The Associated Press
This has been published in conjunction with The Big Roundtable.
Ever since he was a child, Eric LeGrand’s life was always about his physicality, his body. It still is, but in a new way. This is what happened in the last hours of the life that he once lived:
On the nights before Rutgers University home football games, the Hyatt Regency Hotel in downtown New Brunswick, N.J., welcomes busloads of Scarlet Knight players and staff members for an overnight stay. And on Friday, Oct. 16, 2010, at the Hyatt, the players were hard to miss; each one was dressed in a Rutgers gray-and-red jumpsuit.
Although the hotel is just a few miles from campus, it’s far enough from girlfriends, Friday night parties, and grease trucks (aka food trucks) to help the players focus on the next day’s game. In one of the hotel’s conference rooms, they loaded their plates with food and, before they ate, head coach Greg Schiano led a short prayer.
Eric filled his plate with carbohydrates — lasagna, white rice, and two slices of bread. Then he raced to be first at the blender. It was his pregame ritual: Get to the blender before his teammates contaminate the jar with protein powders, peanut butter, bananas — all of which Eric found unpalatable. His recipe was simple: chocolate ice cream and milk, for a milkshake to take to his room.
The Scarlet Knights were 3–2 on the eve of facing Army at the new, 82,000-seat MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, the home field of the New York Jets and Giants. The game was among the nastiest on Rutgers' schedule; it was one of only two for which most Rutgers defensive players were required to wear shin guards and long white socks with their uniforms. Eric preferred white mid-calf socks and black ankle braces — his “swag.” He hated the idea of everyone around the country seeing him on television without his usual game-day look.
By October, the soreness had set in from a season that really began in August, and Eric wished he could have a break. His body ached as he remembered the hundreds of up-downs in the sand pit on the practice field and the days of running up and down the stairs of the team’s home field, High Point Solutions Stadium, carrying his 295-pound teammate, Charlie Noonan, on his back. Now, after playing nearly every play on defense, lifting workouts were harder. But for a defensive lineman like Eric, who could squat 605 pounds and bench-press 415 pounds, the workouts were just part of the daily grind that he hoped would lead him to the next level of play. “I was the strongest kid on the team, with all the weights added up,” Eric now says. “I was in the best physical shape of my life, training my body to play in the NFL.”
Eric was 20 and stood 6 feet 2 inches, at 275 pounds. He wore his hair in shoulder-length braids. His smile was infectious. It was not typical for a defensive lineman at his height and weight to also play on special teams. But during his sophomore year, Eric led the team with 13 tackles on kickoff coverage. He was quick getting down the field and unafraid to make a big hit — exactly the type of player Schiano wanted on kickoffs. Heading into his junior season as a rising star for the Rutgers defense, Eric was still in a three-man rotation at the nose guard and defensive tackle positions, but he knew that would end, and he was preparing for a pro career. “In college football, you only need one year,” he says. “I would’ve had my senior year to start and then go off into the draft.”
On Saturday morning, the team boarded the buses and headed to East Rutherford for a 2:05 p.m. kickoff. It was a sunny day with temperatures in the upper 50s. As they did before every game, Eric and his teammate, Scott Vallone, dressed and headed to the field to play a simple game of catch. Eric paused his warm-up routine to say a few words to the television cameras. “We’re here at the Meadowlands, the new Giants stadium,” he said, dressed in a white, long-sleeve Nike shirt, a red "R" embroidered on the neck. “We’re out here ready to go, being focused, and we’re gonna keep on choppin’ all day long.” The phrase “Keep on choppin’” was instilled in a Rutgers football player’s vocabulary — it was Schiano’s way of telling the team to stay focused, regardless of the situation.
The game was a battle from the beginning. More than 40,000 fans were roaring in the stands, including Eric’s sister, Nicole, and Karen LeGrand, sporting her No. 52 red jersey with “LeGrand’s Mom” written in white letters on the back.
Eric playing in a 2010 game.
Photography courtesy of Eric LeGrand
The Knights quickly fell behind, and spent the afternoon trying to catch up. They were trailing in the fourth quarter, when on a third-and-4, Eric filled the gap and stopped the fullback head-on. He got up to celebrate but felt dizzy as he started to head off of the field. He focused, only to realize that he was heading toward the Army sideline. Disoriented, he turned around and headed to the Rutgers bench. He was fine. He did his job.
Rutgers tied the score at 17 each, with just 5:16 remaining. On the ensuing kickoff, Eric lined up in his usual position, next to the kicker, San San Te.
It was 4:46 p.m. Eric watched his kicker’s feet.
The Army returner, Malcolm Brown, caught the ball inside the 5-yard line and started sprinting up field. Eric ran around the outside to avoid his oncoming opponents. At the 25-yard line, he bounced off an Army player and fell to the ground on his left side. He rolled onto his back. His arms dropped to his side and his legs remained frozen in mid-air. After a few seconds, as if gravity was pulling down on his legs in slow motion, he could feel his heels gently hitting the turf.
He struggled to whisper to the trainers and coaches surrounding his rigid body. “I can’t…I can’t breathe.” One of the trainers held his hand, hoping Eric could feel their palms touching, squeezing together. But Eric did not know it.
Within minutes, his mother was brought down from the stands and onto the field. With Nicole by her side and Schiano telling her to “just pray,” Karen watched as Eric was carted off the field on a stretcher and loaded into an ambulance that would take him to Hackensack University Medical Center. A paramedic placed an oxygen mask over Eric’s mouth and nose, and everything suddenly went black.
At the hospital, doctors immediately started to prepare Eric for surgery. It would last nine hours, into early Sunday. Doctors told Karen that her son had fractured his C3 and C4 cervical vertebrae and was paralyzed from the neck down, with less than a 5% chance of walking again. They told her he would more than likely need the assistance of a respirator to continue breathing for the rest of his life.
Eric woke up three days later. He was groggy from the drugs and was surrounded by tubes, machines, and wires, but also by his family and friends. He was smiling. “I knew I was hurt but I was just happy to be with everyone, all of these people I hadn’t seen in a while,” he says.
His mother didn’t let anyone in the room who might bring Eric down. She told Eric he had broken his neck and he would need to rehabilitate. Not much more. Weeks passed, and in early November, Eric’s doctors said it was time for him to leave the hospital and begin his recovery at Kessler Institute for Rehabilitation in West Orange. But in the ambulance to his new home, for some reason, Eric’s stomach ballooned. “I knew I wasn’t ready,” Eric says. Still, that night, Eric and his family gathered in his room at Kessler to watch Rutgers play against the University of South Florida, the second game since his injury. During the fourth quarter, Eric started to get restless and anxious. He asked his sister, Nicole, to move his right leg an inch, or his left leg over a little more. Still drowsy, Eric fell asleep. He woke up on a stretcher on his way to St. Barnabas Hospital in Livingston. His fever spiked to a perilous 105.5.
When Eric awakened at the hospital, the fever had ebbed, and his sister was sitting on the edge of the bed.
“Nicole, where are we?” Eric asked.
“We’re in the ICU, at the hospital,” she replied. “You caught a bad fever.”
Eric wanted to get up out of bed.
“Nicole, get off of me, I want to get up real fast,” he said.
She replied, “I’m not on you, Eric.”
Eric didn’t understand.
“Nicole, get off me! I said I can’t get up,” he said.
Scared and nervous, she told him to go back to sleep. He put his head back, and closed his eyes.
Photograph courtesy of Eric LeGrand
By now, Eric knows exactly which way his body will turn during the night: Left side, middle, right side. Back to the left side. Middle. Right. Left side. Middle. Right. Every hour. Every night.
The bed rotates as air leaks out to change its firmness, to ensure that Eric’s body isn’t “falling asleep” while he slumbers. Often we wake up with pins and needles in our arm and can’t completely feel our fingers; the same thing can happen to Eric, except that he doesn’t experience those sensations and he can’t move around to get things back to normal. The rotations are one of the reasons Eric doesn’t sleep that much. The spasms are another.
As the bed rotates, sometimes he can feel them coming. Eric’s legs will kick straight up, uncontrollably. Or his abdominal muscles will contract, forcing the top half of his body upward and pushing him into a seated position. Sometimes Eric tries to fight against the spasms because they can be painful, but they are out of his control.
Mornings are the worst. The bed has been rotating for hours, every hour. Eric doesn’t need much sleep — about five hours a night is enough — but his mom does, so he doesn’t wake her. The nurses and aides don’t get to his house in Avenel, N.J., until 9 a.m. He can’t reach over to his nightstand to get his phone to pass the time. He can’t get up to use the bathroom. He can’t roll over into a new position and go back to sleep — the bed won’t rotate for at least another half hour. He lies there, tossing and turning with his head. It’s all he can do. The inspirational quotes and “BELIEVE” posters on the wall seem to mock him as he lies there, staring at the ceiling.
It frustrates him — the dependence on others, the loneliness, the things in his old life he remembers so vividly but can no longer do.
Eric at five years old.
Photograph courtesy of Eric LeGrand
Some mornings, there is no sign of the person the world knows: the radiant Eric, speaking in front of thousands at the ESPY Awards, as he did in 2012; the confident Eric, moving himself around in his mouth-operated wheelchair; the focused Eric, concentrating on each exercise movement at therapy.
At 8:15 a.m., Karen LeGrand awakens to her son calling for her in the next room. She no longer works, and she helps take care of her son. He tries not to bother her, but he wants to watch TV before the process of getting ready begins. It takes two to three hours, usually until around noon, before Eric is primed to start his day. His electric bed pushes his body into an upright position, allowing his aide, a young woman Eric’s age named Raven, to slide a sling under his legs. Silver chains connect the sling to a rail system, which looks like train tracks suspended from the ceiling. The harness allows Raven to raise Eric out of bed. His suspended body slides on the ceiling tracks 10 feet across the room to the bathroom, where the lift system lowers him down into a shower-safe wheelchair seat. He does his business in the bathroom and Raven cleans him up afterward. Then she wheels him into his open shower. Raven fixes his hair and brushes his teeth.
His nurse, Clementina, helps to slide Eric’s body back into the sling to bring him back to the bed. Rolling his hips and legs back and forth, Raven and Clementina shimmy his pants up. They pull his arms and head through his shirt. They transfer him from the lift system to his chair. Clementina cleans his ears with a Q-tip and applies some Chapstick to his lips. They fix him up in the chair, making sure everything is pulled and tucked and comfortable. His arms and hands are arranged on the armrests on the side of the wheelchair, and his legs are positioned in place in the footrests.
Clementina attaches his iPhone to the wheelchair stand by a strip of Velcro — his phone is his lifeline to world, since he can no longer just get up and go places. She puts a stylus pen, covered with a cut-off finger of a rubber glove, in his mouth. He secures it between his teeth. Eric doesn’t eat breakfast. Frosted Flakes used to be his favorite, but he doesn’t get hungry early in the day anymore. By the time he is dressed and prepared for the day, it’s time for lunch, the first of two daily meals.
Eric his senior year of high school.
Photograph courtesy of Eric LeGrand.
At therapy, five days a week, for four hours each day, Eric works to do things he had done all his life, like walk. He is a participant in the Christopher and Diana Reeve Foundation’s NeuroRecovery Network, which raises money and provides special treatments for spinal cord injuries. His therapy sessions begin with a harness, a treadmill, and four to five specially trained physical therapists. The sessions are called locomotor training, and researchers at the NeuroRecovery Network believe these rehabilitation treatments can help spinal cord injury patients like Eric gain significant functional improvements, and with them a better quality of life. Gail Forrester, Eric’s doctor, who helped the Kessler Rehabilitation Institute become a part of the NeuroRecovery Network in 2007, says there are about 300 people in the program nationwide. The network has six other locations and a waiting list of six months to a year to be admitted.
All this treatment has a high cost, of course. Eric’s insurance policy from Rutgers expired two years ago, but he is covered by his personal health insurance and a lifetime catastrophic injury policy from the NCAA.
From his wheelchair, Eric is transferred into a harness suspended above a special treadmill, where five people will help him exercise his body and operate the machine. A large brace supports his torso and back, and royal blue harness straps, secured from the hips to above the top of his shoulders, lift him up. His arms hang down at his sides, palms facing in and fingers, long and straight, pointing directly toward the ground. With his feet on the treadmill, the harness lifts about 120 pounds of his weight, or about 45%, while the rest of his body weight rests on his legs. While his physical therapist, Sandra “Buffy” Wojciehowski, straddles the treadmill belt and steadies her feet on the sides of the treadmill behind Eric’s body, two others position themselves in small chairs near the belt, where they each will control one of his legs. Buffy grasps the straps on the harness, her biceps flexing, as she presses her body weight against Eric’s back. Another physical therapist bends Eric’s arms at the elbows and straps his forearms and hands onto wooden boards at the sides of the treadmill. Waiting for the signal from Buffy to start the belt, yet another therapist sits at a computer next to the treadmill. It’s almost time to get moving.
Photograph courtesy of Eric LeGrand
Strapped in, harnessed up, sneakers tied, Eric stands upright. He stares at himself — his new body — in a long, floor-length mirror hung on the wall in front of the treadmill. With the treadmill set at 2.8 miles per hour, the physical therapists bend his legs at the knee with each step, pressing on specific nerves and placing each foot on the belt. Buffy says that the next 55 minutes on the treadmill will “excite his nervous system” by maximizing his weight bearing and optimizing the sensory cues in his legs and lower body. Eric spends those 55 minutes walking, talking, and most importantly, watching. He sees his reflection in the mirror, and while he focuses to keep his body still and his head and shoulders upright, he envisions his future.
It has been two years and more than 360 sessions since Eric started the locomotor training therapy. He’s still in the first of the three phases of the program. Before it, he had 88 sessions of traditional therapy — double the number of traditional sessions of most patients — but still could not yet sit. He never scored higher than a 0 to 3, out of 56 points, using a measure called the Berg Balance Scale. The scale measures the performance of 14 different tasks. The individual scores are based on a five-point scale, ranging from 0, meaning the patient cannot perform the task, to 4, meaning he or she has normal performance.
Eric is the only patient at Kessler with his precise level of injury. Doctors measure that level on a system called the ASIA scale. The scale is based on motor function tests and how much sensation the patient can feel in different parts of the body. The ASIA scale uses a Grade A to E measuring system, with Grade A representing the most impairment, or complete lack of motor and sensory function below the level of the injury, including the anal area, an important indicator, and Grade E, indicating the least impairment, or that all neurological function has returned. Eric is a Grade B, meaning he has some sensation below the level of injury, which was not the case immediately after he was hurt.
That level, in turn, is indicated by the part of the vertebrae that has been fractured. Vertebrae are grouped into different sections, based on the location in the spine. Usually, the higher up on the spinal cord the injury is, the greater the impairment. The higher vertebrae, located in the neck region, are called the high cervical nerves, and are labeled as C1 to C4. Eric fractured his C3 and C4 vertebrae. The C3 and C4 contain the phrenic nucleus, which is important for breathing because it passes motor information to the diaphragm and receives sensory information from it.
Photograph courtesy of Eric LeGrand