, Kevorkian severed his relationship with the charismatic Feiger, who supported him, not only as pro-bono counsel, but also by providing rent-free housing. In his last trial, Kevorkian defended himself. In the end, he regretted this decision, which ultimately robbed him of the freedom to choose his method of death.
The name his pipe-fitter father gave him, Murad, belonged to a line of Ottoman sultans and warriors, but means “wish” in its original Arabic. In this lies another irony of Kevorkian’s existence. His obsession with death, which surfaced early in his medical career when he studied the corneas of cadavers and experimented with postmortem blood transfusions, led him to an examination of the quality of life of those in the process of dying. While physicians have recommended hospice care for centuries for terminal patients, advances in medicine, technology and hygiene in the last fifty years changed the final stage of life inexorably. The emergence of morally ambiguous cases – a quadriplegic saved from a car wreck, or a brain dead stroke victim sustained by artificial life support – demanded a new, serious discussion about health care policy and legislation. Kevorkian helped bring this discussion into the mainstream spotlight with his 130 assisted suicides.
“My ultimate aim is to make euthanasia a positive experience. I’m trying to knock the medical profession into accepting its responsibilities, and those responsibilities include assisting their patients with death,” Kevorkian told The New York Times after his first procedure in 1990. For many, a quick and painless end, in the bed of Kevorkian’s Volkswagen parked next to a stream at a campground or even sinking into the moldering cushions of his couch wearing a gas mask pumping carbon monoxide, offered a more positive experience than years of fighting for life in a hospital or waiting for it too slowly and excruciatingly ebb away in hospice.
But Jack Kevorkian played the bogeyman, the Dr. Death part to the hilt. An apocalyptic paranoid toward the end of his life, he ranted to Mark Kram, Jr., of The Philadelphia Daily News, about how humanity would be subjected to “worldwide slavery within two to three centuries” telling Kram the human race would then extinguish itself in the 23rd or 24th centuries.
In the Harper’s symposium, over twenty years before his death, Kevorkian said, “I don’t know what you mean by ‘ethic of the body.’ A body’s a body. A dog’s a body. Any mammal is a body. And when you cut, you bleed. When you die, you stink. That’s all we know about it. Is there sacredness in all this?
“My idea of the human body is that it’s a living organism like any mammal. You want to know what to do with it? Then you must consider: What are the exigencies of the spatial and temporal situation you’re in at the time? Then you apply your reason, which is uniquely human and often abused -and most often by ethicists – and you use your common sense and logic and try to arrive at a solution to the problem you are in, not some preconceived idea that you’re trying to fit reality into.”
Toward the end, perhaps, Kevorkian lost this ability to resist his preconceived ideas, but while he was at it, there was no braver champion of the right to die as we choose. Andrew Solomon, in a piece for The New Yorker about his own mother’s suicide, which he assisted, wrote, “He (Kevorkian) should not have gone to prison, but civil disobedience comes at a cost, and he paid it. He was the Malcolm X of the right-to-die movement—a movement that is unfortunately still seeking its Martin Luther King, Jr.”
Mark Kram, Jr. concentrates on the view from the other end of the Thanatron in his new book Like Any Normal Day, which chronicles the life of Buddy Miley, a high school football player from Warminster, a suburb of Philadelphia, paralyzed in the early 1970s on a routine play and left quadriplegic for the rest of his life. Kram brings the perspective of a local sports journalist to this story of pain and thwarted dreams. His initial contact with Miley and his family came 19 years after Buddy’s accident, when, in the 1990s, a rising tide of publicity about traumatic head injuries on the gridiron, inspired Kram to write a feature story on Buddy for The Philadelphia Daily News.
“19 Years of Hell,” Kram’s headline for the story reads, and Like Any Normal Day focuses on how an instant of reckless teenage aggression and then a careless, untrained medical response can change a young man’s life forever. But Kram’s book does not tell Buddy’s story alone. The large Miley family provides a perfect cast for a tragedy of circumstance and repressed emotions.
The streets of suburban Philadelphia in the 40s, 50s and 60s come alive in Buddy’s mother Rosemarie Miley’s hopping at the Benedict Club in Center City, then moving to Warminster and having seven kids. The picture Kram paints of suburban life is not unique, but the details he brings to bear, mostly through Rosemarie’s reminiscences and Buddy’s father Bert’s war correspondence, enrich the story tremendously. The cliché divisions of small town society – Buddy, the wonderboy jock; Karen, the sensitive hippie girl; Bert, the muted, restrained father; Juzwiak, the understanding coach – strike us as the caricatures of Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused, but resonant more fully as Kram provides a broader stage on which his subjects can grow.
Kram relies, occasionally, too much on generalizations and fails to string the otherwise strong narrative together with specific anecdotes, though the stories he does include, particularly in Buddy’s hospital room – Buddy counting the pages Karen turns, or Karen lying on the floor looking up at Buddy in traction – provide enough stirring emotional content to allow readers a strong connection. Too often, though, Buddy’s friends and siblings remember generalities – he was a hot dog on the field; he was obsessed with his appearance; he never got along with his father – and Kram allows these to crowd out the quality recollections.
Like Any Normal Day, though, does not focus solely on Buddy’s trauma. His youngest sibling, Jimmy, follows in his brother’s footsteps, more successfully on the playing field – going semi-pro in baseball. In fact, Jimmy’s character, perhaps because Kram had more immediate access to him, shines through the narrative. He’s the tragic hero here, not Buddy. Jimmy’s brief foray into pro baseball, his disregard for fame or money, show him as an odd character, a “goofball” as his friends call him, but one with some hidden, underlying purpose. For anyone familiar with Kevorkian and Miley’s story, this purpose is apparent from the first two sentences of Kram’s book.
“Strangely, it seemed as if they were up in the air by themselves, suspended in some surreal place beyond words or feeling. Three of them had flown earlier that day to Detroit, and now, going home, it was just Jimmy and Lisa, seated shoulder to shoulder in this cylinder of whooshing sound as Northwest Airlines Flight 1717 carried them back to Philadelphia.”
This sense of listless drifting pervades Jimmy’s story as he crashes his car damaging his brain and muting his impeccable physical abilities. Buddy, in the end, gives Jimmy’s life purpose – a purpose no one else in the large Miley family could fulfill.
The desperation, both in Buddy’s continued relationship with Karen, his high school sweetheart, and Jimmy and Buddy’s trip to Lourdes for a miracle cure, make Like Any Normal Day a devastatingly sad book. On top of this, Bert’s relationship with his crippled son, the son he pinned his own athletic dreams on, is more stunted than Buddy’s body. Even after Buddy’s death, Bert remains guarded in his assessment of their relationship. The boy was too flamboyant, too much of a hot dog. He didn’t accept any guidance from his quiet old dad. In this way, Kram pulls off an amazing feat, allowing his subjects to show and tell the greatest of family tragedies.
Where Kram’s narrative falters is in his assessment of Kevorkian’s role in Buddy’s death. Towards the end, Kevorkian failed to follow his own stringent procedures for verifying the mental soundness and the terminality of illness of his patients. Initially he demanded psychological evaluations and rigorous medical assessments before he would assist in a person’s death. By the time Jimmy and his estranged girlfriend Lisa brought Buddy to a Detroit motel to meet with Kevorkian and his aides in 1997, the doctor only required Buddy’s medical records. This, coupled with Kram’s inability to convey Buddy’s pain in a way to make readers feel it, leaves the question of whether Buddy chose suicide because of the pain or because of the paralysis. For Kram, and one would assume his readers, the distinction is important.
Perhaps because he spoke to the doctor only in his dotage, Kram weakly dismisses Kevorkian as an old nut with apocalyptic delusions and cheaply lets Buddy’s story rest with the image of the white feathers Lisa thinks Buddy sends her from heaven, instead of confronting cold hard reality. Kram never comes right out and tells us this is a Catholic story, but this final juxtaposition can leave no doubt where he stands. Ironic, then, that the only savior Buddy could find in this world was the atheistic doctor, and every other person Buddy met, other than his screw-up little brother, failed him in the end.
The ultimate irony of Jack Kevorkian’s life must be the nature of his death.
On June 3, 2011, Kevorkian died of pulmonary thrombosis, a blood clot in the lungs, at William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Michigan. Geoffrey Feiger, Kevorkian’s longtime lawyer and advocate, told The New York Times in 1995, “He’ll lie and say he isn’t. But he is. He’s scared to death (of death).” Kevorkian lived to the age of 83, but none of his ancestors made it past 70, and the thought of dying a slow, painful death in the hands of the medical system disgusted him. A descendant of Armenians who fled genocide at the hands of the Ottomans in the second decade of the 20th century, Kevorkian famously dressed in thrift shop clothes, ratty cardigans and ill-fitting suits. He often assisted suicides in a bed in the back of his white 1968 Volkswagen bus, or on the red couch in his one-bedroom apartment in suburban Detroit. A lover of fine arts and classical music, and a painter and composer in his own right, Kevorkian played the role of the gruff defender of terminal patients’ right to die, while in private his friends remarked on the warmth and compassion he expressed.
In a symposium on medical ethics published in Harper’s Magazine in 1990, Kevorkian said, “First of all, the word “soul” has no place in this discussion. No invented human abstraction of a theological nature will solve anything. It only obscures the issue. You mention a soul, but no one knows anything about it; it’s absolutely ethereal. Body parts are property. The person owns them and has the absolute right over what will be done with them in every situation.” This staunch secularism and inability to bend in his atheistic language and his willingness to buck the prevailing system got him in more trouble than the suicides he assisted.
Jessica R. Cooper, the judge to finally convict Kevorkian of murder in 1999, after a two-day trial, told Kevorkian, “You had the audacity to go on national television, show the world what you did and dare the legal system to stop you. Well, sir, consider yourself stopped.” The previous year, 60 Minutes broadcast a videotape of Kevorkian assisting in the suicide of Thomas Youk, a patient with Lou Gehrig’s disease. Unlike many of Kevorkian’s other procedures, in this case the patient did not press a button to start the injections of potassium chloride from the Thanatron. Instead, Kevorkian injected the patient himself. “They must charge me; either they go or I go. If they go, that means they’ll never convict me in a court of law,” he told Mike Wallace during the interview accompanying the footage.
In many other forums through the years, he expressed these same cavalier sentiments, telling Feiger, before an earlier trial, “I want to be convicted!” He never expressed his real sentiments, and his real purpose in assisting suicides in such a public manner, better than Feiger did for him, in his opening statements in the same case.
“Humanity and compassion are on trial. You will be deciding one of the great issues in the struggle for human rights….His intent is never to kill someone, but only to reduce suffering. That is Dr. Jack Kevorkian. That is the man who stands charged before you. You will decide how much suffering all of us must endure before we go into that good night –some of us, not so gently.”
Finally, though, in 1999, Kevorkian severed his relationship with the charismatic Feiger, who supported him, not only as pro-bono counsel, but also by providing rent-free housing. In his last trial, Kevorkian defended himself. In the end, he regretted this decision, which ultimately robbed him of the freedom to choose his method of death.
The name his pipe-fitter father gave him, Murad, belonged to a line of Ottoman sultans and warriors, but means “wish” in its original Arabic. In this lies another irony of Kevorkian’s existence. His obsession with death, which surfaced early in his medical career when he studied the corneas of cadavers and experimented with postmortem blood transfusions, led him to an examination of the quality of life of those in the process of dying. While physicians have recommended hospice care for centuries for terminal patients, advances in medicine, technology and hygiene in the last fifty years changed the final stage of life inexorably. The emergence of morally ambiguous cases – a quadriplegic saved from a car wreck, or a brain dead stroke victim sustained by artificial life support – demanded a new, serious discussion about health care policy and legislation. Kevorkian helped bring this discussion into the mainstream spotlight with his 130 assisted suicides.
“My ultimate aim is to make euthanasia a positive experience. I’m trying to knock the medical profession into accepting its responsibilities, and those responsibilities include assisting their patients with death,” Kevorkian told The New York Times after his first procedure in 1990. For many, a quick and painless end, in the bed of Kevorkian’s Volkswagen parked next to a stream at a campground or even sinking into the moldering cushions of his couch wearing a gas mask pumping carbon monoxide, offered a more positive experience than years of fighting for life in a hospital or waiting for it too slowly and excruciatingly ebb away in hospice.
But Jack Kevorkian played the bogeyman, the Dr. Death part to the hilt. An apocalyptic paranoid toward the end of his life, he ranted to Mark Kram, Jr., of The Philadelphia Daily News, about how humanity would be subjected to “worldwide slavery within two to three centuries” telling Kram the human race would then extinguish itself in the 23rd or 24th centuries.
In the Harper’s symposium, over twenty years before his death, Kevorkian said, “I don’t know what you mean by ‘ethic of the body.’ A body’s a body. A dog’s a body. Any mammal is a body. And when you cut, you bleed. When you die, you stink. That’s all we know about it. Is there sacredness in all this?
“My idea of the human body is that it’s a living organism like any mammal. You want to know what to do with it? Then you must consider: What are the exigencies of the spatial and temporal situation you’re in at the time? Then you apply your reason, which is uniquely human and often abused -and most often by ethicists – and you use your common sense and logic and try to arrive at a solution to the problem you are in, not some preconceived idea that you’re trying to fit reality into.”
Toward the end, perhaps, Kevorkian lost this ability to resist his preconceived ideas, but while he was at it, there was no braver champion of the right to die as we choose. Andrew Solomon, in a piece for The New Yorker about his own mother’s suicide, which he assisted, wrote, “He (Kevorkian) should not have gone to prison, but civil disobedience comes at a cost, and he paid it. He was the Malcolm X of the right-to-die movement—a movement that is unfortunately still seeking its Martin Luther King, Jr.”
Mark Kram, Jr. concentrates on the view from the other end of the Thanatron in his new book Like Any Normal Day, which chronicles the life of Buddy Miley, a high school football player from Warminster, a suburb of Philadelphia, paralyzed in the early 1970s on a routine play and left quadriplegic for the rest of his life. Kram brings the perspective of a local sports journalist to this story of pain and thwarted dreams. His initial contact with Miley and his family came 19 years after Buddy’s accident, when, in the 1990s, a rising tide of publicity about traumatic head injuries on the gridiron, inspired Kram to write a feature story on Buddy for The Philadelphia Daily News.
“19 Years of Hell,” Kram’s headline for the story reads, and Like Any Normal Day focuses on how an instant of reckless teenage aggression and then a careless, untrained medical response can change a young man’s life forever. But Kram’s book does not tell Buddy’s story alone. The large Miley family provides a perfect cast for a tragedy of circumstance and repressed emotions.
The streets of suburban Philadelphia in the 40s, 50s and 60s come alive in Buddy’s mother Rosemarie Miley’s hopping at the Benedict Club in Center City, then moving to Warminster and having seven kids. The picture Kram paints of suburban life is not unique, but the details he brings to bear, mostly through Rosemarie’s reminiscences and Buddy’s father Bert’s war correspondence, enrich the story tremendously. The cliché divisions of small town society – Buddy, the wonderboy jock; Karen, the sensitive hippie girl; Bert, the muted, restrained father; Juzwiak, the understanding coach – strike us as the caricatures of Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused, but resonant more fully as Kram provides a broader stage on which his subjects can grow.
Kram relies, occasionally, too much on generalizations and fails to string the otherwise strong narrative together with specific anecdotes, though the stories he does include, particularly in Buddy’s hospital room – Buddy counting the pages Karen turns, or Karen lying on the floor looking up at Buddy in traction – provide enough stirring emotional content to allow readers a strong connection. Too often, though, Buddy’s friends and siblings remember generalities – he was a hot dog on the field; he was obsessed with his appearance; he never got along with his father – and Kram allows these to crowd out the quality recollections.
Like Any Normal Day, though, does not focus solely on Buddy’s trauma. His youngest sibling, Jimmy, follows in his brother’s footsteps, more successfully on the playing field – going semi-pro in baseball. In fact, Jimmy’s character, perhaps because Kram had more immediate access to him, shines through the narrative. He’s the tragic hero here, not Buddy. Jimmy’s brief foray into pro baseball, his disregard for fame or money, show him as an odd character, a “goofball” as his friends call him, but one with some hidden, underlying purpose. For anyone familiar with Kevorkian and Miley’s story, this purpose is apparent from the first two sentences of Kram’s book.
“Strangely, it seemed as if they were up in the air by themselves, suspended in some surreal place beyond words or feeling. Three of them had flown earlier that day to Detroit, and now, going home, it was just Jimmy and Lisa, seated shoulder to shoulder in this cylinder of whooshing sound as Northwest Airlines Flight 1717 carried them back to Philadelphia.”
This sense of listless drifting pervades Jimmy’s story as he crashes his car damaging his brain and muting his impeccable physical abilities. Buddy, in the end, gives Jimmy’s life purpose – a purpose no one else in the large Miley family could fulfill.
The desperation, both in Buddy’s continued relationship with Karen, his high school sweetheart, and Jimmy and Buddy’s trip to Lourdes for a miracle cure, make Like Any Normal Day a devastatingly sad book. On top of this, Bert’s relationship with his crippled son, the son he pinned his own athletic dreams on, is more stunted than Buddy’s body. Even after Buddy’s death, Bert remains guarded in his assessment of their relationship. The boy was too flamboyant, too much of a hot dog. He didn’t accept any guidance from his quiet old dad. In this way, Kram pulls off an amazing feat, allowing his subjects to show and tell the greatest of family tragedies.
Where Kram’s narrative falters is in his assessment of Kevorkian’s role in Buddy’s death. Towards the end, Kevorkian failed to follow his own stringent procedures for verifying the mental soundness and the terminality of illness of his patients. Initially he demanded psychological evaluations and rigorous medical assessments before he would assist in a person’s death. By the time Jimmy and his estranged girlfriend Lisa brought Buddy to a Detroit motel to meet with Kevorkian and his aides in 1997, the doctor only required Buddy’s medical records. This, coupled with Kram’s inability to convey Buddy’s pain in a way to make readers feel it, leaves the question of whether Buddy chose suicide because of the pain or because of the paralysis. For Kram, and one would assume his readers, the distinction is important.
Perhaps because he spoke to the doctor only in his dotage, Kram weakly dismisses Kevorkian as an old nut with apocalyptic delusions and cheaply lets Buddy’s story rest with the image of the white feathers Lisa thinks Buddy sends her from heaven, instead of confronting cold hard reality. Kram never comes right out and tells us this is a Catholic story, but this final juxtaposition can leave no doubt where he stands. Ironic, then, that the only savior Buddy could find in this world was the atheistic doctor, and every other person Buddy met, other than his screw-up little brother, failed him in the end.
August 20, 2017
Read Michael's review of August 2, 2012 for a very thorough and thoughtful review of this book.
I feel that this book gave the topic of assisted suicide a very shallow treatment.
Let me say, first, that I am compassionate toward anyone who suffers interminable pain that cannot be alleviated by any pain killer. I had an accident and for years I endured screaming exhausting pain that would never stop. No prescription drug could even dull it, let alone stop it. I was given various regimens of drugs, including anti-depressants (although I was not depressed) and muscle relaxants. I never contemplated suicide but I was exhausted from the energy required to live with this pain. I understand why someone would feel that they wanted to do anything to get rid of it. And I understand how someone could feel despair at not being able to live a normal life.
Nobody wants to go through this kind of existence, and nobody wants their loved ones to go through this either.
But there are deeper issues here. They are controversial and I am not stating my opinion, only the issues. In each case, the individual circumstances determine the choices.
1) The most obvious issue is the rules of sports today, especially with regard to concussions, violence and fighting, especially in hockey. Thankfully, many changes have been made in these sports resulting in fewer spinal and brain injuries of teenagers. But there is still room for improvement.
2) Medical treatment of school football injuries is more sophisticated now. Buddy would probably have had the use of his arms and upper body if he had been treated properly on the field from the moment of his injury instead of having his neck moved by bystanders. Or having his jersey removed over his head instead of being cut off by medical personnel. This would not happen today in the US. But the reader can still learn from Buddy's experience.
3) The body is not intended for continuous agonizing pain. It is not intended to live without exercise or movement. In a real world, someone who could not feed or relieve himself would die. It is unnatural care and treatment that keep this person alive.
Am I saying that we should not look after someone in this condition?--No. But I am saying that sometimes when extreme measures are taken to keep a body alive which could not exist in nature, abnormal situations which a person's spirit, soul and body are never intended to endure are created. In such situations, it might be better to withhold treatment and let the person die.
This might sound horrible. We like heroic stories of amazing results where lives are saved despite seemingly impossible conditions. But sometimes there is more value in looking at quality of life.
This is totally different from Kevorkian's position of assisted suicide.
But in situations where not providing extreme measures that will need to be continued for the entire person's life will result in a natural death, letting nature take its course might be more compassionate.
By treating a person medically with extreme measures, we might be forcing them into a situation where assisted suicide seems the only option to escape unbearable pain. In a way, then, their pain becomes our fault. And their suicide becomes our fault.
A decision to extend or withhold medical treatment is a decision that nobody wants ever to have to make. But many people will deal with this in their lifetime; it is better to think this through before it happens. Under the pressures and emotional trauma of seeing a loved one in this circumstance, it is difficult to make a decision like this unless it is thought out beforehand.
4) There is a spiritual existence after death. Scientists have captured pictures of energy leaving a body at the time of death. Whether a person believes in the existence of a spirit or life after death, whether Heaven or Hell does not matter. It is like not believing in gravity (although that expression could be argued by quantum physicists). Whether you believe in it or not, the effects in the natural world are the same. You jump off a cliff; you fall. What happens when you die will happen and you cannot change it by believing that it will not happen.
Many NDE's (near death experiences) include a tunnel of white light and a feeling of great peace and no pain. People who are brought back to life from this NDE often are angry at being brought back to life. Buddy had an experience like this.
So by using extreme medical measures in situations where death would be inevitable either instantly or within a few days, we might be robbing someone of a pain-free existence in eternity. In essence, we then are responsible for the torture that they endure living in a shell.
We are choosing hell on earth for them instead of the Heaven to which they were going.
So what is misdirected love is actually an act that hurts them. And we are responsible for the horror of their existence.
5) However, there is also the situation where Satan can appear as an angel of light, and sometimes this white tunnel turns into an entry to Hell where the agony a person endures is much worse than anything they would have endured on earth.
The Miley family were practicing Catholics in a church that believes and teaches about the existence of Heaven and Hell.
There are people who have returned from NDE's who have experienced this hell and are grateful to be brought back from the dead.
So these are circumstances in which extreme measures to keep a person alive are appreciated by the patient and his family. Read books by Dr. Maurice Rawlings, Dr. Richard Eby, Bill Wiese, Don Piper and many other books of people who have been brought back from the dead.
Dr. Maurice Rawlings was a doctor who specialized in resuscitation. He had many patients who screamed to him to not let him die because they were going to Hell. But others were angry at being brought back to life. He initially did not believe in an existence after death. But he documented these cases, researched life after death, and concluded that both Heaven and Hell existed for his patients who died. He had the unique perspective of knowing they had died on the operating table and recording their experiences when he brought them back to life.
One pastor who died in a horrible accident, was left unattended by medical personnel because he was dead, then raised from the dead by a bystander, was really not grateful for the horrible pain he endured in recovery and for the rest of his life after experiencing the joys of Heaven. We need to be careful in how we apply extreme measures to restore life after death, whether medically or spiritually.
Perhaps Buddy would have chosen to stay dead and go into that white tunnel of love.
6) A person who is a quadriplegic is still the same human that he was before the accident. He still thinks and loves and laughs and creates. His life is no less valuable than before the accident. Think of Joni Earackson Tada who, at the age of 67, is still living a full life of ministry and love toward others. She did not need arms or legs to have a valuable life.
Buddy brought joy to others and made people feel better after spending time with him. He loved and encouraged them.
... which makes some of the arguments for assisted suicide invalid.
7) Perhaps Buddy would have been better off if he had been allowed to die the day of his accident and experienced the joys of Heaven instead of being kept alive by heroic actions.
And for Catholics and many fundamentalist Christians who believe that people who commit suicide can never enter Heaven, they have put their loved ones in a desperate situation by prolonging an agonizing life that forces a choice on them that would never have existed if they had been allowed to die in their time.
(I personally do not believe that all people who commit suicide go to Hell. I do not believe that this is backed by any study of the Bible. I believe that when man interferes with a natural death, the circumstances of their second death change the consideration of suicide. They did not choose to kill themselves. They wanted a natural death. And loved ones or medical personnel prevented it and forced them into a situation which God did not intend which resulted in unendurable pain and a desire for the death that they had previously been denied.)
However, I am stating my opinion here only so that you realize that I am not stating opinions above on these 7 issues, just introducing the issues that I feel the author should have included in order to give more depth to this story. They need more research and more thought from all of us before we encounter these situations. Life has become more complex and the issues we face medically have also become more complex. I am not telling people what to do, and unfortunately, the law does not seem to keep up with technology. So we are faced with difficult decisions.
Did I say that Buddy should have been allowed to die after the accident? No. did I say that extraordinary measures should not have been used? No. I am saying that each situation is individual and must be considered separately. But we must be aware of the consequences of decisions that we make that will permanently affect the lives of others, possibly very negatively.
There is food for thought in Buddy's story.
I feel that this book gave the topic of assisted suicide a very shallow treatment.
Let me say, first, that I am compassionate toward anyone who suffers interminable pain that cannot be alleviated by any pain killer. I had an accident and for years I endured screaming exhausting pain that would never stop. No prescription drug could even dull it, let alone stop it. I was given various regimens of drugs, including anti-depressants (although I was not depressed) and muscle relaxants. I never contemplated suicide but I was exhausted from the energy required to live with this pain. I understand why someone would feel that they wanted to do anything to get rid of it. And I understand how someone could feel despair at not being able to live a normal life.
Nobody wants to go through this kind of existence, and nobody wants their loved ones to go through this either.
But there are deeper issues here. They are controversial and I am not stating my opinion, only the issues. In each case, the individual circumstances determine the choices.
1) The most obvious issue is the rules of sports today, especially with regard to concussions, violence and fighting, especially in hockey. Thankfully, many changes have been made in these sports resulting in fewer spinal and brain injuries of teenagers. But there is still room for improvement.
2) Medical treatment of school football injuries is more sophisticated now. Buddy would probably have had the use of his arms and upper body if he had been treated properly on the field from the moment of his injury instead of having his neck moved by bystanders. Or having his jersey removed over his head instead of being cut off by medical personnel. This would not happen today in the US. But the reader can still learn from Buddy's experience.
3) The body is not intended for continuous agonizing pain. It is not intended to live without exercise or movement. In a real world, someone who could not feed or relieve himself would die. It is unnatural care and treatment that keep this person alive.
Am I saying that we should not look after someone in this condition?--No. But I am saying that sometimes when extreme measures are taken to keep a body alive which could not exist in nature, abnormal situations which a person's spirit, soul and body are never intended to endure are created. In such situations, it might be better to withhold treatment and let the person die.
This might sound horrible. We like heroic stories of amazing results where lives are saved despite seemingly impossible conditions. But sometimes there is more value in looking at quality of life.
This is totally different from Kevorkian's position of assisted suicide.
But in situations where not providing extreme measures that will need to be continued for the entire person's life will result in a natural death, letting nature take its course might be more compassionate.
By treating a person medically with extreme measures, we might be forcing them into a situation where assisted suicide seems the only option to escape unbearable pain. In a way, then, their pain becomes our fault. And their suicide becomes our fault.
A decision to extend or withhold medical treatment is a decision that nobody wants ever to have to make. But many people will deal with this in their lifetime; it is better to think this through before it happens. Under the pressures and emotional trauma of seeing a loved one in this circumstance, it is difficult to make a decision like this unless it is thought out beforehand.
4) There is a spiritual existence after death. Scientists have captured pictures of energy leaving a body at the time of death. Whether a person believes in the existence of a spirit or life after death, whether Heaven or Hell does not matter. It is like not believing in gravity (although that expression could be argued by quantum physicists). Whether you believe in it or not, the effects in the natural world are the same. You jump off a cliff; you fall. What happens when you die will happen and you cannot change it by believing that it will not happen.
Many NDE's (near death experiences) include a tunnel of white light and a feeling of great peace and no pain. People who are brought back to life from this NDE often are angry at being brought back to life. Buddy had an experience like this.
So by using extreme medical measures in situations where death would be inevitable either instantly or within a few days, we might be robbing someone of a pain-free existence in eternity. In essence, we then are responsible for the torture that they endure living in a shell.
We are choosing hell on earth for them instead of the Heaven to which they were going.
So what is misdirected love is actually an act that hurts them. And we are responsible for the horror of their existence.
5) However, there is also the situation where Satan can appear as an angel of light, and sometimes this white tunnel turns into an entry to Hell where the agony a person endures is much worse than anything they would have endured on earth.
The Miley family were practicing Catholics in a church that believes and teaches about the existence of Heaven and Hell.
There are people who have returned from NDE's who have experienced this hell and are grateful to be brought back from the dead.
So these are circumstances in which extreme measures to keep a person alive are appreciated by the patient and his family. Read books by Dr. Maurice Rawlings, Dr. Richard Eby, Bill Wiese, Don Piper and many other books of people who have been brought back from the dead.
Dr. Maurice Rawlings was a doctor who specialized in resuscitation. He had many patients who screamed to him to not let him die because they were going to Hell. But others were angry at being brought back to life. He initially did not believe in an existence after death. But he documented these cases, researched life after death, and concluded that both Heaven and Hell existed for his patients who died. He had the unique perspective of knowing they had died on the operating table and recording their experiences when he brought them back to life.
One pastor who died in a horrible accident, was left unattended by medical personnel because he was dead, then raised from the dead by a bystander, was really not grateful for the horrible pain he endured in recovery and for the rest of his life after experiencing the joys of Heaven. We need to be careful in how we apply extreme measures to restore life after death, whether medically or spiritually.
Perhaps Buddy would have chosen to stay dead and go into that white tunnel of love.
6) A person who is a quadriplegic is still the same human that he was before the accident. He still thinks and loves and laughs and creates. His life is no less valuable than before the accident. Think of Joni Earackson Tada who, at the age of 67, is still living a full life of ministry and love toward others. She did not need arms or legs to have a valuable life.
Buddy brought joy to others and made people feel better after spending time with him. He loved and encouraged them.
... which makes some of the arguments for assisted suicide invalid.
7) Perhaps Buddy would have been better off if he had been allowed to die the day of his accident and experienced the joys of Heaven instead of being kept alive by heroic actions.
And for Catholics and many fundamentalist Christians who believe that people who commit suicide can never enter Heaven, they have put their loved ones in a desperate situation by prolonging an agonizing life that forces a choice on them that would never have existed if they had been allowed to die in their time.
(I personally do not believe that all people who commit suicide go to Hell. I do not believe that this is backed by any study of the Bible. I believe that when man interferes with a natural death, the circumstances of their second death change the consideration of suicide. They did not choose to kill themselves. They wanted a natural death. And loved ones or medical personnel prevented it and forced them into a situation which God did not intend which resulted in unendurable pain and a desire for the death that they had previously been denied.)
However, I am stating my opinion here only so that you realize that I am not stating opinions above on these 7 issues, just introducing the issues that I feel the author should have included in order to give more depth to this story. They need more research and more thought from all of us before we encounter these situations. Life has become more complex and the issues we face medically have also become more complex. I am not telling people what to do, and unfortunately, the law does not seem to keep up with technology. So we are faced with difficult decisions.
Did I say that Buddy should have been allowed to die after the accident? No. did I say that extraordinary measures should not have been used? No. I am saying that each situation is individual and must be considered separately. But we must be aware of the consequences of decisions that we make that will permanently affect the lives of others, possibly very negatively.
There is food for thought in Buddy's story.
November 5, 2015
I received an advance reading copy through the Goodreads First Reads program.
This biography tells the story of Buddy Miley, a promising athlete who at 17 became a quadriplegic after a football accident. The book details the struggles of Buddy and his family after the "'dark day'" (63). For almost a quarter century, Buddy was totally immobilized and dependent on others for care and in constant pain. With the help of his brother Jimmy he sought out Dr. Jack Kevorkian to assist him in committing suicide.
The author interviewed Buddy's family members and friends and successfully shows the personalities and emotions of those most closely involved in Buddy's life. Rosemarie, Buddy's mother who assumed virtually all the responsibility for Buddy's care; Karen, the woman Buddy believes was his true love; and Jimmy, Buddy's youngest sibling and confidant, receive the most attention, but several other points of view are given as well.
The portrayals are realistic; the people are real human beings with flaws. For example, when it came to providing help to Buddy, "Even Buddy seemed to 'keep score' of who did what as a barometer of who truly cared" (89). The tension between Buddy and his father is not ignored, and neither is Jimmy's responsibility for his failed career as a professional baseball player.
A number of social issues are touched on, including assisted suicide and football's glamourization of violence. Generally, both pro and con perspectives are given. As well, the book examines love in its various forms, including the privileges and responsibilities of love.
Parts of the book are heartbreakingly sad; nonetheless, it is inspirational as well. "Buddy provided instruction by example to others on how to bear the pain that would come into their lives" (255). In my opinion, a well-written book which provides food for thought earns a high recommendation.
Please check out my blog (http://schatjesshelves.blogspot.ca/) and follow me on Twitter (@DCYakabuski).
This biography tells the story of Buddy Miley, a promising athlete who at 17 became a quadriplegic after a football accident. The book details the struggles of Buddy and his family after the "'dark day'" (63). For almost a quarter century, Buddy was totally immobilized and dependent on others for care and in constant pain. With the help of his brother Jimmy he sought out Dr. Jack Kevorkian to assist him in committing suicide.
The author interviewed Buddy's family members and friends and successfully shows the personalities and emotions of those most closely involved in Buddy's life. Rosemarie, Buddy's mother who assumed virtually all the responsibility for Buddy's care; Karen, the woman Buddy believes was his true love; and Jimmy, Buddy's youngest sibling and confidant, receive the most attention, but several other points of view are given as well.
The portrayals are realistic; the people are real human beings with flaws. For example, when it came to providing help to Buddy, "Even Buddy seemed to 'keep score' of who did what as a barometer of who truly cared" (89). The tension between Buddy and his father is not ignored, and neither is Jimmy's responsibility for his failed career as a professional baseball player.
A number of social issues are touched on, including assisted suicide and football's glamourization of violence. Generally, both pro and con perspectives are given. As well, the book examines love in its various forms, including the privileges and responsibilities of love.
Parts of the book are heartbreakingly sad; nonetheless, it is inspirational as well. "Buddy provided instruction by example to others on how to bear the pain that would come into their lives" (255). In my opinion, a well-written book which provides food for thought earns a high recommendation.
Please check out my blog (http://schatjesshelves.blogspot.ca/) and follow me on Twitter (@DCYakabuski).
May 8, 2012
Buddy Miley's life changed suddenly and unexpectedly, and what began like any normal day became a day that divided his life into "before" and "after." Buddy's little brother Jimmy became one of his closest allies, a wellspring of humor and support whose efforts were surpassed only by their mother's unerring devotion. But Jimmy also faced a pivotal day of "before" and "after" with the potential to destroy his family, a day that also began like any other.
This touching story of love and pain, hope and limitation tells more than the story of one man. It is also the story of a family coping every day with tragedy, of loss that becomes giving, of the same bad luck and good intentions to which everyone can relate. As the Mileys and their community well know, most days that forever alter the course of our lives begin normally, and all we can hope to do is make the best of what comes despite our shortcomings and faults.
This touching story of love and pain, hope and limitation tells more than the story of one man. It is also the story of a family coping every day with tragedy, of loss that becomes giving, of the same bad luck and good intentions to which everyone can relate. As the Mileys and their community well know, most days that forever alter the course of our lives begin normally, and all we can hope to do is make the best of what comes despite our shortcomings and faults.
April 7, 2012
Received this book from Goodreads as a giveaway. Started it last night and just finished a minute ago. A gut wrenching story of the love of a devoted family for their quadrapleglic son and brother and that boy's bravery to face life as it came to be until he just couldn't do it anymore. An extremely well written and emotional true story - get the tissues.
March 3, 2015
I received this book in a Goodreads book giveaway. It has been on my shelf and I recently had the opportunity to read it. I am so glad that I did! What a beautiful story on how one life altering event can effect so many lives. This is definitely a book of strength and courage. Wonderfully written!
April 7, 2015
Fashionably late posting this review! I am not into sports but I loved this book! Kram takes the reader through the life of an athlete and his decision to end his suffering. It was like eavesdropping on family and friends. The conflicts of health, illness, love, politics, pride, and letting go. It is a huge lesson in acceptance.
October 1, 2014
This book gave you an opportunity to look into a life of a quadriplegic and the caregivers. Very informative.
June 8, 2016
A very sad story... Well written.
December 13, 2018
This is a very touching and thought-provoking story of brotherly love and disability. It offers no easy answers and does not give in to a feel-good ending.
November 22, 2021
Buddy Miley was a star athlete at his high school, practically worshipped by his younger brother Jimmy and adored by his mother. His father, Bert, remained somewhat standoffish toward his son, but that was understandable. As a veteran of the Second World War who'd flown some terrifying and carnage-filled missions, he was part of a generation that was told to silently endure horror and not burden others with their problems. Besides which, his son's free-spirited, cocky streak, influenced by "Hollywood" Joe Namath, rankled the old timer's sense of sportsmanship and propriety.
But such father-son tensions are normal, part and parcel of the hardships of family life. Things otherwise seemed to be going quite well for young Buddy, who not only had the love of his family and teammates, but had caught the eye of a charming, hippyish girl at school named Karen.
Then, one day on the field, a player on the other team took umbrage at Buddy's hotdogging ways and tackled him hard. So hard in fact that Buddy first flew up into the air and then landed on his head. The pain was excruciating, and when he recovered his senses—returning, he says, from a tunnel of light—he found himself in a hospital bed and paralyzed from the neck down.
"Like Any Normal Day" tells the story of the ensuing decades that followed that quick on-field collision. It is not easy to read about the physical pain this man was in. It's even harder to endure the psychological anguish he had to bear while watching the only girl he ever loved recede further and further from his life, while his mother and the rest of his loved ones tried to hide the strain that came with taking care of a quadriplegic.
Ultimately Buddy reached a decision to take his own life, at which point he crossed paths with the controversial end-of-life advocate, Dr. Jack Kevorkian. One might regard Jack as a ghoul willing to use suffering people as pawns in his constitutional battles, or as a heroic man willing to end the ongoing anguish that the rest of us refuse to see, but their opinion is likely to deepen or even flip one-hundred and eighty degrees after reading this complex, moving tale.
And it needs saying that in and among the pain and suffering is some genuine joy, hope, and of course a reminder of the gratitude we should all have for the little things we take for granted. Buddy's tale makes it imperative to remember the simple joys like walking through a park or holding loved ones, joys that, alas Buddy Miley was denied for the bulk of his unfortunate life. Hopefully his soul is now at peace. Highest recommendation.
But such father-son tensions are normal, part and parcel of the hardships of family life. Things otherwise seemed to be going quite well for young Buddy, who not only had the love of his family and teammates, but had caught the eye of a charming, hippyish girl at school named Karen.
Then, one day on the field, a player on the other team took umbrage at Buddy's hotdogging ways and tackled him hard. So hard in fact that Buddy first flew up into the air and then landed on his head. The pain was excruciating, and when he recovered his senses—returning, he says, from a tunnel of light—he found himself in a hospital bed and paralyzed from the neck down.
"Like Any Normal Day" tells the story of the ensuing decades that followed that quick on-field collision. It is not easy to read about the physical pain this man was in. It's even harder to endure the psychological anguish he had to bear while watching the only girl he ever loved recede further and further from his life, while his mother and the rest of his loved ones tried to hide the strain that came with taking care of a quadriplegic.
Ultimately Buddy reached a decision to take his own life, at which point he crossed paths with the controversial end-of-life advocate, Dr. Jack Kevorkian. One might regard Jack as a ghoul willing to use suffering people as pawns in his constitutional battles, or as a heroic man willing to end the ongoing anguish that the rest of us refuse to see, but their opinion is likely to deepen or even flip one-hundred and eighty degrees after reading this complex, moving tale.
And it needs saying that in and among the pain and suffering is some genuine joy, hope, and of course a reminder of the gratitude we should all have for the little things we take for granted. Buddy's tale makes it imperative to remember the simple joys like walking through a park or holding loved ones, joys that, alas Buddy Miley was denied for the bulk of his unfortunate life. Hopefully his soul is now at peace. Highest recommendation.
January 8, 2025
I feel kind of weird giving star ratings on biographies and memoirs simply because it is someone’s life, but this star rating comes purely from the writing and not the life story.
The story of Buddy Miley is devastating and everything that led up to his decision to set up an appointment with Dr. Kevorkian to end his life is tragic. But I was very confused through a lot of the book. It doesn’t really flow together and feels disjointed and choppy. There were random, brief deep dives into people that are a blip in Buddy’s story as far as the book is concerned. I get that Karen was nearly Buddy’s high school girlfriend but I didn’t pick up the book to learn about her life story, more than half of which wasn’t relevant to Buddy.
The jumping around was sporadic and made it difficult to follow sometimes and since the author is a journalist I was surprised that the flow of the story was so off.
I was really interested in everything leading up to Buddy’s decision to end his life with doctor-assisted suicide and since the author actually met Buddy and members of his family I thought this would be a good source to get a more real take but the structure was so all over the place that it felt like a google search would have been easier.
The story of Buddy Miley is devastating and everything that led up to his decision to set up an appointment with Dr. Kevorkian to end his life is tragic. But I was very confused through a lot of the book. It doesn’t really flow together and feels disjointed and choppy. There were random, brief deep dives into people that are a blip in Buddy’s story as far as the book is concerned. I get that Karen was nearly Buddy’s high school girlfriend but I didn’t pick up the book to learn about her life story, more than half of which wasn’t relevant to Buddy.
The jumping around was sporadic and made it difficult to follow sometimes and since the author is a journalist I was surprised that the flow of the story was so off.
I was really interested in everything leading up to Buddy’s decision to end his life with doctor-assisted suicide and since the author actually met Buddy and members of his family I thought this would be a good source to get a more real take but the structure was so all over the place that it felt like a google search would have been easier.
November 9, 2023
It's been a while since I read this book, but I found it fascinating and so sad. It wasn't the idealized presentation of assisted dying that Jojo Moyes did with "Me Before You" (although I did like that book). The worst part was all the negative effects the boy's accident had on so many other people.
January 26, 2024
moving
I graduated Wm Tennent HS in 1975. The trials of Buddy were fresh nearly 50 years ago and have remained in my heart ever since. This book is a tribute to the love, strength and dedication of Buddy and his family.
I graduated Wm Tennent HS in 1975. The trials of Buddy were fresh nearly 50 years ago and have remained in my heart ever since. This book is a tribute to the love, strength and dedication of Buddy and his family.
November 18, 2018
good story, but got really bogged down and confusing in the middle.
September 3, 2013
This is the thoughtfully told tragic story of a high school kid who suffered a broken neck and subsequent quadriplegia -playing football.
The story centers around the Miley family, a family of sports fans and athletic abilities. Buddy, the quarterback for William Tennent High School, was severely injured in a game with Plymouth-Whitemarsh. This event occurred in 1974, when diagnosis and treatment of spinal cord injuries were not as sophisticated as today. Unfortunately, the care he received wasn't even up to the standards of that time and his quadriplegia was complete, with no hope of any improvement. Cared for by his mother, while his father distanced himself emotionally and even physically from the young man, Buddy depended on his brothers, sisters and friends to keep his spirits up- while bolstering theirs with his generosity of spirit and sensitivity.
The physical and psychological pain he experienced began to take their toll after 16 years and he schemed with his brother and a few other trusted family members to get him to Michigan and Dr. Kevorkian so his suffering could be ended.
His best friend and sibling Jimmy was to carry out his wishes.
The real tragedy here is that Buddy is only one of many severely injured, or killed, playing a "sport" that stresses a macho image and physical violence. Between 1971 and 1975 alone, 77 young football players died of football injuries and another 99 became quadriplegics from broken necks! And the saddest part of all? When reading the New York Times yesterday, I noticed the lead story was about a high school football player in California who died of severe head injuries suffered in a game. So the numbers say these aren't inevitable "freak" accidents. They are part and parcel of a violent game where young players are encouraged to use their heads as battering rams.
And it is still happening.
The families of these guys are never the same. And the tragedy ripples out to friends, coaches, athletes, school communities and beyond.
Although the numbers have decreased, more needs to be done to end this totally unnecessary toll.
This is a sad story, but hard to put down. Highly recommended.
The story centers around the Miley family, a family of sports fans and athletic abilities. Buddy, the quarterback for William Tennent High School, was severely injured in a game with Plymouth-Whitemarsh. This event occurred in 1974, when diagnosis and treatment of spinal cord injuries were not as sophisticated as today. Unfortunately, the care he received wasn't even up to the standards of that time and his quadriplegia was complete, with no hope of any improvement. Cared for by his mother, while his father distanced himself emotionally and even physically from the young man, Buddy depended on his brothers, sisters and friends to keep his spirits up- while bolstering theirs with his generosity of spirit and sensitivity.
The physical and psychological pain he experienced began to take their toll after 16 years and he schemed with his brother and a few other trusted family members to get him to Michigan and Dr. Kevorkian so his suffering could be ended.
His best friend and sibling Jimmy was to carry out his wishes.
The real tragedy here is that Buddy is only one of many severely injured, or killed, playing a "sport" that stresses a macho image and physical violence. Between 1971 and 1975 alone, 77 young football players died of football injuries and another 99 became quadriplegics from broken necks! And the saddest part of all? When reading the New York Times yesterday, I noticed the lead story was about a high school football player in California who died of severe head injuries suffered in a game. So the numbers say these aren't inevitable "freak" accidents. They are part and parcel of a violent game where young players are encouraged to use their heads as battering rams.
And it is still happening.
The families of these guys are never the same. And the tragedy ripples out to friends, coaches, athletes, school communities and beyond.
Although the numbers have decreased, more needs to be done to end this totally unnecessary toll.
This is a sad story, but hard to put down. Highly recommended.
September 9, 2012
So very sad, sad, sad.
Like Any Normal Day is the tragic true story of Buddy Miley who in 1973 became a quadruplegic after getting injured during his high school football game. He was only 17 years old.
I am not a sports fan but I am aware that American football is a dangerous contact sport with players frequently getting injured, often seriously. Back in Buddy's day, it was even more perilous. Young players were trained to use their heads as battering rams. Boys crashed helmets against each other, sometimes breaking them upon impact. It was only a few years later that this practice was stopped. By then it was too late for Buddy.
Because no one thought he had a spinal injury at the game, he was not given the correct emergency procedure when taken to the hospital. Back then, they did not have the methods that would have helped him regain some mobility with his hands and become more independent. He needed help to be fed, bathed, clothed, put to bed which his mother did for the next 24 years. Many people also helped financially and he had a large loving family. But he suffered from constant pain, and any chance of a full or partial recovery became an impossibility. In 1997, he was found dead in a motel room in Michigan, far from his home in Philadelphia.
I found it so heartbreaking that someone so young, full of cocky ambition and gifted athleticism, gets struck down by such a catastrophic injury before he even becomes a man. Perhaps because he was so young when he got hurt, his mind often seemed stuck in the 70's when his body was whole. He was a dreamer and never stopped pining for his high school sweetheart. He even went to Lourdes.
But there would be no miracle for Buddy, only an appointment with Dr. Death himself, Jack Kevorkian. His story will stay with you for a very long time, make you more mindful about people with disabilities and making the choice of taking your own life.
Like Any Normal Day is the tragic true story of Buddy Miley who in 1973 became a quadruplegic after getting injured during his high school football game. He was only 17 years old.
I am not a sports fan but I am aware that American football is a dangerous contact sport with players frequently getting injured, often seriously. Back in Buddy's day, it was even more perilous. Young players were trained to use their heads as battering rams. Boys crashed helmets against each other, sometimes breaking them upon impact. It was only a few years later that this practice was stopped. By then it was too late for Buddy.
Because no one thought he had a spinal injury at the game, he was not given the correct emergency procedure when taken to the hospital. Back then, they did not have the methods that would have helped him regain some mobility with his hands and become more independent. He needed help to be fed, bathed, clothed, put to bed which his mother did for the next 24 years. Many people also helped financially and he had a large loving family. But he suffered from constant pain, and any chance of a full or partial recovery became an impossibility. In 1997, he was found dead in a motel room in Michigan, far from his home in Philadelphia.
I found it so heartbreaking that someone so young, full of cocky ambition and gifted athleticism, gets struck down by such a catastrophic injury before he even becomes a man. Perhaps because he was so young when he got hurt, his mind often seemed stuck in the 70's when his body was whole. He was a dreamer and never stopped pining for his high school sweetheart. He even went to Lourdes.
But there would be no miracle for Buddy, only an appointment with Dr. Death himself, Jack Kevorkian. His story will stay with you for a very long time, make you more mindful about people with disabilities and making the choice of taking your own life.
May 20, 2012
This book tells the story of Buddy Miley who was hurt during a high school football game and became a quadriplegic as a result of his injuries. Buddy and his family's lives were forever changed as they struggled to deal with day to day life afterwards.
This book was tragic. For me, reading a story about a young man confined to a wheelchair who never even got a chance to truly experience life was not easy. I felt so bad for Buddy when he realized that he wouldn't be playing sports again or even be able to walk, and that his mother had the burden of taking care of him for the rest of his life.
What do I say about Karen? She meant the world to Buddy and he eventually came to understand that they would never be more than friends. That must have just crushed him. I'm sure that it must have been very hard and awkward for her to be in that position too. I appreciated reading her thoughts on Buddy, and thought she was great for being there for him when she could be.
Towards the end of the book, when Buddy asks his brother Jimmy to help him end his life, I couldn't help but to want to cry. I thought Jimmy was very brave and devoted to his brother to help him. Buddy suffered so much and I think that he made his choice with everyone's and his own interests in mind. I respected his decision as sad as it was.
The book is well written and full of details as told by those who knew Buddy the best. They had such interesting stories to tell about him and I could feel the love and respect they had for him. It's a very sad and unforgettable story, but definitely worth reading. Also, I enjoyed the pictures throughout the book as they helped bring Buddy to life in my mind. :)
I received this book for free through Goodreads First Reads. Thank you!
This book was tragic. For me, reading a story about a young man confined to a wheelchair who never even got a chance to truly experience life was not easy. I felt so bad for Buddy when he realized that he wouldn't be playing sports again or even be able to walk, and that his mother had the burden of taking care of him for the rest of his life.
What do I say about Karen? She meant the world to Buddy and he eventually came to understand that they would never be more than friends. That must have just crushed him. I'm sure that it must have been very hard and awkward for her to be in that position too. I appreciated reading her thoughts on Buddy, and thought she was great for being there for him when she could be.
Towards the end of the book, when Buddy asks his brother Jimmy to help him end his life, I couldn't help but to want to cry. I thought Jimmy was very brave and devoted to his brother to help him. Buddy suffered so much and I think that he made his choice with everyone's and his own interests in mind. I respected his decision as sad as it was.
The book is well written and full of details as told by those who knew Buddy the best. They had such interesting stories to tell about him and I could feel the love and respect they had for him. It's a very sad and unforgettable story, but definitely worth reading. Also, I enjoyed the pictures throughout the book as they helped bring Buddy to life in my mind. :)
I received this book for free through Goodreads First Reads. Thank you!
November 15, 2014
It's 2:30 AM on a Thursday, and I couldn't stop reading until I finished this book. This book is moving and fascinating. It is a biography that is told via an outside writer, Mark Kram, Jr. Buddy had everything going for him until a football injury left him completely dependent on his family and with painful spasms. Jimmy was the baby of the family that did not understand what paralysis meant and grew up wanting to make his brother laugh. The part of this book that really surprised me was the fact that Buddy decided to end his life because the suffering was getting to be too much, and he could see the toll it was taking on his mother. The only person that he knew he could count on was Jimmy. Buddy's solution was obvious to him in the 90s: Dr. Jack Kevorkian.
This book is well-written, providing a narrative to a story that is being told from many different points of view. The prologue sets the stage very well, and then the story officially starts with Buddy's parents as teenagers. It winds through time, and explains how it's quite possible Buddy's injury was worsened by the care he received on the field and immediately following at the hospital, yet his family never filed a lawsuit. It's a story of what could have been. It also provides a little insight to a process I only remember from newsflashes over a decade ago: how "Dr. Death" operated, including an interview with Dr. Kevorkian late in his life.
I truly enjoyed the book and would recommend it to anyone that enjoys non-fiction.
This book is well-written, providing a narrative to a story that is being told from many different points of view. The prologue sets the stage very well, and then the story officially starts with Buddy's parents as teenagers. It winds through time, and explains how it's quite possible Buddy's injury was worsened by the care he received on the field and immediately following at the hospital, yet his family never filed a lawsuit. It's a story of what could have been. It also provides a little insight to a process I only remember from newsflashes over a decade ago: how "Dr. Death" operated, including an interview with Dr. Kevorkian late in his life.
I truly enjoyed the book and would recommend it to anyone that enjoys non-fiction.
April 17, 2012
Can't wait to read this one! :) I just won it through one of the Goodreads "First reads" giveaways, so the mail can't get here soon enough!
Okay, I got this ARC in the mail yesterday, and have already finished reading it. I found this book one of those that "you just can't put down." This was a very personal and intimate look into the life of an everyday American family and how they continued on with life after a debilitating, life-altering sports injury. Mark Kram, Jr. does a great job in painting the personalities and feelings of the individuals in the story....how they intertwine, how they cope, and how they connect with their loved ones; how there is an unexplainable, unconditional love that survives between two brothers. Buddy (the "star" of the book) and his brother Jimmy are described in a way that you can't help but feel the emotions that they and their family went through. More than once during the story I felt the lump in my throat, and found myself considering what feelings and emotions I would be going through if I had been in their position. Overall, an excellent read! The pictures at the beginning of each chapter also added a personal touch to the story, which helps the reader to understand, connect, and become familiar with the people and topics discussed in each chapter. Thank you, Firstreads, for the opportunity to preview this book!!
Okay, I got this ARC in the mail yesterday, and have already finished reading it. I found this book one of those that "you just can't put down." This was a very personal and intimate look into the life of an everyday American family and how they continued on with life after a debilitating, life-altering sports injury. Mark Kram, Jr. does a great job in painting the personalities and feelings of the individuals in the story....how they intertwine, how they cope, and how they connect with their loved ones; how there is an unexplainable, unconditional love that survives between two brothers. Buddy (the "star" of the book) and his brother Jimmy are described in a way that you can't help but feel the emotions that they and their family went through. More than once during the story I felt the lump in my throat, and found myself considering what feelings and emotions I would be going through if I had been in their position. Overall, an excellent read! The pictures at the beginning of each chapter also added a personal touch to the story, which helps the reader to understand, connect, and become familiar with the people and topics discussed in each chapter. Thank you, Firstreads, for the opportunity to preview this book!!
April 10, 2012
Thanks to Goodreads for the Advance Reading Copy.
In addition to the compelling story of young athlete Buddy Miley becoming a quadriplegic, the reader is treated to three unforgettable characters. There is Buddy, who was a star athlete when high school athletics were a significant entertainment option, a little cocky on the field and able to back it up; his younger brother Jimmy, who idolized Buddy and made his life into one of service to Buddy; and the transcendent Karen, Buddy's high school classmate who had a date with him the day of his accident. Karen spent hours with Buddy at the hospital as he tried to come to terms with his near-complete disability and forged a relationship that few people are blessed with, perhaps unaware how rare it is to understand or experience. Her life was complicated by that relationship which never ended, and which could not be dimmed by her later relationships. Buddy's ability to empathize with those less encumbered than himself is a joy to behold, tempered by his inevitable decision to end his life by assisted suicide. That decision and its outcome is saddening and enlightening, easy to understand but emotionally exhausting to those involved.
In addition to the compelling story of young athlete Buddy Miley becoming a quadriplegic, the reader is treated to three unforgettable characters. There is Buddy, who was a star athlete when high school athletics were a significant entertainment option, a little cocky on the field and able to back it up; his younger brother Jimmy, who idolized Buddy and made his life into one of service to Buddy; and the transcendent Karen, Buddy's high school classmate who had a date with him the day of his accident. Karen spent hours with Buddy at the hospital as he tried to come to terms with his near-complete disability and forged a relationship that few people are blessed with, perhaps unaware how rare it is to understand or experience. Her life was complicated by that relationship which never ended, and which could not be dimmed by her later relationships. Buddy's ability to empathize with those less encumbered than himself is a joy to behold, tempered by his inevitable decision to end his life by assisted suicide. That decision and its outcome is saddening and enlightening, easy to understand but emotionally exhausting to those involved.
June 1, 2012
Thanks first to GoodReads First Reads for this exceptional biography, and Mark Kram Jr.
"Like Any Normal Day" is about a day that stopped time and lives with an accident on a high school football field. It ended everything that should have been for a seventeen year old boy, and injured and forever altered the progression through the rest of their days of those nearest him. Buddy barely survived, and was left a quadriplegic, completely dependent on the care of others and suffering bouts of intense pain the rest of his life. The life that should have been Buddy's to live left without him, as did the lives of those who loved him. Abiding love was all they had left, and that is what this book speaks best about. I really recommend reading this, there are lessons in truth about the real nature and deep endurance of actual love here, especially that exemplified by Buddy's mother Rosemarie, and his youngest brother, Jimmy.
"Like Any Normal Day" is about a day that stopped time and lives with an accident on a high school football field. It ended everything that should have been for a seventeen year old boy, and injured and forever altered the progression through the rest of their days of those nearest him. Buddy barely survived, and was left a quadriplegic, completely dependent on the care of others and suffering bouts of intense pain the rest of his life. The life that should have been Buddy's to live left without him, as did the lives of those who loved him. Abiding love was all they had left, and that is what this book speaks best about. I really recommend reading this, there are lessons in truth about the real nature and deep endurance of actual love here, especially that exemplified by Buddy's mother Rosemarie, and his youngest brother, Jimmy.
October 25, 2012
WOW! I could not put this book down. It was an emotional read throughout. If you have a son who loves the game of football, like I do, it may be difficult. I realize times have changed, preventive measures have been put in place and medical personnel are better trained but things happen. I pray my family never has to experience something like this.
Without giving anything away, the medical advancements that have taken place over the years for paralyzed patients is unreal. The sacrifices and devotion this family endured is very touching. One statement in the book that brother Bob made hit home, "try it yourself: Sit in one place for an hour and not move, not if you have an itch or even if you have to go to the bathroom. Now imagine doing that for years."
This book also brings up the argument of euthanasia. If you disagree with physician assisted suicide, read this book, you might change your mind. Thank you to the Miley family for sharing their profound story.
Without giving anything away, the medical advancements that have taken place over the years for paralyzed patients is unreal. The sacrifices and devotion this family endured is very touching. One statement in the book that brother Bob made hit home, "try it yourself: Sit in one place for an hour and not move, not if you have an itch or even if you have to go to the bathroom. Now imagine doing that for years."
This book also brings up the argument of euthanasia. If you disagree with physician assisted suicide, read this book, you might change your mind. Thank you to the Miley family for sharing their profound story.
February 16, 2013
Really good book. I liked the way the author covered all the various family members and their "journey" as Buddy traveled his. Also, loved the idea that it was the author's first book. I liked that he is a sports writer. Rather unusual. He was so able to capture the heart of the story. I didn't know sports writers could do that in such an intimate way. The book is dark, and very sad, but I liked learning about his real sorrow in life. I am left wondering though why was there not someone in his life who could give him real hope? Hope for a future of living until God called him home. I am not judging, because I cannot begin to imagine this man's pain. No, I am thinking of how I there may be people around me who are in such a state, and am I doing anything to demonstrate hope to them. Goodness, I wish it so, but I am desperately needing God in me, for that to be possible. A deep thinking book, and I always love those. Great writing.
August 27, 2012
I received this book through the Goodreads First Reads program.
This book tells the true story of Buddy Miley, a high school quarterback who sustained a spinal cord injury during a game. The author, Mark Kram Jr, paints a real and poignant picture of Buddy's life: his hardships as a quadriplegic, the relationships with old friends and members of his family; in particular, his brother Jimmy and high school friend Karen, and eventually, Buddy's assisted suicide.
Despite the sad and perhaps troubling (to some) subject matter, I really enjoyed reading this book. The fact that this story is true is what makes it; everything written here has happened to someone. I liked reading it and knowing that people lived through this unfortunate thing, and it reminded me that many lives can change in an instant.
This book tells the true story of Buddy Miley, a high school quarterback who sustained a spinal cord injury during a game. The author, Mark Kram Jr, paints a real and poignant picture of Buddy's life: his hardships as a quadriplegic, the relationships with old friends and members of his family; in particular, his brother Jimmy and high school friend Karen, and eventually, Buddy's assisted suicide.
Despite the sad and perhaps troubling (to some) subject matter, I really enjoyed reading this book. The fact that this story is true is what makes it; everything written here has happened to someone. I liked reading it and knowing that people lived through this unfortunate thing, and it reminded me that many lives can change in an instant.
November 15, 2012
Engrossing, extremely depressing (to me) book about a guy who was injured playing high school football and left a quadriplegic. Ends up many years later getting Jack Kevorkian to help him in an assisted suicide. Much of the focus is the impact on his little brother he enlisted to help with the arrangements with Kevorkian, plus the high school girlfriend he remained in love with till the end even as she moved away, married someone else and had kids, etc. etc.
Last chapter elaborates author's negative opinion of Kevorkian, but otherwise the book is quite even-handed and descriptive, and author remains in the background. Well and clearly written, and you get a good feel for his friends and family as well as what the daily grind was like for Buddy Miley as he needed to rely on others to help him with everything and as he suffered intense chronic pain.
Last chapter elaborates author's negative opinion of Kevorkian, but otherwise the book is quite even-handed and descriptive, and author remains in the background. Well and clearly written, and you get a good feel for his friends and family as well as what the daily grind was like for Buddy Miley as he needed to rely on others to help him with everything and as he suffered intense chronic pain.
June 18, 2012
I picked this book up at the library after remembering the cover photo from a brief review in Sports Illustrated.
This was definitely "a story of devotion" as the subtitle says. The care and love of Buddy's family and friends is what kept him alive and active for 20 years after his football injury.
It was hard to read about the injury and the care Buddy received immediately after. To think if he was properly immobilized he might have regained more movement. Or if he went to a more compassionate rehabilitation center he may have been able to feed himself and move his wheel chair giving him more independence.
Buddy had a long, hard life but it seems that he touched so many people along the way. That's truly a gift.
This was definitely "a story of devotion" as the subtitle says. The care and love of Buddy's family and friends is what kept him alive and active for 20 years after his football injury.
It was hard to read about the injury and the care Buddy received immediately after. To think if he was properly immobilized he might have regained more movement. Or if he went to a more compassionate rehabilitation center he may have been able to feed himself and move his wheel chair giving him more independence.
Buddy had a long, hard life but it seems that he touched so many people along the way. That's truly a gift.
September 29, 2012
So many times when we read about Dr. Kevorkian, we get the story from this point of view. This fast-moving story gives us the other side of the coin: a probing look into the suffering of one young man who became a patient of Kevorkian's. Buddy Miley was a cocky high school quarterback with the world at his fingertips -- until one fateful football play put him into a wheelchair for life, unable to use even his hands. Mark Kram Jr. shows us Buddy's ordeal as well as the sacrifices made by his family, especially his loving brother, Jimmy.
Like Any Normal Day is a can't-put-down, and for every tear you shed over it, you will also ponder the philosophical issues of assisted suicide. Terrific for use in high schools with aggressive football programs.
Like Any Normal Day is a can't-put-down, and for every tear you shed over it, you will also ponder the philosophical issues of assisted suicide. Terrific for use in high schools with aggressive football programs.
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