{"id":173146,"date":"2017-10-13T07:26:52","date_gmt":"2017-10-13T11:26:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=173146"},"modified":"2018-10-09T09:54:58","modified_gmt":"2018-10-09T14:54:58","slug":"new-hollywood-film-celebrates-value-life-amidst-disease-disability","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/new-hollywood-film-celebrates-value-life-amidst-disease-disability\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Breathe’: New Hollywood film celebrates the value of living life with disease and disability"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Unlike the aptly titled movie “Me Before You<\/a>,” which celebrated the main character’s suicide after he became paralyzed, the new film “Breathe<\/a>” chronicles the life of Robin Cavendish, who chose to embrace life after becoming paralyzed from polio.<\/p>\n

In theaters today, October 13, 2017, “Breathe” tells the true story of Cavendish, who became sick with polio at age 28 while his wife was pregnant with their only child, Jonathan. He became paralyzed from the neck down, requiring a ventilator to breathe, and doctors gave him just three months to live. However, despite moments of depression and the temporary loss of the will to live, Cavendish’s wife Diana insisted that he continue to fight — and fight he did, for 36 years<\/em>.<\/p>\n

“When I first became paralyzed, I wanted to die,” the actor Andrew Garfield (portraying Cavendish in the film) says. “My wife told me I had to live.”<\/p>\n

Rather than live in the hospital as was expected of a man with his condition, Cavendish left after a year. In 1962, together with his friend Teddy Hall, an Oxford professor, Cavendish created a wheelchair with a built-in respirator which allowed him to leave his bed and get back to living life. This chair would become the model for future wheelchairs and would change the lives of other polio victims, allowing them to leave the hospitals where they had been living confined to beds.<\/p>\n

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