Four years after falling out a window and breaking his back, blind adventurer Mark Pollock has gone to Hollywood to tell his story.
It’s almost four years since the tragic accident in which Mark Pollock fell from a window and became paralysed from the waist down. The fall happened just three weeks before he was due to be married to his fiancé Simone and he was in hospital for over a year.
Since then Mark and Simone have been on an amazing journey which has seen Mark go through intensive rehabilitation at the innovative Project Walk in San Diego and become the first person in the world to own a personal set of robotic legs made by Ekso Bionics. Both Mark and Simone have become Board Members at the Reeve Foundation, originally set up with ex-Superman Christopher Reeve.
Today, Thursday 19th, Mark’s newest adventure culminates with him telling his story at the prestigious TEDx Hollywood event.
It’s an opportunity for Mark to spread the word about spinal injury and what needs to be done to help people in wheelchairs.
“Doing a TED Talk has been something I wanted to do for quite a while as it’s an fantastic opportunity to raise the profile of spinal injury with influential people around the world. There’s no money in it but that’s not the motivation – it’s to spread the word to the world that spinal injury needs attention.”
Tedx Youth events are designed for young people with the goal of bringing inspiration and new ideas to people of all ages. Mark will be speaking about how he learned to face this challenge head-on, to find a balance between accepting this disability and to also seek out the innovators and dreamers who believe in breaking new ground and fighting to find a cure for spinal injury.
“One of the main things I’m going to talk about is the dichotomy of acceptance and hope. When I broke my back, I was advised to accept my situation and move on but unless we have hope, how can we ever change things. Without Acceptance there is no start line but without hope there is no finish line. Somewhere in the middle is making important progress.”
The talk will be available to view online in JULY and will also form part of the closing sequence of a feature documentary to be released in October called UNBREAKABLE, which follows Mark and Simone’s story from before his fall and through his recovery and search for cures in the world of science.
