Feared paralyzed, high school track star makes miracle recovery
Adrian Gordon walks with crutches as staffers cheer.
Adrian Gordon has always been a sprinter - he has just never been in a race like this before.
Today, less than three months after doctors assumed the former high school track star might forever be a quadriplegic, Gordon will walk out of Southside Hospital in Bay Shore on crutches and go home to the Bronx.
"I treated it like a sprint," said the 20-year-old, who believes the speedy recovery that has shocked his doctors and physical therapists was an "absolute miracle."
Gordon had been drinking at a party in Queens with his friends and was asleep in the backseat of a pal's car on Jan. 9 when a back tire on the vehicle blew out on the Long Island Expressway in eastern Queens.
The car spun out of control, and Gordon broke his spine when he was ejected out the rear window.
"When I woke up, I was in the hospital," the handsome young patient said yesterday during a press event at the hospital announcing his recovery.
Surgeons at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset operated on Gordon's severe spinal cord contusion, stabilizing his spine. But after the operation, Gordon was only able to move his eyelids.
"He was quadriplegic. He had no voluntary movement of his arms and legs," said Dr. Chris Overby, a spine surgeon at the Manhasset hospital. "It's rare that a person who has no voluntary movement ... will walk again."
Gordon remained paralyzed for two weeks, until late at night in early February he started to wiggle his left toes. He stayed awake all night wiggling his toes to make sure he was not dreaming.
"I was thinking to myself, 'If I can wiggle my toes on the left, maybe tomorrow I can wiggle my toes on the right foot,'" said Gordon, a Manhattan Community College student. "Then the day after that, I can do something else."
On Feb. 29, Gordon was transferred to Southside's rehabilitation unit, where in seven weeks he has risen from nearly helpless - unable to stand, dress himself or brush his teeth - to very hopeful.
In front of a horde of news cameras and reporters yesterday, he rose from his wheelchair and walked on crutches down a hospital corridor.
"Oh, that's nothing for him," Gordon's physical therapist, Lori Hochman, quipped. "He's been doing that for a couple of weeks."
Gordon, who ran 100 meters in 11.2 seconds while at Mount Vernon High School in Westchester, said his immediate goals are walking without crutches and returning to school by September.
And with his ever-present smile, he guaranteed that he will sprint again.
"It might not be this year. It might not be next year. But however long it takes, I will run again."