Cody Unser, daughter of race-car driver and two-time Indianapolis 500 winner Al Unser Jr., lost the use of her legs at age 12, when she was suddenly stricken with transverse myelitis. This neurological condition inflames the spinal cord, resulting in symptoms including loss of motor skills in the limbs.
Unser struggled to adjust upon returning home from rehab. “I was angry, confused and really upset all the time,” she says. “I didn’t want to live in this paralyzed body. They’d been teaching me how to live in a wheelchair, but it felt like they were teaching me how to live in a box.”

Her brother Al Unser III hated seeing her like that, and stepped up to motivate her.

“I still knew she could do anything she wanted,” says Unser III. “There was just going to be a different way that she had to do it.”
To show her what he already knew, he brought her poolside, then tied his own legs together and swam. Then, he says, “I grabbed her and said, ‘C’mon.’”

And so she did.

The next step was for Cody to try scuba. Unser III, already scuba certified, encouraged her every step during a trip to Cozumel, Mexico.

“I hated it at first,” she says. “The wetsuit is really annoying to put on. And I don’t have abs or sensation in my trunk area, which makes it much harder to know if I’m neutrally buoyant.”

It took her an extra beat to feel confident in her skills, including clearing the mask.

“But the frustration of doing the skills in the water took me out of the frustrations of being paralyzed,” says Cody. “And from there, I started to see that diving is a really cool thing to do.”

Says Unser III, “This one thing improved her whole outlook on life. She could have chosen to just travel everywhere she wanted to dive, but that’s not Cody.

When Cody was in the hospital [when she first was diagnosed], she always had all kinds of stuff — flowers and teddy bears — from being my dad’s daughter. She was always sharing as much of it as she could with other people who were going through what she was going through.”

That’s how she is with scuba too.

She formed the Cody Unser First Step Foundation initially to raise awareness for her little-known disease, then expanded the focus to include teaching participants with physical challenges, including paralysis in all four limbs, how to scuba dive.

Says Unser III, “I was proud when she got certified, but I feel a much bigger sense of pride when I see how selfless my sister is in showing other people the thing she has come to love so much.”

The Cody Unser First Step Foundation

Based in Cody Unser’s hometown of Albuquerque, New Mexico, this foundation strives to integrate kids and adults with disabilities into the world of diving. Known as Cody’s Great Scuba Adventures, each trip is to a different warm-water location. On every one, participants bring a loved one to get certified with them, alongside a PADI instructor and a Handicapped Scuba Association course director. Unser’s foundation also certifies therapists working with Johns Hopkins University so that they too can begin to understand the physical-healing aspects of scuba, and then incorporate it more readily as a modality of therapy for more patients with disabilities. codysfirststep.org

— Photos and Video by Zach Stovall

By Brooke Morton

Source: sport diver