Ginny Toepfer, like Michael Jordan, knows a thing or two about getting the job done when your system is doing a first-class dipsy-doodle.
A saleswoman for a nationwide shipping company, Toepfer was nine months’ pregnant when she called on a Downstate client a few years ago to nail down the biggest deal of her career. During the meeting, she went into labor.
“What can I do?’ the client pleaded.
“Sign the contracts,” Toepfer replied coolly.
He obeyed in a nanosecond, and Toepfer hurried off to the hospital.
Wobbly from a likely viral infection, Jordan’s awe-inspiring 38-point performance in Game 5 of the NBA Finals on Wednesday gave new meaning to the term “gut-check.”
Odd as it may seem, feeling downright rotten can for some people be a powerfully motivating force.
Think of Kerri Strug, the 18-year-old gymnast who last summer turned in the vault of her life on a badly sprained ankle to lead the U.S. women’s gymnastic team to a gold medal at the Atlanta Olympics.
Think of Orson Welles, who once wowed Broadway audiences when he performed King Lear from a wheelchair after breaking one ankle and spraining another in separate falls.
Think even of California Republican Gov. Pete Wilson, who suffered a ruptured appendix 12 years ago when he was a member of the U.S. Senate. Wearing a brown bathrobe and with an intravenous tube in his arm, Wilson was taken to the Senate floor by ambulance less than two days after his operation to cast the key vote on a crucial budget bill.
And then think of Wally Pipp, the regular first baseman for the New York Yankees who was pulled from the lineup on June 2, 1925, after complaining of a splitting headache. His replacement was a rookie named Lou Gehrig, who went on to play every game for the next 14 years.
Pipp’s story is a chilling corollary to the others, the ultimate example of how bad things can sometimes ensue when we let aches and pains get the best of us.
Though Jordan is clearly in a class of his own, experts say his ability to kick it into high gear when feeling punk is surprisingly commonplace. It has to do with primitive human defense systems designed to help outrun predators.
A perceived threat triggers a shot of adrenaline and other complex biological processes that help regulate breathing and heighten nerve and muscle junction response. More blood sugar is released from the liver, and an increase in the production of endorphins acts to suppress pain.
“Essentially you’re forcing your body to do something it is not prepared to do, compensating for what’s not there,” explained Kim Dell’Angela, a clinical psychologist at Loyola University Medical Center’s pain clinic. “All this is possible in everyone . . . but only so long as the mind knows it’s important.”
For Jordan, the ultimate competitor, the threat was the possibility of seeing his Bulls dethroned as champions by a tough Utah Jazz team.
Champion diver Greg Louganis may have felt similar pangs when he whacked his head on a board and needed stitches during the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul. Yet he was back diving within minutes and took the gold.
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The challenges that summon up inner strength are endless.
Last year, a woman named Lauren (who did not want her last name used) was dispatched by her boss to organize a reception in Boston for First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. But when it came time for the affair, Lauren had come down with a bad cold, a hacking cough and laryngitis.
Feeling lousy, Lauren tried to hang in the back of the crowd but was ordered by her boss to take a place in the receiving line. “Get in that line; we need you,” she was told.
Lauren sucked it up and began whispering hellos, shaking hands and spreading her germs to VIPs from all over New England.
Unemployment may be at its lowest point in two decades, but years of downsizing and corporate restructuring have transformed American workers into a hardier lot–at least when it comes to recuperating from illness.
Between 1993 and 1994, the last year for which figures are available, the number of work or school days lost by Americans to illness dropped by about a half-day per person, from 5.5 to 5, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.
The effect is especially pronounced at the lower rungs of the socioeconomic spectrum.
Javier Perez of Oak Park says he hasn’t taken a sick day in 12 years while working variously as a gardener, drywaller, painter, and all-around handyman, often seven days a week.
“It’s a matter of need,” said Perez, 32, trimming a hedge Thursday at a home in River Forest. “If you don’t work, you don’t get paid.”
And Perez needs to be paid. He has a mortgage, a wife and two children to support in this country and a mother back in Mexico to whom he sends a check every month.
Dick Durbin, Illinois’ recently elected Democratic U.S. senator, is by no means teetering on the edge financially. But in the last weeks of his campaign last fall against Republican Al Salvi, Durbin set a grueling pace that exhausted him by campaign’s end–and left him looking awful.
Durbin served seven terms in Congress before running for the Senate, and experienced the same phenomenon every time.
“Within 48 hours of the vote I will be sick as a dog, in bed, hardly able to move,” he explained. “I will have lost my voice and will be probably facing the flu.”
For the successful politician, he explained, there are no timeouts allowed at the end of a campaign.
“I’ve always thought I can live with a defeat if I felt that I’d done everything possible to win,” Durbin said. “I just hate to think I’d lost because I took a three-day vacation.”
In his own quiet and unassuming way, Sam Mitchell, also was a driven person.
For years he held a decidedly unglamorous job at the Chicago Athletic Association, a porter who carried dirty towels to the laundry and kept the pool area clean.
Yet his boss, aquatics Director Tom Johnston, said Mitchell was the kind of employee who always would be doing something above and beyond the call of duty and was a favorite with the members and management.
Then last year, Mitchell was diagnosed with liver cancer. Even with the chemotherapy, Mitchell reported to work promptly at 5:45 each morning and never missed a day.
“He never complained,” Johnston said. “I would say to him, `Sam, you have any pain?’ He would say, `Yeah, every once in a while, but I’m OK.’ He could have taken time off and still gotten paid, but he wouldn’t do it.”
As the weeks went by, Mitchell was clearly slipping. Near the end, he could barely push his towel cart.
He reported to work as usual Dec. 31, put in his full shift and then went home to his wife and 4-year-old son.
He died on New Year’s Day.