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Few people expected Steven Fletcher to survive after hitting a moose on a Manitoba highway.
Even fewer expected him to want a meaningful life. After all, he was crippled -- a 23-year-old guy paralysed from the neck down, with the strapping, rugged 6-foot-4 kayak champion gone forever.
Fletcher, of course, defied the odds, the naysayers, even his own inner demons that told him he's be better off dead.
LIFE STORY
So what happens when a promising young man is written off by most?
You ask yourself, What Do You Do If You Don't Die.
It's the title of a new book about the Manitoba MP that recounts the decade from January 1996 when the then 23-year-old geological engineer was hit by "the harsh reality," of being alive and figuring out what to do next.
"It was a difficult exercise to put together and quite frankly, many of the issues I'd rather forget," said Fletcher of collaborating on the book.
The book, to be published next spring by Heartland Publishing, recounts Fletcher's fight with doctors, nurses and other caregivers to keep him out of an institution.
"They really just wanted to put him in a nursing home. It was like, C'mon kid, you've got nothing except your brain and your head and you can't even move it," said Linda McIntosh, Fletcher's close friend and a former Manitoba cabinet minister.
Fletcher didn't want to spend his life "on drugs, lying on my wheelchair bed, watching sitcoms and entertained by visiting choirs," McIntosh writes.
The Conservative MP, who was first elected to the House of Commons in 2004, won a precedent-setting battle with Manitoba Private Insurance for the right to have medical and personal support to help him live an independent, non-institutional, life.
"The things that Steven has done has set a precedent that will make it easier for us to be meaningful citizens," said McIntosh of his battles to get 24-hour medical attendant care.
DEFINE YOURSELF
In the book, Fletcher recalls how he fantasized about killing himself, a near-impossible endeavour for a quadriplegic.
The book also touches upon his foray into federal politics in 2004 and his re-election in 2006.
"It happens that he's a politician but this is a story of a man who spent 11 years trying to be seen as a person who can make a contribution and have his intellect mean something," said McIntosh.
Fletcher, who says his goal in life "is not to be a politician but to be a father, and a good one," wants the book to both educate and comfort.
"I hope it will help other people define themselves in situations so they can deal with absolute catastrophe," said Fletcher.