"I doubt you'll have use of your body from the neck down. You may not even survive the operation."    Those are numbing words. It's about the last thing anyone would want to hear before going into surgery. But that's exactly what Sam Kline, a former All-America wrestler from West Virginia University and one of America's brightest prospects at 76 kg, heard from his doctor before having an emergency operation on his spine in early June.     Most people would have been frightened. Some might have cried; some might have denied the situation they were in. Others might have simply just given up. Sam doesn't think like most people though.     "I got real calm," Sam said. "I wasn't freaked out going into surgery. I knew whatever God had in store for me, I'd be able to handle. They rolled me in and put me out, and I don't remember being nervous about waking up."     Perhaps it was his faith in God that gave him his serene outlook. Or maybe it was the nurse that gave him an encouraging word right before he went into the operating room. We'll get to that later, though. It all started the morning of June 6th.     Sam had been training at a regular pace at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colo. and was pleased with his progress. He had strained a rib in practice a few weeks prior, but didn't think much of it. It hadn't affected his training. He got up that Wednesday morning to take a swim and later in the day took a nap. That's when he noticed that something wasn't quite right.     "I woke up from a nap after swimming with a little bit of back pain," he said. "I took a little stretch to walk it off and it wouldn't go away. It kept getting worse."     Sam wasn't too concerned, but he went to the training room to get some ice before grabbing dinner in the cafeteria. But, by about 8 p.m. he couldn't take the pain anymore and ended up going to the emergency room at the neighboring Memorial Hospital. He got a shot of pain medication and blew the pain off as a muscle spasm and went back to his room at the training center to sleep for the night.     Thursday rolled around, and things weren't better so he went to the training room to get more pain medication for his back. The trainers denied him any pain relievers, but gave him some muscle relaxers and sent him back to his room for the day. He still didn't think anything serious was wrong.    "I went back and took some of the muscle relaxers and they were doing nothing for me," Sam said. "I sat down on the couch and there was only one position I could get comfortable in. I would sit crooked on the couch. It wasn't really comfortable, it was just the only thing I could stand."    "I sat there for close to 10 hours. People kept coming in to talk to me and my roommates and they'd come back five or six hours later and say 'God, Kline, what are you doing here in the same spot?' I was really struggling."    Sam didn't sleep a wink that night. He just laid in bed as the pain kept pulsing through his body. When he rolled out of bed Friday morning he could hardly walk. He struggled over to the training center, and after one look at him, the trainers gave him some pain medication.    Later that afternoon Sam was feeling better- so much better, in fact, that he went out to see a friend. Finally, after three days of pain, he was starting to feel better. He was able to get a good night's sleep. Everything seemed fine. That relief wouldn't last long, though.    "I woke up Saturday and went to the training room and they wanted to stretch me out, they wanted me to lie on my back," Sam said. "And now the pain that was in the lower part of my back started to spread out to my hips and to the upper part of my shoulder. It was really intense, I couldn't even lie down."    Sam had developed a temperature. The trainers weren't concerned about it, though, because it wasn't abnormally high. He went back to his room to take a nap. Once again, he woke up in worse shape than he was when he went to sleep.     "When I woke up, I couldn't get out of bed by myself," Sam said. "I couldn't use my legs. I could move them, but I couldn't use them. I couldn't support my weight."    Sam was beginning to realize that his condition was more serious than he originally thought. He called the trainers and they sent a doctor over to check him out. That doctor happened to be five-time Olympic gold medalist Eric Heiden. Heiden, who was only at the Olympic Training Center for a couple of weeks to help work with the athletes, told Sam to get to the hospital immediately.     "Just getting down to the car to go to the hospital was incredibly painful," Sam said. "I made it to the hospital and they barely even checked me it into the room and they started sedating me and working on trying to figure out what the problem was."    The doctors performed an MRI and Sam waited anxiously for the results as his condition worsened. What had started out as a small pain in his back had taken over his body. He couldn't move his legs at all anymore and he could feel it consuming his upper body as his arm began to stiffen. He wasn't too concerned, though. Dr. Heiden had told Sam that it was probably an infection in his spine that could be treated with an IV. Sam couldn't focus on being worried anyway.     "I was in so much pain that it was taking up most of the space in my mind," Sam said. "I was just trying to control that."     Sam's doctor came back with a surprising report. Sam needed another MRI. The abnormality in his spine was so large that the first MRI didn't detect it all. By the time the doctor came back with the results from the second MRI, it was 2 a.m. and the news wasn't good. Sam wasn't prepared for what the he was about to hear.    "He came in and he just kind of shook his head at me and he said this is very serious," Sam said. "First, he tested my strength in my hand. The strength in my arms was terrible.     "I asked the doctor if I'd ever wrestle again. He said absolutely not. I asked if I'd ever walk again. He didn't know." That's when the doctor laid it all on the table for Sam.    "I doubt you'll have use of your body from your neck down and I don't know if you'll survive this operation," said the doctor.     "All right doc, how about something positive," Sam asked, looking for a glimmer of hope.     "I can't really think of anything positive to say," was his response. "I'd spend more time with you, but time is of the essence. We need to operate immediately. I'm going to prep the operating room. You need to have surgery right now."    Now, what had originally been self diagnosed as a muscle spasm had gone far beyond what anybody could have imagined. Not only was Sam's wrestling career on the line, but his life was.     "That hit me pretty hard," Sam said in retrospect. "A lot of thoughts started running through my mind. I really couldn't focus on much."    Then a ray of light came to Sam just before he was wheeled into the operating room. A nurse who had overheard the conversation between Sam and his doctor went over to Sam and reassured him.    "You're in good hands," the nurse said to Sam. "A lot of people come in here in dire circumstances that shouldn't make it and they do make it. You have to have a positive attitude."    Then the nurse and Sam prayed together.     Sam had prepared himself for whatever was going to happen to him on that operating table as the surgeons performed a spinal lamenectomy. He wasn't nervous, even though the hospital didn't have a full surgical staff on hand to perform such a complex operation. He was reassured that Dr. Heiden, an orthopaedic surgeon, just happened to be at the training center at the time and was able to assist with the surgery.    Sam was at peace before the doctors cut an incision up the length of his entire spine up to his neck. The infection that had been incubating in his body for the past three weeks literally oozed out of his back. The doctors cut pieces out of 18 of Sam's vertebrae to access and rid the remainder of the infection from around his spine.    What Sam hadn't realized, is that when he strained his rib th