Spring Break
Injured student fights for life of normalcy
Adjusts to life in wheelchair
HARPER BRIDGERS
Issue date: 12/5/08 Section: Variety
| |
|
Many were born with a handicap, and others acquired it later. Whether temporary or indefinite, both are life-changing. One pre-medicine student suddenly found himself paralyzed from the shoulders down during his sophomore year. He was knocked off his feet but refuses to be stuck in the undertow of inability.
Woody Morgan, a junior from Atlanta, was swimming in the ocean during a spring break trip to Destin, Fla. on March 9. He dove into a wave before its crest met the sand, and his friend, junior Lauren Hoffman, thought Morgan was joking as he floated up motionless. Hoffman and other friends on the trip soon discovered it was no game.
Morgan had sustained a massive injury to the C-5 and C-6 sections of his spinal cord.
"It could have been the water, the way it hit me," he said. "There was a sandbar and the wave could've hit my head into the sandbar - [it was] just really bad timing." But no one knows exactly how it occurred, he said.
After airlifting Morgan from the beach to Sacred Heart Hospital in Pensacola, Fla., Morgan's family airlifted and checked him into the Shepherd Center of Atlanta, a hospital that specializes in spinal and brain injuries.
His mother, Nell Morgan, remembered him waking up, delusional in the hospital. With an oxygen tube down his throat, he repeatedly mouthed "What happened? What happened?"
While lying in the Shepherd Center Intensive Care Unit, only three days after the accident, Morgan slipped into cardiac arrest. A blood clot moved from his leg into his heart.
"That was scary," he said. "I just passed out ... I remember waking up and everything was white, I couldn't see anything really. I was gasping for air. It felt like I was in water ... I couldn't get a breath."
Morgan was near death twice in three days, but he only remembered one time, he said.
Morgan was unable to finish his coursework last spring, but to his doctors' and parents' astonishment, he resumed classes this fall, only six months after the accident. By this time, mobility had returned to his torso, arms and wrists, but not his fingers.
"I just always assumed I was going to go back to school," he said. At Shepherd, Morgan endured seven hours of physical therapy every day for five months. His focus shifted from rigorous physical therapy to spending time with the people he really cares about.
"Some people just want to do therapy, like just keep doing it and put your life on hold," Morgan said. "But so many other people say that's not a good idea and you just need to continue with your life."
Upon his return to Athens, Morgan and Nell befriended Nanda Dorea, a 26-year-old graduate student from Rio de Janero, Brazil, to join his mother in helping him with his daily routine. Morgan exceeded her expectations.
"I didn't expect him to be such a strong, healthy person," she said. "On my first day with him, I was just surprised to learn that the accident had been so recent and he was not a bitter person."
Before Morgan, Dorea said because she was from a different country and was only surrounded by busy graduate students, she felt a bit lonely. But Morgan changed all of that.
"As soon as I met him, I realized that I would not be donating the extra time that I had," she said. "I would actually be finding someone to hang out with. He does me as much good as I could possibly do for him ... at some point the [service] thing just left the scene, and he became this good friend that I am happy to be able to help."
And this is what inspired Morgan to come back - his friends.
"The biggest thing in his life right now is his friends," said Phillip Stice, one of Morgan's three roommates. "I see him the happiest when he's with a group of his friends ... He's such a social person."
Morgan's life has undergone tumultuous change. But, he said, "you realize what's important - quality of life, the people that surround you ... the people that you love."
It is a two-way relationship between Morgan and his friends - and even professors. He instills strength in everyone around him.
"I only see him with admiration," Dorea said. "He's this great guy that's going through this with a smile. It gives me so much motivation and energy."
Morgan had to retake organic chemistry in the fall because he did not finish it during the spring 2008 semester. After making a perfect score on the first exam, Morgan now holds a 96 percent test average.
"What amazes me is ... to have that level of special need but still do very well in the class, it's impressive," said Richard Hubbard, Morgan's organic chemistry professor. "When you get a person that already has something else to overcome and then does very well in a class that is traditionally very difficult for students, it's pretty amazing ... It kind of re-energizes me."
For his 11 hours of class this semester, Morgan uses note takers provided through the University's Disabilities Resource Center.
"I don't really use any special tools in class, I just try to pay attention, [and] not fall asleep," he said.
The only "tools" Morgan uses in his day-to-day routine were specifically designed for his hands.
For tests and assignments that require him to write, he has a tool that clamps on between his thumb and index finger.
"The pen clips on under my index finger, as if you were to write with your index finger," Morgan said.
Because this method would be a messy transaction for any student, scribes or his lab assistant usually "translates" Morgan's work into more legible print for professors to grade.
He is able to answer and make calls on his cell phone with a simple cuff made of splint-like material, attached to the back of the phone, which was fitted especially to the width of his hand.
Predicting when more mobility will return is impossible for this type of injury, Morgan said. Progress is the goal at this point.
When Morgan was in rehab in Atlanta, he met people who suffered similar spinal injuries, and their relationships helped heal some of the wounds.
"It was nice to know people who go through the same things," he said. The experience changed his perspective of how he views people with handicaps.
"Everyone has a different way they got hurt, a different accident," Morgan said. "Now I always wonder 'what happened?' and how long they've been in a wheelchair."
Morgan is fighting the odds. It is a fight in which he, his friends and family are all soldiers. Together they battle for their son, their best buddy and new friend.
"It doesn't ever feel like I'm giving anything," Dorea said. "I am sharing the fight, I am sharing the struggle. It's something I'm doing with him, not for him." Stice not only agrees with Dorea, but is confident in Morgan's strength.
"If there was one friend of mine that could put the time and effort into getting better," Stice said, "It would be Woody."
Be the first to comment on this story