States of Grace follows Dr.
Grace Dammann, a pioneering HIV/AIDS physician, as she navigates life following
a catastrophic motor vehicle accident that leaves her severely physically
disabled. Before the accident Grace was a devoted caregiver at work and at home.
She was the co-founder of one of the first HIV/AIDS clinics for
socioeconomically disadvantaged patients at San Francisco’s Laguna Honda
Hospital, honored for her work by the Dalai Lama with a 2005 Unsung Heroes of
Compassion Award. She was also the primary breadwinner and parent in her family
with partner Nancy "Fu" Schroeder and adopted daughter Sabrina, born
with cerebral palsy and HIV. During a routine commute across the Golden Gate
Bridge in May 2008, Grace was struck head-on by a car that veered across the
divide. She miraculously survived—her
mind intact, her body devastated. She endured a prolonged coma, innumerable
surgeries, and a marathon of rehabilitation. The documentary picks up Grace’s
story when she is finally discharged for good. She returns home to acclimate to
a radically altered life, one where she is wheelchair-bound and dependent on
others for simple tasks of daily living. The film captures the rippling effects
of the accident on all dimensions of Grace’s life—personal, professional,
psychological, spiritual, and economic—focusing especially on how Grace’s
disability turns the family dynamic on its head. Fu becomes the primary
caregiver to both Grace and Sabrina, Grace becomes a care-receiver, and as
Grace describes “Sabrina’s position in the family [is] radically upgraded by
the accident. She is so much more able-bodied than I am.” We witness her
frustrations with the limitations of her paralyzed body and see her, at one
point, arguing with Fu about her right to die if she continues to be so
impaired. Some of Grace’s ultimate goals (to walk again, to dance again, to
surf again) remain unattainable at the film's conclusion, but she sets and
exceeds new ones. Grace “comes out” as a disabled person in medicine, returning
to Laguna Honda Hospital as its first wheelchair-bound physician, where she is
appointed Medical Director of the Pain Clinic. She resumes the caregiver role,
but with an intimate knowledge of the lived experience of pain, suffering, and
disability.
