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Wednesday, August 22. 1990 / University Daily Kansan
KU student has fresh outlook after accident
Signs of progress include mastering everyday tasks after several months of rehabilitation therapy
By Jolee Fishback
Special to the Kansan
Jim Skinner, Overland Park senior, now jokes about using a wheelchair.
During the summer, he and his friends were wandering around the Country Club Plaza when they stopped at a light.
The light changed and the word "Walk" blinked. Skinner suddenly feigned horror. His friends broke into laughter.
But nobody was laughing at 3 a.m. March 22, 1989.
Skinner and a friend had taken a study break to practice rappelling in the main stairwell in the Art and Design Building. Rapelling involves the use of ropes to descend mountains.
Skinner's equipment was improperly adjusted and he fell 43 feet.
suffering a broken back and a head injury.
After a year of physical therapy, Skinner remains paralyzed below the waist.
He planned to return to the University of Kansas this semester, and he would return with renewed seed award his industrial design studies.
"My new idol is this fictitious character, Mr. Completion," he said. "He's the guy who got everything he wanted him to get. He's going to be that man."
Skinner said his past academic performance was acceptable but not exemplary. He said he always had good ideas in problems but never did so, harsher bursars burt
To improve his use of time, Skinner has worked to develop his study skills, memory and drawing.
During his recovery, he sketched
oesigns of consumer products, like a remote control unit or a car dashboard.
He also took a course on study habits and memory.
Skinner experienced minor memory loss because of the head injury. However, he now considers his memory better than before the injury.
"It wasn't that good before, really," he said. "Now my memory may be worse, but I remember more things. I just have to be more methodical about writing them down."
But Skinner is thankful he does not remember the time he spent in intensive care at the University of Kansas Medical Center.
"All I hear is horrible stories about other people's memories of ICU," he said. "It's like, where do the machines stop and you begin?"
During rehabilitation therapy, he
impressed his family, friends and the hospital staff with his positive attitude.
"A lot of people were really shocked by that," he said. "But it was from being frustrated with people in the hospital who were real whim."
Near the end of his four-month hospital stay, Skinner finally began to regain his memory.
After he was released, he made frequent trips to the hospital for physical therapy. The therapy ended last spring, still lifts weights to about 20 pounds strength.
Skinner now measures his progress by mastering everyday tasks. Each new accomplishment increases his independence.
A major step toward independence was learning to get into his car and to fold the wheelchair in the back seat.
Skinner said he would drive to
class at the University and park near the Art and Design Building, which is accessible by ramps and elevators.
Skinner and Mikesic got along so well they decided to share the duplex
Bob Mikeski, Skinner's roommate,
helped him find a duplex in Lawrence
with ramps and enough clearance for
a wheelchair.
Mikesie, who has used a wheelchair for 22 years, works for independence firm, 1900 Haskell Ave, which provides accessible and affordable housing.
won they decided to share the duplex. Skinner said he thought he could learn from Mikese's experience in laundry and chores like laundry, and shopping.
Mikesic said he thought Skinner would adjust fairly easily to his new life using a wheelchair
Skinner's personality will help reduce other people's discomfort with his disability, Mikesie said.
"Since he's a good communicator, I think he'll give people an opportunity to get to know him," he said. "He may find he needs to assert himself a little more now that he's a new member of a minority group."
On campus, Skinner will regularly open the door to the building where his life was changed.
He heard that the stair handrails in the Art and Designs Building were still bent from his body's impact.
He returned recently to see for himself, and found that they were.
Skinner said that, as he looked down at the distance he had fallen, he realized how lucky he was to have survived.
"You would never think someone could live through something like we do. It'll be 'scary' but since we know the story ends, the suspense is lost."
Heavv rain makes Oliver KU's only lakeside residence hall
By Deron Grau
Kansan staff writer
Potter Lake is no longer the only lake on the KU corpus at least during heavy rains.
campus, at its best during a new water detention pond behind Oliver Hall that holds rain runoff from campus has the honor of being KU's second lake.
It's second time. "It's kind of weird," said Randy Timm, assistant residence hall director of Oliver. "Now there's a lake behind us."
Sam Trang, assistant landscape architect, said the detention pond is intended to reduce the amount of runoff south of campus. In the past, runoff from campus has overflowed storm drains on 19th Street.
Trang said that although the pond had not been completed, it worked well during the heavy rains of late
As rainwater flows into the pond, it drips through a pipe that regulates its flow into the city's sewers. When the water evaporates, it replenishes the pond.
can drain it, the pnd begins to fill.
The pond, complete but for some seeding and sod placement, will be four to five feet deep when full and partially submerged.
The parking lots on campus are responsible for the excess runoff. Water that would normally soak into the ground runs down the hill's paved lots. An underground holding tank in the parking garage at Naismith and Irving Hill roads serves the same purpose as the new pond.
Timm said the pond would not interfere with recreation on the grass field behind Oliver, although a volleyball net would be installed.
"It should be nicer when the grass grows back," Timm said.
During final examinations last spring, a group of older residents went swimming in the pond after a piscine.
"The hall was pretty trashed and muddy afterwards." he said. "But it was a great stress reliever."