Max
06-01-2003, 11:32 AM
After fall, sky's still the limit
06/01/03
Tom Breckenridge
Plain Dealer Reporter
Hudson- Charles Boebinger, near the top of the 35-foot wall, reached for the next handhold.
He had pushed for one more climb the afternoon of April 11.
It was typical of the challenge-loving Charles. While classmates at Western Reserve Academy looked to lighten their academic loads in their senior year, Charles piled on nine classes, five of them college-caliber.
Two weeks before, Charles had been accepted at Yale University. At Western Reserve, where academic and artistic talent is prized, Charles is a star. Classmates had picked the brilliant, puckish 18-year-old as commencement speaker.
His ascent through much of what the New England-style boarding school has to offer - from advanced physics to rock climbing - was nearly finished.
Then, Charles reached for that handhold . . . and missed.
He fell three stories and landed feet first with a thud.
Pain engulfed him as horrified classmates huddled around. Ominously, Charles could feel nothing from his waist down.
He was about to face a mental and physical climb of excruciating rigor. The next 50 days showed that he was up to the challenge, even as the climb of his life continues.
Today, Charles will maneuver his wheelchair to the front of his 116-student graduating class and deliver the commencement speech.
"It will be peppered with political, economic and historic references, along with an acerbic touch," says Western Reserve Headmaster Henry "Skip" Flanagan.
Last week, the blond, brown-eyed Charles would not reveal what he will say today. He sat in a wheelchair in the living room of his Hudson home, his torso encased in a plastic brace that restricts movement.
Certainly, there will be thanks to family, friends and school during his speech.
Friends should be wary, however. Charles is regaining control of his left leg, enough that those standing too close could get a kick in the shin and a greeting, "I'm still dangerous!"
His humor, and that of his friends, has been a tonic as Charles pushes through surgery and rehabilitation. Flanagan says his humor is patently British - understated for effect.
Of his right leg, which barely quivers when he concentrates on moving it, Charles observes, "It's something of an underachiever."
Charles is not, considering where he was April 11 - sprawled on the rubberized floor of Kendall Cliffs, an indoor climbing gym in Peninsula.
A classmate handling the support rope while Charles climbed somehow lost her grip as he lurched back from missing the handhold.
"It was an accident, a one-in-a-million thing," says Kevin Bache, 18, one of Charles' best friends. He didn't see his friend fall but heard his scream and the impact. "The wrong thing happened in a millisecond."
Charles, lying on the ground, asked if the classmate who was handling the rope was OK.
He has since refused to blame anyone. (He confides, however, that it would be a kick to send the school a litigious-looking envelope with the family name on the outside and a note inside that says, "Gotcha!")
Seconds after the fall, art teacher Alan Doe scrambled to Charles' side.
An ambulance arrived in minutes, and his parents just after that. They rushed to Akron City Hospital, where several hours of diagnosis yielded dispiriting news: Charles would need surgery at noon the next day to stabilize a burst vertebra.
He was paralyzed from the waist down, and his chances of walking were not good, Charles and his parents recalled being told.
Charles' mother thought, "I'm not really hearing this."
"I don't think I even believed them," Charles says. "It was, 'OK, you can say that, but I'll go off and prove you wrong.' "
Kevin was among a handful of classmates who gathered at the hospital. Charles shook and his voice quivered after receiving the bad news, Kevin says.
"His life was changed, and he knew it," Kevin says.
Charles' humor remained unaffected. That night, a medicated Charles asked his friends if they had seen the musical episode of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer."
"He started singing the whole episode to us," says senior classmate Buck Bania, 18.
The next morning, Charles' treatment took a fateful shift. His parents, Robyn and John Boebinger, talked urgently with Charles' stepgrandmother, Jeanette Grasselli Brown, a trustee of the Cleveland Clinic Foundation.
The family wanted a second opinion. With Akron doctors in agreement, a medical helicopter whisked Charles to the Clinic that Saturday and to the hands of Dr. Gordon Bell, head of spinal surgery in the Clinic's department of orthopedic surgery.
Charles' friends, meanwhile, had arranged a prayer service for noon Saturday at the campus chapel.
More than 100 students and teachers showed up, including Charles' older sister, Carolyn, 21, a Western Reserve graduate.
Tears and laughs flowed, with several students mentioning Charles' over-the-top turn as Thenardier, the innkeeper, in the school's production of the musical "Les Miserables."
At the end of the service, everyone stood and sang "Master of the House," the innkeeper's wicked signature song.
Carolyn later told her brother of the testimonials.
"He started crying (no noise, just three or four tears) and he said it was the first time he'd cried throughout. He didn't even cry when he fell or found out they didn't think he'd walk again," Carolyn wrote in her journal.
At the Clinic, Charles underwent 7½ hours of surgery on Sunday. Bell and his team removed some of the burst bone and implanted a 6-inch titanium splint - two pencil-thin rods screwed into vertebrae above and below the fracture point. Bell fortified the area with bone grafted from Charles' hip.
After a week of painful recovery, Charles moved to MetroHealth Medical Center and its spinal-cord rehabilitation unit.
Charles spent a month with doctors, therapists and counselors, relearning basic movement and balance, handling a wheelchair and dealing with the emotional aftermath.
Charles impressed with his resolve, says ex-Marine and physical therapy assistant Todd Anderson.
"I told him I would push him until he said stop," Anderson says. "He never said stop."
Charles took four hours of therapy a day, one more than usual. He maxed out on one weight machine. "He was the first person I ever saw do that," Anderson says.
Early on, Charles took 15 minutes to get shoes on his limp legs. He had it down to two minutes by the time he left.
Dr. Greg Nemunaitis is director of the spinal-cord unit and oversaw Charles' treatment. He noticed the teen's focus, especially his insistence on taking five Advanced Placement tests while at MetroHealth. The tests will earn him college-level credits.
"He's got his game plan, and nothing is getting in the way," Nemunaitis says.
"He'll be able to drive a car and get around in a wheelchair, and I would suspect, in eight months, he'll walk with crutches indoors and some outdoors."
Charles has never viewed the shattering injury as insurmountable. But his plight has left him angry and sharp-tongued at times.
He hates the loss of independence. This is the same teen who went to prom last year without telling his parents. A date, a tuxedo, a corsage, a limo, and his parents never knew until several weeks after.
"I thought it was funnier that way," Charles shrugs.
"I just thought it was odd," his mother says, shaking her head.
There's no prom this year for Charles. "I was unconscious during the whole date-asking period," he quips.
No one has heard the "Why me?" question or seen depression in Charles. His father says that could partly be the result of Charles watching others at MetroHealth - quadriplegics and patients with severed spines - who were in worse shape.
Charles, quoting a line from the Economist magazine, says his injuries are "something to be endured, much like the British civil service or French foreign policy."
He attributes some of his can-do approach to friends and a school that have rallied around him.
The lacrosse team put his initials on their helmets. The baseball team chanted his name in a huddle and dedicated a win, featuring two home runs, to him.
The annual academic challenge pitting students against faculty was dubbed the "Charles-a-thon."
He made it to the competition in his wheelchair, and students thronged around him.
Charles sat and pounded his forehead as competitors missed easy questions in categories honoring his passions - British history, "Star Wars," "Simpsons" to "South Park," Classical Music, Python-mania, Weird Science, "Black Adder" and Middle Earth. Donations were taken for the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation.
Charles intends to be at Yale in the fall.
"I wouldn't let it win," he says of his injuries. "I'm too competitive."
Headmaster Flanagan has no doubt Charles will make his mark.
"Whether he does that with the full office of his legs or whether he does it in a less ambulatory fashion," Flanagan says, "he will make a path nonetheless."
To reach this Plain Dealer reporter:
tbreckenridge@plaind.com, 216-999-4695
© 2003 The Plain Dealer. Used with permission.
Copyright 2003 cleveland.com. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/summit/1054460044233523.xml
06/01/03
Tom Breckenridge
Plain Dealer Reporter
Hudson- Charles Boebinger, near the top of the 35-foot wall, reached for the next handhold.
He had pushed for one more climb the afternoon of April 11.
It was typical of the challenge-loving Charles. While classmates at Western Reserve Academy looked to lighten their academic loads in their senior year, Charles piled on nine classes, five of them college-caliber.
Two weeks before, Charles had been accepted at Yale University. At Western Reserve, where academic and artistic talent is prized, Charles is a star. Classmates had picked the brilliant, puckish 18-year-old as commencement speaker.
His ascent through much of what the New England-style boarding school has to offer - from advanced physics to rock climbing - was nearly finished.
Then, Charles reached for that handhold . . . and missed.
He fell three stories and landed feet first with a thud.
Pain engulfed him as horrified classmates huddled around. Ominously, Charles could feel nothing from his waist down.
He was about to face a mental and physical climb of excruciating rigor. The next 50 days showed that he was up to the challenge, even as the climb of his life continues.
Today, Charles will maneuver his wheelchair to the front of his 116-student graduating class and deliver the commencement speech.
"It will be peppered with political, economic and historic references, along with an acerbic touch," says Western Reserve Headmaster Henry "Skip" Flanagan.
Last week, the blond, brown-eyed Charles would not reveal what he will say today. He sat in a wheelchair in the living room of his Hudson home, his torso encased in a plastic brace that restricts movement.
Certainly, there will be thanks to family, friends and school during his speech.
Friends should be wary, however. Charles is regaining control of his left leg, enough that those standing too close could get a kick in the shin and a greeting, "I'm still dangerous!"
His humor, and that of his friends, has been a tonic as Charles pushes through surgery and rehabilitation. Flanagan says his humor is patently British - understated for effect.
Of his right leg, which barely quivers when he concentrates on moving it, Charles observes, "It's something of an underachiever."
Charles is not, considering where he was April 11 - sprawled on the rubberized floor of Kendall Cliffs, an indoor climbing gym in Peninsula.
A classmate handling the support rope while Charles climbed somehow lost her grip as he lurched back from missing the handhold.
"It was an accident, a one-in-a-million thing," says Kevin Bache, 18, one of Charles' best friends. He didn't see his friend fall but heard his scream and the impact. "The wrong thing happened in a millisecond."
Charles, lying on the ground, asked if the classmate who was handling the rope was OK.
He has since refused to blame anyone. (He confides, however, that it would be a kick to send the school a litigious-looking envelope with the family name on the outside and a note inside that says, "Gotcha!")
Seconds after the fall, art teacher Alan Doe scrambled to Charles' side.
An ambulance arrived in minutes, and his parents just after that. They rushed to Akron City Hospital, where several hours of diagnosis yielded dispiriting news: Charles would need surgery at noon the next day to stabilize a burst vertebra.
He was paralyzed from the waist down, and his chances of walking were not good, Charles and his parents recalled being told.
Charles' mother thought, "I'm not really hearing this."
"I don't think I even believed them," Charles says. "It was, 'OK, you can say that, but I'll go off and prove you wrong.' "
Kevin was among a handful of classmates who gathered at the hospital. Charles shook and his voice quivered after receiving the bad news, Kevin says.
"His life was changed, and he knew it," Kevin says.
Charles' humor remained unaffected. That night, a medicated Charles asked his friends if they had seen the musical episode of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer."
"He started singing the whole episode to us," says senior classmate Buck Bania, 18.
The next morning, Charles' treatment took a fateful shift. His parents, Robyn and John Boebinger, talked urgently with Charles' stepgrandmother, Jeanette Grasselli Brown, a trustee of the Cleveland Clinic Foundation.
The family wanted a second opinion. With Akron doctors in agreement, a medical helicopter whisked Charles to the Clinic that Saturday and to the hands of Dr. Gordon Bell, head of spinal surgery in the Clinic's department of orthopedic surgery.
Charles' friends, meanwhile, had arranged a prayer service for noon Saturday at the campus chapel.
More than 100 students and teachers showed up, including Charles' older sister, Carolyn, 21, a Western Reserve graduate.
Tears and laughs flowed, with several students mentioning Charles' over-the-top turn as Thenardier, the innkeeper, in the school's production of the musical "Les Miserables."
At the end of the service, everyone stood and sang "Master of the House," the innkeeper's wicked signature song.
Carolyn later told her brother of the testimonials.
"He started crying (no noise, just three or four tears) and he said it was the first time he'd cried throughout. He didn't even cry when he fell or found out they didn't think he'd walk again," Carolyn wrote in her journal.
At the Clinic, Charles underwent 7½ hours of surgery on Sunday. Bell and his team removed some of the burst bone and implanted a 6-inch titanium splint - two pencil-thin rods screwed into vertebrae above and below the fracture point. Bell fortified the area with bone grafted from Charles' hip.
After a week of painful recovery, Charles moved to MetroHealth Medical Center and its spinal-cord rehabilitation unit.
Charles spent a month with doctors, therapists and counselors, relearning basic movement and balance, handling a wheelchair and dealing with the emotional aftermath.
Charles impressed with his resolve, says ex-Marine and physical therapy assistant Todd Anderson.
"I told him I would push him until he said stop," Anderson says. "He never said stop."
Charles took four hours of therapy a day, one more than usual. He maxed out on one weight machine. "He was the first person I ever saw do that," Anderson says.
Early on, Charles took 15 minutes to get shoes on his limp legs. He had it down to two minutes by the time he left.
Dr. Greg Nemunaitis is director of the spinal-cord unit and oversaw Charles' treatment. He noticed the teen's focus, especially his insistence on taking five Advanced Placement tests while at MetroHealth. The tests will earn him college-level credits.
"He's got his game plan, and nothing is getting in the way," Nemunaitis says.
"He'll be able to drive a car and get around in a wheelchair, and I would suspect, in eight months, he'll walk with crutches indoors and some outdoors."
Charles has never viewed the shattering injury as insurmountable. But his plight has left him angry and sharp-tongued at times.
He hates the loss of independence. This is the same teen who went to prom last year without telling his parents. A date, a tuxedo, a corsage, a limo, and his parents never knew until several weeks after.
"I thought it was funnier that way," Charles shrugs.
"I just thought it was odd," his mother says, shaking her head.
There's no prom this year for Charles. "I was unconscious during the whole date-asking period," he quips.
No one has heard the "Why me?" question or seen depression in Charles. His father says that could partly be the result of Charles watching others at MetroHealth - quadriplegics and patients with severed spines - who were in worse shape.
Charles, quoting a line from the Economist magazine, says his injuries are "something to be endured, much like the British civil service or French foreign policy."
He attributes some of his can-do approach to friends and a school that have rallied around him.
The lacrosse team put his initials on their helmets. The baseball team chanted his name in a huddle and dedicated a win, featuring two home runs, to him.
The annual academic challenge pitting students against faculty was dubbed the "Charles-a-thon."
He made it to the competition in his wheelchair, and students thronged around him.
Charles sat and pounded his forehead as competitors missed easy questions in categories honoring his passions - British history, "Star Wars," "Simpsons" to "South Park," Classical Music, Python-mania, Weird Science, "Black Adder" and Middle Earth. Donations were taken for the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation.
Charles intends to be at Yale in the fall.
"I wouldn't let it win," he says of his injuries. "I'm too competitive."
Headmaster Flanagan has no doubt Charles will make his mark.
"Whether he does that with the full office of his legs or whether he does it in a less ambulatory fashion," Flanagan says, "he will make a path nonetheless."
To reach this Plain Dealer reporter:
tbreckenridge@plaind.com, 216-999-4695
© 2003 The Plain Dealer. Used with permission.
Copyright 2003 cleveland.com. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/summit/1054460044233523.xml