How a Terminally Ill Patient Overcomes Total Paralysis to Start a New Career and Become a Millionaire

What happens to a person who survives a car accident, with their vehicle completely totaled—and worse, with legs broken in 14 places?

It's not exactly a picnic, you'll agree. But that's exactly what happened to John Morrow in April 2006. For three months, he couldn't work or do almost anything else. All he could do was think about his life and try to cope with the pain as best he could.

And that's exactly what he did. The result of those months? He transformed his life—and within a few years, he also became a millionaire.

How does a car accident victim find enough strength to use his post-accident immobility to turn his life around? In Morrow's case, it’s quite simple: he very well remembered how lucky he was just to be alive. According to doctors' forecasts, he was supposed to have been dead before he turned two.

Morrow was born with a severe muscular dystrophy, but until the age of one, he wasn’t diagnosed. At one year old, his mother, concerned with the way he crawled, decided to take him to see a doctor. In fact, he simply couldn’t crawl—just dragged himself short distances before giving up. Something about the way he moved his body seemed odd to her. Everyone around tried to reassure her that she was just a hysterical mother, but Pat Morrow wasn't calmed. She decided to take little John to a doctor.

The doctor ran various tests and then summoned her to his office. 'I'm sorry, but I have bad news,' he said. 'John has a disease that degenerates the spine and muscles. While most children get stronger as they grow, he will only get weaker. He will lose all ability to move. He will lose the ability to breathe on his own. And one day, he will catch an infection that will spread to his respiratory system and develop into severe pneumonia... Most children with this disease die of pneumonia before they turn two... I'm really sorry.'

Pat wiped her tears and straightened her shoulders with determination. 'Don't be sorry. John is not going to die.'

'It's important that you understand the situation, Mrs. Morrow. He won't be able to fight pneumonia...'

'He won’t need to fight it,' Pat Morrow said. 'I will fight pneumonia for him.'

And that’s exactly what she did, her son recounted later. Every time he developed pneumonia—and it happened 16 times in the next 16 years—Pat's stubbornness stood firm for her son. She sat by him all night, forcefully patting his back and chest every two hours to release the mucus accumulated there. She managed to secure the best specialist doctors to treat her son. And she simply never gave up.

But Pat Morrow did not settle for John merely staying alive. She insisted that he attend a regular school—and all obstacles melted before her stubbornness. When he wanted to play basketball, she met with the gym teacher and arranged a new role in the game: 'ball carrier,' a role that Morrow could fill from his wheelchair. When John lost the ability to write, she arranged for volunteer students to come daily to write for him. And she never stopped encouraging him to believe in his abilities. The result: he graduated high school with honors at age 16 and later completed a bachelor's degree with honors.

With such a background, it's perhaps not surprising that the car accident didn’t break Morrow's spirit. But it did something more: he decided he wasn’t living the life he wanted. He was fed up with living in the United States on disability benefits, where every dollar he earned had to go towards the medicine and medical care he needed to stay alive. Within a week, he packed his belongings and moved to Mexico, to a beautiful town where a friend had told him about Playa. In this town, he found a home he liked and rented it. Then he tackled his next goal: to earn enough money to support himself, fund all his medical expenses—and also support his aging parents.

By this point, Morrow was already completely paralyzed, able to move only his head, but with advanced technology, that didn't impede the career path he chose for himself: a professional blogger and blogging consultant, read by millions worldwide—and earning hundreds of thousands of dollars annually.

'A few months later, I bought my dad a new car,' Morrow writes. 'Do you understand how special it is for a guy who can’t move anything below his neck to buy a car for his dad? And the best part—I make money by helping people, helping them to change their lives. Every day, I receive emails full of gratitude. It’s hard for me to believe it! Normally, a guy like me should be wilting away in some institution, watching TV and waiting for death. Instead, they pay me money to give advice. If my fingers worked, I'd pinch myself.'

Morrow often tells his story to lead readers to the inevitable conclusion. 'If I could achieve all this as a disabled person who can only move his head—what can’t you achieve?'

In his mid-thirties, Morrow is one of the oldest people in the world with his disease. Still, he harbors no illusions. He knows his life expectancy is much lower than average, and sooner or later the disease will take his life. But when that happens, he says, he knows what he will take with him: not material success or notoriety—but the people whom his story touched and changed their lives.

'Like the guy who wrote to me after reading my story and said he was convinced by me not to commit suicide,' he recalls. 'These are the things that will truly stay with me forever.'