The Abridged version:
- Robert Paylor was a former athlete whose neck was broken on the field at the age of 20.
- The Roseville resident was told he’d never walk again, but today he can walk laps around his home with a walker.
- Paylor and his wife are expecting a baby on Christmas Day, despite the odds.
- He says in some ways, he is “grateful he broke his neck” because it allows him to “have this meaning in my life.”
Robert Paylor is living a life he was told he’d never see.
The former Cal rugby star and author of “Paralyzed to Powerful: Lessons from a Quadriplegic’s Journey” is busier than he’s ever been, traveling the country as a motivational speaker and getting his Roseville home ready for a baby due on Christmas. Paylor’s wife, Karsen, is eight months pregnant. Paylor, 29, calls the pregnancy a “miracle,” given his story.
When he was just 20 years old, the 233-pound, 6-foot-5 athlete had already spent years on the rugby field and countless hours in the gym preparing for a lifelong dream: to make it to a rugby national championship game. His dream came true, but it would quickly turn into a nightmare when his neck was broken on the field.
Today, Paylor says he is grateful for all he has overcome. Gratitude, he says, is a “muscle that must be used or it will atrophy.” He’s even grateful for the “hard things,” too.
“In some ways, grateful that I broke my neck and that I’ve been able to meet so many incredible people and have this meaning in my life that I don’t know I would have had if I didn’t break my neck,” Paylor says.
A Christmas baby and a thankful heart
Days before Thanksgiving, Paylor is eager to share the news — and it has nothing to do with book sales or his physical recovery.
“Pregnant! We’ve got a baby coming on the way,” he says, a smile in his voice. “Isn’t that amazing? I mean, it was not expected.”
For a man living with a spinal cord injury, he knows the odds.
“When you have a spinal cord injury, your odds go down quite a lot for being able to have your own biological child,” he says. “And so, we were cautiously optimistic.”
The couple started trying for children earlier than planned, assuming there would be a long road ahead. The timing only deepened his sense of awe.
“My faith is very important to me. And we finally got the positive test on Good Friday. And the news that the due date is Christmas Day. Every kid is a miracle, but this felt like God was just saying, ‘If there’s any question on your mind about this, let me just settle that for you,’” he says.
The day everything changed
To understand why this Christmas baby feels like a miracle, you have to go back to May 6, 2017. Paylor was a freshman at the University of California, Berkeley, playing in the collegiate rugby national championship game at Santa Clara University.
Just minutes into the match, an opposing player wrapped an arm illegally around his neck and pulled as the formation collapsed. In that instant, Paylor’s neck broke and he was left motionless on the field, unable to feel anything below his neck.
His doctors’ prognosis was grim. He was told he would never walk again, never move his hands. If he beat the odds enough to survive, he was told the the best case might be someday lifting a hand to his mouth.
What followed was a blur of scans, a 105-degree fever and a life-or-death decision.
“I take all my scans, you know, MRI, X-ray, CT scan, and my doctor comes in and he delivers that infamous news that I will never walk again,” he recalls. “If I even survive.”
He was told he needed spinal fusion surgery through the front of his neck. The procedure could be fatal.
“My body was already under immense trauma from breaking my neck,” he says. “Surgery was only going to add to that. It wasn’t certain of whether or not I would wake up.”
He had one hour to decide.
Choosing mindset when everything else is gone
During that hour, what Paylor calls his “lowest moment,” he called his friend, Brian Konzman, the chaplain of the Cal rugby team and his spiritual adviser.
“I didn’t have a doctor saying that things are going to be OK,” Paylor says. “I definitely didn’t have the odds on my side, and to me, I had no signs of life really showing up in my body.”
Paylor asked for prayers and for a priest before the surgery. What he received was guidance from Konzman that would shape his next 3,000 days and counting.
“He gives me this piece of advice that just changed everything for me,” Paylor says. “He said, ‘Throughout this journey, there’s going to be a lot of things that you can’t control. You can’t control what happened to you, and you can’t control how your body responds. But you can control your mindset, your positivity and your ability to wake up every day and fight. This is up to you. And this injury can’t take that away from you.'”
At that moment, Paylor felt like he had nothing.
“But when I heard those words, I knew I was wrong,” he says. “I had my mindset. I had that ability to keep moving forward mentally. As long as there’s breath in my lungs, nothing can take that away from me.”
Paylor was ready for the fight ahead, no matter how long it would take.
‘I have suffered, but I haven’t stayed there’
The suffering that followed was brutal. In Santa Clara, Paylor battled pneumonia. He could not cough or breathe on his own.
“I had machines helping me, a ventilator mask pushing oxygen into my lungs, so I could breathe,” he says. “I mean, my doctors told me on multiple occasions I might not survive.”
Every three hours, respiratory therapists came in, pounding on his lungs and pressing his diaphragm to force mucus up. Every two hours, staff turned his body to prevent skin breakdown. Every hour, someone checked his vitals. “I just didn’t sleep,” he recalls.
From Santa Clara, he transferred to Craig Hospital in Colorado, a spinal cord specialty center in Denver. Eleven months later, after nine hours a day of intense rehabilitation and the assistance of medical devices, Paylor was able to walk out of Craig Hospital.
Today his life looks nothing like those first nights in the ICU. The past 8½ years have been filled with intensive physical therapy. Every limit in his body has been pushed to the brink.
“I don’t look over the fact that I can walk 500 yards now,” he says. “One yard would have been a miracle, 500 yards is just inexplicable. It’s out of this world.”
His sensation has returned to about 80 percent of his body. “I can feel my feet hitting the ground. I can feel my wife put her hand on my leg,” he says. “I can have all of that now.”
For Karsen Paylor, who met Robert in 2019 after the injury and married him in 2023, the journey has helped her see life through a new lens. “He reminds me never to complain about anything ever again,” she said, “because if he can go through his day with what he has to deal with, and I never hear him complaining … it’s like, instead of ‘I’ve got to get up and go to work today,’ it’s I get to get up and go to work. I get to contribute to something. I get to be a part of something.”
He is clear about what he’s been through: “I have suffered. But I haven’t stayed there. I think that’s why I’m grateful for a lot of suffering because it makes those blissful moments of life just that much sweeter.”
Gratitude for the hard things
Ask Paylor what gratitude means to him in this season of his life, and he does not hesitate.
“It’s being grateful for absolutely everything, and I mean everything,” he says. He starts with the obvious blessings. The baby. The book. The ability to share his story on stages from Fortune 500 conferences to school gyms.
“I have this kid coming on the way. It’s such an incredible blessing in my life. Like this wasn’t supposed to happen,” he says. “Being able to share this story through the book and my speaking, it continues to progress.”
Paylor’s book aims to help readers identify what is paralyzing them — physically, emotionally or mentally — and to apply the same mindset tools that carried him from a hospital bed to the stage.
“I have people reach out to me and they say, ‘Robert, I’m battling stage four cancer right now, or I just lost a son or daughter or spouse. And I’m going through the most difficult thing I’ve ever gone through in my life right now. But through seeing your story and your faith and your perseverance through this, I’m able to keep moving forward. I just want to say thank you.’”
Those messages help move Paylor forward.
“When I read a message like that,” he says, “I’m just filled with overwhelming gratitude that I could take breaking my neck, which many people thought would be the worst thing that can ever happen to me, and turn that into a gift that I can share with other people.”
Despite the progress he’s made in his recovery, his injury is still real. He points out that he’s telling his story from a wheelchair.
“It’s a significant struggle,” Paylor says. “But I think it’s in this physical weakness that I’ve been given, that I can share this mental and emotional strength with others.”
Forgiveness freed his mind
The player whose illegal tackle broke his neck has never reached out. Yet Paylor has made a conscious decision not to let that define him.
“I forgive him and I wish him well,” he says. “Forgiveness is always the answer. Forgiveness cleared space in my mind and gave me room to focus on what actually matters.”
For Paylor, forgiveness extends beyond one player. It extends to everyone and everything, including himself. “It’s so important because I think everybody has someone they need to forgive, and we have to forgive ourselves,” he says.
“Forgiveness is not a feeling. It is a decision and a practice,” he says, adding “just like gratitude.”
Growing from ‘Paralyzed to Powerful’
Paylor says a three-word question that came out of his journey is foundational to continuous growth.
“The phrase that helps me do that and have that mindset is compared to what? I think, oh I have it really bad. But compared to what? I think of those incredible people who are overcoming tremendous adversity who write to me. And I just think I have so much to be grateful for and there’s so much that I can actually do,” he says.
Perspective, he says, is another key to happiness.
“This injury taught me that life is fragile. It can change in a split second,” he says. “One second, you’re in this national championship and the next second you can be on your hospital bed and being told that this might be your last day.”
He refuses to let the fragility of life drive him into fear.
“I don’t think that’s reason to put on our bubble wrap before we decide to step outside of our door,” he says. “I think it’s reason just to be grateful for every second that we do have. And to appreciate everything we have before it’s ever lost.”
A Thanksgiving invitation
Although he has grown, is walking and is healing tremendously, Robert Paylor still lives with daily limitations that most never notice in their own bodies. When he’s not standing or walking as far as he can, he is still in a wheelchair.
“I have so much more to be grateful for in my life now than I did before,” he says. “And it’s because of that challenge, because I’ve chosen to give everything I have in everything I do.”
Paylor says anyone who is in the thick of a challenge — a diagnosis, a loss or invisible pain — can make the same choice he was given the day he broke his neck.
“We always have the ability to keep moving forward,” he says. “We always have the ability to react in a positive way, with optimism.”
This Thanksgiving, Paylor’s invitation is simple and hard at the same time. Don’t wait until something is gone to be grateful for it. Living through a lens of gratitude can redefine your perspective. Live believing your glass is half full, not half empty.
“I think in a lot of ways that’s true,” he says of the old saying that you do not know what you have until it is gone. “But I think it’s a horrible way to live. Why should we wait to lose something before we start appreciating it. Shouldn’t we appreciate it right now while we have it? Ask yourself, compared to what? Find something, maybe everything, to be grateful for.
“It will save your life.”
Rob Stewart is an executive producer and reporter for Abridged.