Choose Hope: After 13 years and seven surgeries Lybrand Beard is getting his life back

We find happiness in achieving, in loving someone and in having something to hope for.

A progressive and almost total debilitation from a 1974 injury as a Du Quoin High School freshman pole vaulter robbed Lybrand Beard and certainly his family and friends of much of that hope for 13 years.

Still, they all chose hope.

Seven surgeries since 1999--two of them back-to-back on May 8 and May 10 of this year--and a Chesterfield, Mo. orthopedic surgeon who specializes in "revision surgeries" to correct the wrongs of others--have finally given him his life back,

"When I was at the bottom of the well there were three things I couldn't do--walk, sit or stand," said Beard, who on some Christmas mornings watched his family open presents through a doorway from his bed because the pain was so bad.

As Du Quoin High School principal "I would walk along the lockers so that if I fell I would just slip to the floor."

By 1999 a wholesome life had turned into Beard's darkest and uncertain hour.

"I affected everyone around me with the wear and tear," he said.

"The love of my immediate family and my family at school got me through this. I have relationships that didn't fall apart--wife Kathy, married children Pam and Derek, the parents, the kids and the grand kids all kept raising me up."

"You remember (football and baseball great) Don Stanhouse. He would come by and pick me up and take me SIU for treatments," Beard said.

Then came Dr. Matthew Gornet of the Orthopedic Center in Chesterfield, a suburb in west St. Louis.

Many physicians end their training with an internship and residency. Dr. Gornet spent two years in a fellowship role at Johns Hopkins University Medical Center in Baltimore, Maryland. "He will work on you when others won't," Beard said.

And the decision to right the wrongs of past surgeries "didn't take five minutes."

Here was the problem.

A past surgery in 2006 tried to fuse what are known as the L-5 and S-1 vertebrae together. "They put in rods and screws to try and stabilize my back," said Beard.

In doing so, the surgery was designed to take pressure off of both sides of the sciatic nerve which at that point leaves the spine to take care of the lower body.

But, Dr. Gornet quickly determined that not only did the 2006 surgery fail to fuse the bones, but screws and rods had wallowed out, actually compounding the problem.

"It was burning and crippling me," said Beard. "Because of the physical and psychological pain I thought I was done."

"All I wanted was to get my life back. Dr. Gornet said I can give you back your structure and your foundation."

The May 8 surgery "went in through the front" and two days later the May 10 surgery "went in through the back" to completely rebuild the bone/nerve relationship.

Within days, Dr. Gornet had given Beard his life back and within six weeks a promise he couldn't make before he could make now. "He said I would be able to work again," as Beard heads back into a Du Quoin elementary classroom in early October to help students with trouble in reading and math.

When Beard graduated from high school in 1978 he became a coal miner. As the days of Black Gold and solid paychecks in the coalfields became numbered he took four years off to earn a degree in education and a certificate in administration. But, as the pain grew worse, so did the psychological problems of trying to be a husband, father and leader--so he took some of the stress off by leaving the principal's office and returned to the classroom in 2011.

He has used accumulated sick days and vacation days to work around the surgeries.

On Wednesday, Beard said, "The pain in my back and left leg are completely gone. The pain in my buttocks and right leg are 80-percent--maybe 90 percent--gone."

"I am not the same person I was 13 years ago."

"I don't know who's happier--my family or me." He can do the three things that years ago he couldn't do--walk, sit and stand. He hugs his wife. He plays with his grandchildren.

"Kathy and I can go out to a restaurant and have dinner without being in pain after 15 minutes," he said.

"I walk every day. I am going to Doc Z's (fitness center) and am starting basic yoga," he smiled. Meditation has been calming throughout this ordeal.

Friends see him walking on Washington Street and ask, "Is that Lybrand? It's Lybrand!"

"God had to have played a role in this. His hand was on my shoulder." While growing up he remembers sitting in church "some weeks, some weeks not" with his grandfather.

"Now, I am in church every Sunday."

"I have been so fortunate to come out of this," he said.

"My priorities in life have drastically changed on what is important. I count my blessings every day," he said.

Recent months have been a defining moment. He will be back in the classroom this fall as a champion of children and of hope. But, moreover, "I want to do something for the kids that don't even have their basic needs met--two parents, supplies and food."

Ultimately, he sees himself in a real world role of helping people who are going through what he has gone through. "I've been raised by Du Quoin and now it is my turn to help."

Will we see Lybrand back along the sidelines during Indian football? "Maybe the press box," he smiles--and he's been doing more of that lately--but I have told myself I need to take a year for me."

"My doctor said, 'I'm not going to even tell you what's next if you don't do what I say'."

Not having to even think about that is something else to hope for.