Q: How bad was your injury?
Bill Walton: “I spent three years on the ground. I was in unrelenting, excruciating pain that can only be described as being submerged in a vat of acid with an electric current running through it that I couldn’t get out of. I was just a pitiful ball of flesh writhing on the floor, begging for the pain to stop. My life was over.”
Q: How did it compare to some of your other injuries?
Walton: “I spent a lifetime with bone and joint pain. There’s nothing like nerve pain. It never goes away and nothing can fix it. It destroys your life, it destroys the lives of everyone around you. It takes away the hope and the dream that tomorrow is going to be better. If you don’t have that, you don’t have much. You don’t have anything.”
Q: How do you feel today?
Walton: “I am busier than ever, happier than ever. I haven’t been this healthy since high school. No pain, no medication. I had no idea what life was like without back pain. It’s a miracle what’s happened to me. So with the privilege and good fortune of health comes responsibility, duty and obligation to help other people have their dreams comes true.”
— Reported by Dan McCarney of the San Antonio Express-News (Blog)
