"I am a 100% disabled Vietnam veteran," says Steven M. Best, 51, of Powder Springs, Ga. "In the mid-1990s, a progressive neuromuscular disease forced me to leave my chosen profession (I owned a chiropractic clinic in Wisconsin for 20 years)."

Facing diminishing physical abilities, Best looked for an outlet for his creative talents. Growing up on the south side of Detroit and having little knowledge of his family history, he interviewed genealogists and found a amazing collection of historical records.

"Among these," Best says, "the most compelling stories were those of my great-great uncle's tribulations during the American Civil war. Those stories created an overlay that wove themselves into a compelling series of events, a soap opera of sorts, contrasting many little-known, unconventional clashes in the trans-Missisippi West."

Once Best had a clear picture of his family's history, the compulsion to write it nearly became an obsession.

"Diving headfirst into the ever-expanding world of computer technology, my quest quickly led me to employ the use of voice-activated software," Best explains. "Eleven years and some three or four billion rewrites later, my dream - When Philosophers Were Kings- is finally being realized. If other veterans with similar disabilities hear my story and how writing has become a creative outlet as well as an effective form of therapy, it could be a source of encouragement to them."

You're Drafted!

Inducted into the U.S. Army in July 1969 and taking basic traning at Fort Polk, La., Best graduated as a private first class.

"From there I had a short stint at Fort Walters for helicopter training but found it wasn't quite what I was looking for," Best says. He moved on to Fort Holabird, Md., for advanced individual training. The facility is now closed, but at the time it offered training for all aspects of intellegence work.

Best became an analyst at an air-conditioned complex near Tan Son Nhut air base, known as the Combined Intelligence Center of Vietnam (CICV pronouned "sick-V"). Personnel stationed there were not front-line troops but trained as Quick Reaction Forces (QRF).

"To most of us, the idea of training as QRF gave a point of focus and a strong sense that we could fight back if needed," Best recalls. "Although we generally didn't carry weapons, we knew that on any evening we could grab our gear, hit the armory for our M16s, be briefed in only a matter of minutes, and roll off to wherever. I think everyone understood we would never be as effective as seasoned infantry; without combat experience, no one can perform like seasoned troops."

Given the shortage of manpower from systematic cutbacks, Headquarters needed to use every available resource to prop up its defenses.

Disability Begins

Best's journey on the road of disability began with immunizations.

"Most everyone seemed to get sick from the various immunizations we received during basic training," he says. "But that was nothing compared to what I expereinced following my shots for going to Vietnam.

"First, there was a problem with my shot records being lost back at helicopter school, so some of the normal ones, like DPT, had to be redone- in addition to all the typhoid, typhus, black plague, and others required specificlly for Nam's tropical climate.

"It was after this, in a holding company in Oakland (Calif.), that the usual post-shot aches and pains turned into a very bad case of the flu, with the respiratory tract infection and diarrhea. The post doctor put me on bed rest, but two days later my urine turned black."

Alarmed, Best went straight to sick call, wondering if something in his medication caused the abnormal color. The doctor, swamped with draftees trying to avoid Nam duty, asked for a urine sample. However, Best had justed used the bathroom and couldn't produce one. As a result, Best shipped out for Long Binh that afternoon, April 15, 1970.

"The cold symptoms seemed to settle into some kind of chronic sinus congestion, but the diarrhea was relentless," Best recalls. "Unfortunately, that was a almost universal side effect of malaria pills. There was no way to tell my case was anything different until I was off the pills for more than a month."

Best collapsed and ended up in the hospital. This occurred twice. The first time put him in bed for two weeks; the second, for about a month.

Doctors believed they were dealing with parasites, then colitis- later changed to adult celiac disease. This is an immune related condition of the intestinal wall, which is usually controlled by diet. Then neuromuscular symptoms appeared.

"Even though I had developed my first foot drop before release from the hospital, it seemed it was the natural result of so much bed rest," Best explains. "By the time of my separation from service, though, I had to file a medical claim- not to obtain money but to find out what was wrong. Within a year of civilian life, I couldn't even wear lightweight tennis shows without turning my ankles. The colitis raged on and off, and I saw various doctors inside and outside of VA, but got nowhere."

Not until graduate school in 1975 was there enough obvious muscle pathology to warrant seeing a neurologist. He diagnosed Best's condition as distal myopathy, a rare disorder. Biopsies at the Mayo Clinic confimed this.

Within a year of graduating and becoming a licensed chiropractor in 1978, Best needed hard-plastic anklefoot orthoses in order to walk. But he continued to watch his diet, take vitamins, and exercise.

"One never knows when medical breakthoughs may come, so it seemed best to uphold my responsibility for my own health as best I could," he says.

Did he want to quit? "Sometimes every day," he says. "Sometimes many, many times a day."

When he questioned whether he could practice any longer, his parents reminded him to trust in God and do his best. He also had supportive colleagues who encouraged and helped him become the best chiropractor he could be, despite his physical challenges.

Through Patient's Eyes

Best treated his patients as though they were his own flesh and blood, striving for excellence without cutting corners. His practice flourished.

"I purchased Dr. Mittet's business and moved into a strip mall," Best says. "For a year we carried his name on the sign before removing it. Prior to that time, I had maintained a home office in the historic downtown Hudson area. The move turned out to be a good one. I soon had three full-time doctors working in the clinic."

Most people went to him for help after referral by friends or relatives. Their primary concern wasn't how he was fighting his battles but what he could do to help them with theirs. With progressing weakness, Best continued working for 20 years.

"Whenever I couldn't do something a conventional way, I would pray - half hoping I would get a strong sense that it was finally time to quit. If I didn't get an inspiration and couldn't perform what needed to be done, I tried to be honest enough to make a referral, while adjusting the patients I could. This kept me going for 20 years," he explains. "During the last five, I primarily did specialty exams and trained the doctors to whom I would later sell my practice."

When the time came to sell, Best knew he had gone as far as he could. The year he went into service he had placed third in his weight in the state wrestling tournament and ran a five-minute mile in combat boots en route to obtaining a perfect score in the Army's Physical Combat Proficiency Test. Today, he cannot walk, make a fist, or even roll over in bed without assistance.

No Retirement Plans

After selling his successful practice, Best didn't plan to sit back and retire.

"People must do something with their lives," he says, "with whatever abilities they possess. Everyone has limitations; some more than others. It doesn't mean they can't find fulfillment or a sense of accomplishment.

"I often think our most limiting capacity is the space between our ears. Work is a focal point, and when focus is joined with passion, it becomes therapeutic. I know it's become a colloquialism of our day, but it is true.

"Life is a journey. There are always more talents to discover, new mountains to climb, so to speak. Many retired people have severe arthritis and can barely walk, yet they think nothing of spending 30 or 40 hours a week as volunteers. That does something for them inside, something that overcomes their disability. Perhaps it is just seeing there are others worse off then they are, but it provides an important balance in perspective.

"Look at Christopher Reeve- his life hasn't ended. He flies around the country as a motivational speaker, with the added plus of raising funds for medical research in SCI. That's a great case of making lemons into lemonade."

Even with Best's passion about his family history, becoming a published author was a huge mountain to climb.

"Life is more interesting with challenges than without," he believer. "I didn't begin with the idea that I would become a famous author or anything like that. I simply wanted to know about my family."

Since Best can't use a keyboard, he obtained voice-activated software and dictated into his computer.

"When I first started writing around ten years ago, Dragon Dictate was the program I began with. It was extremely tedious and often required identification of each word. The longer I worked with the program, the easier it became, but it was still slow going and sometimes extremely frustrating. Just the same, writing gave me a point of focus and a direction for my life."

Best now uses Dragon's newer software, Naturally Speaking, professional edition.

"It is still frustrating sometimes. I think it is worse for me, since I take medications that dry my throat and thus change my voice at different times of the day. This requires more corrections than normal, but it is still many times faster than the old program. On a good day I can do several sentences before having to make a correction."

Writing his book took nine years, including research. Best says a huge amount of that time was spent in learning to write for today's marketplace.

"VA provided the services of a professional editor, Sue Malone, who guided me through the last year and a half of the process," Best says.

At first, he wrote from about a dozen points of view, which he soon learned was fine for a movie- but bad for a book. His editor urged him to chop it down into one.

"This was an impossibility because it would ruin the soap opera quality of leaving the reader hanging while jumping from character to character," Best recalls. "This was what made writing fun for me, and I wasn't going to give that up."

Despite his disability, Best didn't give up on his dream. Although When Philosophers Were Kings is fiction, the events are true. Look for the book's publication in March 2003.

A long & Interesting Road

"I placed third in the state in high-school wrestling," Best explains. "Although I tried the sport in college, by then my body was steadily losing ground, and I couldn't be competitive. This was complicated by the fact that I tried to use alcohol to deal with my condition's physical pain- a very bad choice, especially since it had ruined my grandfather's life."

"But that is the nature of the beast," he says. "Alcoholism gives you the illusion that everything is going great, while you're dancing on everyone else's feet. But sooner or later, you end up hurling on the carpet, so to speak, and then you know where you're at. When you awake and have to face the shame, the booze quickly calls, 'Forget that! Come on over here, and we'll have a good time.'

"Someone once said that God is the God of second chances. For the truth of that, I give thanks."

Best went through treatment for alcoholism in summer 1974 and has been "dry" since then. He maintained his interest in wrestling by refereeing high school and college matches for six years. He was chosen to referee the national college tournament but had to decline due to advancing muscle weakness.

Married and the father of six (including two long-term foster children), Best has a B.A. in human biology and a doctor of chiropractic from the Northwestern College of Chiropractic, Bloomington, Minn. He and Paulette had 12 foster children.

"I have enjoyed singing with a choir from my junior high school days on. The music moves me beyond my present pain and disabilities into a carefree, joyful realm," he says. Best and Paulette sang gospel music in northwest Wisconsin and Minnesota for about ten years, performing two-hour concerts in churches. For a decade Best was also a member of Prison Fellowship International. He still sings in the choir twice a week, thanks to friends who carry him into the choir loft and place him on a stool.

For the past nine years, Best has been on the corporate board of Best Communications & Supply, but he is in the process of forming a new company named Best Enterprise. This corporation will provide telecommunications supplies and installations for government facilities.

Just like his former chiropractic clinic in Hudson, Wis., Steven Best is still going strong.

© 2002 Paralyzed Veterans of America/PN. May not be reproduced without permission.