Rutgers Football Player Eric LeGrand's Faces Paralysis
Oct. 20, 2010— -- The video is hard to watch. Rutgers University defensive back Eric LeGrand goes in head-first for a tackle and collapses on the 25 yard line, frozen from the neck down by a spinal cord injury.
LeGrand, a junior at Rutgers, is currently in the intensive care unit at Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey. He had emergency spinal surgery soon after the game. Rutgers announced that he was paralyzed from the neck down.
Paralysis can be a grave diagnosis, as seen in other high-profile cases. Christopher Reeve, who had become famous for his role as Superman, was paralyzed from the neck down after an equestrian injury in 1995. He remained in a wheelchair and on life support, becoming one of America's leading advocates for spinal injury research until he died in 2004.
But paralysis has brought other stories that seem to border on miracles. In 2000, Adam Taliaferro, then a freshman cornerback at Penn State, was paralyzed after making a tackle. Several doctors said that Taliaferro would never walk again. But four months later, he did just that -- and in 2001, he led his old team onto the field before a game to roaring applause from the crowd.
Taliaferro later founded the Taliaferro Foundation, a non-profit organization that offers emotional, financial and educational support to student-athletes who suffer catastrophic head or spinal injuries in sanctioned team events. Taliaferro's father has already reached out to LeGrand's family to say the foundation is there to provide any support the family may need.
"My advice to Eric is to focus on where he wants to be," said Taliaferro. "He's going to hear negative news, but he has to block that out. No one knows what he has inside him. He was playing [Division 1] football for a reason. He knows how to work hard, and he'll have the strength and tools to get through rehab."
And that rehabilitation road is a long one. As of Tuesday, doctors said there had been no change in Eric LeGrand's medical status after the spinal cord injury three days before. Even for the experts in the field, it's tough to say what's in store for him.
