Sunday, March 15 at 6:30pm | $8 | Director in attendance!
Directed by Mark Lipman and Helen S. Cohen / USA / 75 minutes
Dr. Grace Dammann’s life changed forever when a driver crashed head-on into her car on the Golden Gate Bridge. After seven weeks in a coma and twelve surgeries, she miraculously regained consciousness with her cognitive abilities intact. Her body, however, was left shattered.
We follow Grace as she struggles to come to terms with her injuries and discover new meaning in her radically altered life. A revered physician, she co-founded one of the first HIV/AIDS clinics for poor people in San Francisco and was honored for her work by the Dalai Lama. She was also the primary parent and breadwinner in her family with Fu Schroeder and their adopted daughter Sabrina, who was born with cerebral palsy.
Now Fu is the only able-bodied person in their household, tending to both Grace and Sabrina. A formidable presence, Fu draws on her training as a Buddhist priest to care for Grace when she finally comes home from rehabilitation hospitals, more than a year after the accident.
Initially, Grace bristles at being so dependent on others and feels unsure of her purpose now that she requires around-the-clock care. Her resilience ultimately prevails, however, as she draws on her experience as a patient to forge a remarkable new path as the first wheelchair-bound doctor at the hospital where she worked before the accident.
In this feature-length film, we witness the vulnerability of both caregiver and care receiver as they face triumphs and setbacks in a journey of loss, resilience, and renewal.