[msb-alumni] Blind metro Detroit skateboarder lands on both feet

From: Steve <pipeguy920@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <msb-alumni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 17 Jan 2017 16:33:37 -0500

BlankBlind metro Detroit skateboarder lands on both feet Emma Ockerman ,
Detroit
Free Press

George Leichtweis, the owner of Modern Skate & Surf in Royal Oak , says
skateboarding is one of the few sports where it's just you versus yourself' the
frustratingly glorious battle of trying, trashing and then landing a trick one
day, only to attempt to out-do yourself later.

On any given night in his park there's a cacophonous symphony of urethane
wheels
slapping concrete floor.

More often than not, there's also the rumbling roll of Nick Mullins' skateboard
as it glides back and forth on the 6-foot ramp.

Modern One is the 25-year-old Mullin's known turf, and many skateboarders and
inline skaters paused to watch him own it one night last month.

"Now he's doing just ridiculous stuff," Leichtweis said. "He does some of the
most amazing stuff I've ever seen on a halfpipe."

Mullins has always been good, and he's been getting better. He attributes that
to not having to think so much anymore about how he can't see his board or the
ramp ahead of him.

The Clinton Township resident has been blind for several years now, so
skateboarding is back to Mullins versus'Mullins instead of Mullins versus
blindness, or Mullins versus the near-deadly bacterial infection that left him
without his sight.

The battle to regain his footing and his spirit, Mullins said, began with
deciding he didn't want to be defined by an illness anymore. Even if a
skateboarding accident nearly killed him, he wasn't about to give up the sport
that made him excited to be alive.

Mullins figured he was dying when he called his father one summer day in 2009.
By the time a doctor correctly diagnosed him'with Methicillin-resistant
Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), the then 18-year-old'was -- in his words -- "out."

After a survival flight from the University of Michigan Health System brought
Mullins from a Toledo-area hospital to Ann Arbor, his father, Jimmy Mullins,
spent a night in the hospital's chapel calling family.  He was sure his son
wouldn't make it through the night.

Nick Mullins was in septic shock by the time he hit the intensive care unit.
"Nick was so tough," Jimmy Mullins, 57, of Toledo, said.

The bacterial infection caused severe pus-filled abscesses in his lungs and
multi-system organ failure. During the 1' months' he was heavily sedated and
undergoing neuromuscular blockades to paralyze him while he received treatment
for his community-associated MRSA, he couldn't have known that he had suddenly
become the nationally renowned skateboarder he had always hoped to be. It would
be awhile before he realized that videos of him skateboarding had gone viral
and
"professional skateboarders were rooting for his return."

Even his doctors remember hearing comments from skateboarders across the
country
and seeing videos of Mullins skating. "He was just a beautiful, instinctive
skater and athlete," Dr. Pauline Park, codirector of the surgical intensive
care
unit at the U-M Health System, said.

He had just escaped a death sentence, but friends said he was still talking
about skateboarding. "I weighed 90 pounds, just literally didn't want to talk
to
anyone. I couldn't eat. I had to put myself in my own rehab," Mullins said. "It
was difficult, I couldn't see. Everyone was there for me, but I didn't even
know. I had no idea what happened."

Mullins was blind -- save for a small part of the peripheral vision in his left
eye'and weighed less than 90 pounds. He had severe lung damage.

Jimmy said the boy lying in the hospital bed hardly looked like Nick.

Then, a few months later, he saw tough-guy Nick return.

The always-independent son was standing on his skateboard in the middle of
their
family driveway in Toledo. Even if a skateboarding accident nearly killed him,
he wasn't about to give up on the sport that made him excited to be alive.

"That's when I knew it wasn't the end," Mullins said. "I could eat again, I
could be myself.

Like most of Mullins' career-defining moments, the fall that could have broken
him wound up on YouTube, uploaded by his filmer and friend Steve Staffan in
March 2009. In fewer than 30 seconds, there is the rumble of Mullins' wheels
off-screen, and then a pause as he slides into view -- palms-down across
rust-colored dust -- and lifts himself up, limping slightly as he walks.
Mullins
thinks that's how he contracted MRSA.

The video, titled  "Nick Taking a Bad Slam ," has since garnered more than
72,500 views. It was taken near an industrial warehouse in Maumee, Ohio, while
filming a "sponsor-me" tape -- basically a plea to skateboarding companies to
consider adding him to their team by showcasing his skills. Mullins said he was
trying to go up the bank wall to the guardrail, and then do a flip trick back
in.

He eventually landed the trick, and it made its way into his video part, though
not before he severely scraped his hip along the rust-colored debris.

But falling down, even in a big way, is normal for a skateboarder. Mullins
didn't think much of it at the time, and tries not to dwell on it too much now.

About a week later, he developed a small welt the size of a nickel on his
thigh.
He figured it was an ingrown hair, or maybe irritated skin, probably caused by
him wearing tight jeans.

Then one welt became many, and Mullins went to a few different doctors. Each
told him he had folliculitis, or irritated hair follicles, and prescribed light
antibiotics and painkillers. Mullins said he was tired, achy and saw "sparkles"
in his vision. It felt more like a flu, but without the congestion.

Thinking that those symptoms could have amounted to anything worse than some
irritated hair follicles or a summer cold, though, seemed improbable at the
time.

Symptoms from MRSA typically begin with painful, pimple-looking bumps that are
warm to the touch. Community-associated MRSA can spread more easily among
athletes like skateboarders, who are frequently dotted with open wounds from
previous falls.

In Mullins' case, doctors confirmed he had severe MRSA necrotizing pneumonia
with acute respiratory distress syndrome. Mullins also had severe hypoxemia --
meaning he was oxygen-deficient -- and hypercarbia, or abnormally elevated
levels of carbon dioxide in his blood, in addition to acute kidney injury and
septic shock.

Dr. Robert Hyzy, medical director of the critical care medicine unit with U-M's
health system, remembers seeing Mullins improve and thinking that doctors had
won the case. They brought Mullins out of sedation and realized he couldn't see.

Though loss of sight isn't a common outcome of MRSA, Hyzy said it could have
been a result of bacterial blood traveling to his retinal artery. "When he lost
his vision, I thought he might not be able to skateboard," Hyzy said.

In 2009, Mullins was skating nonstop, and professional skateboarding companies
were beginning to notice. They sent him products, which is like a nudge to keep
skating -- produce more, and people will be watching. Mullins said he was never
into skateboarding to become big, though he did want to do it for the rest of
his life.

After he finished up his video part and threw it online with Staffan, the plan
was to move out to California that fall. He had been working up to that move
for
years.

Mullins said he found skateboarding when he was about 10, while growing up in
the Toledo area. He tried everything else that was part of skate park culture,
too: inline skating and BMX biking were in the fray. Something about
skateboarding just stuck.

Jimmy Mullins said he realized his son had become dedicated when he started
winning competition after competition. Nick Mullins was also driving up to
Michigan regularly to visit Modern Skate & Surf and the now-closed Oakland Vert
Skatepark.

Things with the sponsor-me tape were fast-tracked after Mullins became sick.
Many skateboarders didn't know exactly what had happened, just that he might
die.

Staffan took a summer's worth of footage and quickly edited Mullins' tape and
put it online.  The video wound up becoming an impromptu eulogy to Mullins'
rising career when friends weren't sure whether he would survive. It went viral
and was posted to the Berrics -- a successful skateboarding website that mostly
features professional clips -- and was
founded by skateboarders Steve Berra and Eric Koston -- and soon garnered
attention across the country.

Mullins said he didn't fully understand at the time just how well-known his
name
had become. He did know, though, that the Berrics 'and others were raising
money
for his hospital bills and were selling merchandise that said "1%" -- Mullins
initial survival rate. They wanted to see him come back.

A few weeks after he got out of the hospital, Staffan filmed an interview with
Mullins and posted it to YouTube.
Mullins is skinny and pallid in the video. The song from his Berrics debut,
Metric's "Help I'm Alive," plays in the background. One title slide reads:
"Steve Berra and the Berrics have been a big part of making your story known,
anything you want to say to them? "You guys helped out and everything," Mullins
said. "Thank you so much, I wish I could do something for you guys. Just, thank
you."  He said he'd be back on a skateboard within three to six months.

A few videos on YouTube seemed to prove that he kept his word and showed him
skating around local parks. Then he moved to'Phoenix, Ariz., and then to
Traverse City, and people didn't hear from him for a while.

Staffan, 30, of Toledo, said e-mails kept flowing in: Where's Nick? Is he
alive?
Can he see?

"What was really weird was that it was like a reality show. All these rumors
got
started," Staffan said. "It was like Nick was a celebrity and I was like his
publicist."

In 2014, Mullins posted his own video. "I'm Nick Mullins, I'm 23 years old, and
I'm
considered legally blind," he told the camera, smiling and wearing sunglasses.
"I took a short break from skateboarding," he added. "Now I'm back skating,
having a lot of fun. Skateboarding every day, staying positive and happy. It
was
a tough road to get there."

Mullins said his legs felt like he was "carrying cinder blocks" when he started
skating again, but he didn't really feel pain anymore. He was all bone, no
muscle. Just standing on his skateboard was challenging at first. His next
move,
he said, "was to drop in on a 3-foot miniature ramp near his home. That would
prove he could come back.

About 10 of his friends came to cheer him on. "I dropped in I made it to the
other side, and that's when they were like, "He's going to get it back. He just
dropped in blind," Mullins said.

Then Mullins was making bounds forward to return to his roots. He took his
skateboard to a half-pipe. He relearned what tricks he could, and then they
started "flowing in like a stream," he said.

He started hosting skateboard competitions again. It helped to be surrounded by
a community of skateboarders who wanted to see Mullins pull through and
succeed -- whether that be at Modern'Skate, or other skate parks across the
country.

Leichtweis said Mullins has become somewhat of a regional legend. Sometimes
people forget he's blind when they see him skate, or at least think he's
regained his sight.

Friends and family drive Mullins the 45 minutes to Modern Skate two or three
times a week in the winter. Leichtweis asks him not to pay to skate. "I tell
people, "Go up this ramp and close your eyes and drop in. Nobody would do
that,"
he said. "He's become quite a legend around here because he's very talented,
and
he didn't allow his issues with not seeing to inhibit the way he looks at life.
That alone shows an example to all the younger kids here."

The 16-year-old skateboarder manning the front desk of Modern said he's almost
intimidated to talk to Mullins, adding that he's a hometown hero. "He's just so
inspiring," Matt Reschke,
employee at Modern Skate, said. "He's really good."

Skateboarding for Mullins, though, is not about being good. It's about staying
on your board. Maybe in the future, Mullins said, he'll travel the country and
talk to other skateboards and let them know that they can overcome their
self-doubts and anxieties, too. Or he could own a clothing company, he said,
and
"give back to the community."

After believing he was about to die -- and then that he might never skate
again -- Mullins said it took a lot to get back on his feet. He was depressed
and anxious. He was lying in bed one day feeling like he would become
overwhelmed and cry, and then he began to laugh. He couldn't believe that he
was
being mopey, he says. "You lost your vision, you still have your arms and
legs,"
Mullins said. "Just get up and live."

[msb-alumni] Blind metro Detroit skateboarder lands on both feet

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