Leo
08-17-2003, 04:25 PM
Another Texan man I wonder if the rate is higher there...
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Biofeedback helps patients like Devon train their brains to find different nerve pathways around the damaged ones to send messages to their muscles. More photos
Sung Park AMERICAN-STATESMAN
By Pamela LeBlanc
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Sunday August 17, 2003
The sun is sinking and the smell of Cajun spice heavy as Devon Saul and a dozen friends gather around a folding table on the back porch of his sister's home in San Marcos.
It's the one-year anniversary of the car accident that broke Devon's neck, just weeks before his high school graduation. For two hours, they whittle away at a mound of crawfish, boiled potatoes and onions. When they're done, Devon turns to a box with reminders of what he's been through.
The box is stuffed with more than 400 cards, notes and letters. They represent the days in intensive care, the struggle to get off the breathing machine, the hours spent learning how to button a shirt and shave again. Devon pulls them out, one at a time, and reads a few excerpts. Then he lights some of the cards and letters, tosses them onto the gravel, and watches the paper crinkle up, burst into flame and glow red.
"This is in no way disrespecting the people who sent these," he says, as a sort of apology to his mother. "She's like, 'I'm not ready for you to burn them. They're memories of love and support.' I'm like, 'Mom, they're my memories, and they're bad memories.' "
He calls his closest friends forward, giving each a stack of cards to burn. "Y'all were the guys there for me," he says as the flames lick the April night air. "Just think, a year ago I couldn't even breathe on my own."
Doctors doubted then that the Bowie High School wrestler would never walk again. But they didn't know yet his determination and how he'd apply himself to a new biofeedback program for rerouting his nerve impulses.
When the carton of cards is burned up, Devon hugs his buddies and kisses his sister. They walk inside together.
Devon was a passenger in an auto wreck Thursday night and broke his neck. He is currently in ICU and survived a major neck surgery to reinsert a cervical vertebra. We are hoping to see him off assisted breathing in the next few days. He has sensations in his face, shoulders and biceps. . . . I believe we have experienced one of the parent's worst nightmares. - e-mail sent April 19, 2002, to family and friends by Gary Saul, Devon's father.
The 17-year-old wasn't wearing a seat belt - "the biggest mistake of my life," he says - when the Pontiac Sunfire his then-girlfriend was driving went out of control while rounding a corner on FM 1826 about 8:30 p.m.
They'd gone to pick up barbecue at the Salt Lick Pavilion. Just a mile from the restaurant, the car crossed into the opposite lane, swerved back, then skidded into a culvert, striking a tree and hurtling into a fence. Devon was thrown into the back seat.
"All I remember is starting to spin," Devon said. When he looked up, a firefighter was bending over him. His C5 and C6 vertebrae - the two vertebrae just above the bony knob at the base of his neck - were sublixated, or popped out of place. His girlfriend, whom he no longer dates, wasn't injured. She was ticketed for driving at an unsafe speed.
Gary Saul, who works for Texas Parks and Wildlife, was making reservations to visit Florida State University with his son when he got the phone call. He and his wife, Mary, an assistant principal at Bowie, drove to the scene, not far from their house. When they arrived, ambulance crews were struggling to get Devon out of the car. He was lying on his back, not moving.
The last thing Devon told me before they wheeled him into the emergency room was 'Don't worry Dad, I'm invincible.' He is a typical teenager - and I pray his recovery will show that he was invincible, this time. - Gary Saul, April 29, 2002
Going into surgery at Brackenridge Hospital, doctors believed - as did Devon's parents - that he would be paralyzed.
The surgeons injected steroids to prevent swelling in his spine, a main culprit in spinal cord damage. They fused the damaged vertebrae, then put in a steel plate, screws and wires for support. And they waited to see the damage, because every spinal cord injury is different.
"I am not sure I can relate the feelings you have when your child, in the prime of his development, faces such a devastating life change," said Gary Saul. "Our hopes and dreams for him were seemingly shattered, and the hurdles that he would have to overcome - just to survive - seemed monstrous."
A doctor told the Sauls he was surprised Devon was even alive. He said their son might not walk again, or be able to breathe on his own. While that was a possibility to the experts, it wasn't to Devon.
"At first, you always have the worst thoughts," he said. "But I always knew in the back of my mind I would get up and walk again."
(Devon) currently has limited use of his right arm (bicep and shoulder) and more limited use of his left arm . . . He has no motor functions within the trunk of his body other than his diaphragm, and he cannot move his legs or feet. He has just gotten feeling back in his feet and left knee (which means some nerve signals are getting through!). He is making great progress each day. . . . - Gary Saul, April 29, 2002
The varsity wrestler essentially was a quadriplegic. He had become one of between 150,000 and 250,000 Americans - an inordinate number of them young men - living with a spinal cord injury. In the next few weeks, he lost nearly 50 pounds off his 6-foot-2-inch frame. He transferred from Brackenridge to St. David's Rehabilitation Center.
And he began to fight back.
Hundreds of visitors filed through his hospital room, and his parents tried to make sure only positive energy went in with them. Still, a month after the accident, a physical therapist was convinced Devon would never walk.
"Devon got livid," Gary Saul said. "He said to me, 'I'm going to walk out of rehab.' "
Devon has several things going for him. He's young, he's athletic and he's motivated. He has a spirit that doesn't allow him to dwell on the negative. "You can't spend your whole time being depressed - that's no fun," he says. "I look at where I am and my function, then I look at other guys who aren't as fortunate."
He's out to prove that a broken neck doesn't mean a life sentence of using a wheelchair.
"(My therapists) told me to slow down, but I choose not to," Devon said. "You only get better when you push yourself further than you can actually go. The second I saw I was able to move my legs and wiggle my toes (a few weeks after the accident), I was like, 'You can't give me enough therapy to tire me out . . . Let's go.' "
Devon graduated with his high school class in May 2002 - a wrestling teammate pushed his wheelchair across the stage to a standing ovation. He went to senior prom with his buddies - a moment his sister Katie calls a turning point, because he decided to take his injuries public, instead of staying at home as some people who are paralyzed do. He wore the tuxedo he'd rented before the accident, and stayed about an hour. "I mostly sat around and stared at people," Devon said.
In the weeks afterward, as his friends were getting ready for college, Devon's mission became simply to get better. His days were filled with physical therapy. But he made progress. Slowly, his muscles began to respond. On July 11, with his family members supporting him on each side, he walked a few steps.
At home, his parents moved to an upstairs bedroom so Devon could live downstairs. They knocked out a wall in the bathroom and ripped the carpet out of the bedroom to make it wheelchair accessible. Even though Devon could take a few steps here and there, he needed a wheelchair to get around. In January, he started biofeedback sessions in St. David's new Neuromuscular Retraining Program. The technique, developed over the past 30 years by a Florida doctor, helps patients train their brains to find different nerve pathways around the damaged ones to send messages to their muscles.
Dr. Bernard Brucker, of the University of Miami School of Medicine, says nearly all his patients with paralysis regain at least some function. Brucker says he's taking patients past the point they normally show improvement. "It's not supposed to happen," he said.
"I'm their guinea pig," Devon says, as therapist Jared Mallory glues half a dozen electrodes along each side of the now 18-year-old's lower back.
Today, Mallory wants to work on Devon's hip muscles. "When he's walking, he tends to bend forward with his trunk. We're going to try to make it a little prettier," Mallory says.
He dims the lights, and two graphs glow brightly on the computer screen. The top graph shows signal reaching the muscles on Devon's right side; the bottom graph shows signal reaching the left side. Devon looks at both and concentrates on keeping the lines high as he squeezes his muscles.
"Control it, control it," Mallory coaches.
Devon spreads out his arms to keep his balance, and grimaces as he flexes his muscles. His leg starts to quake. "That's not cool," he moans, disappointed. "I don't get it. Why's it not working?"
Mallory pushes him on, teasing at the same time. "I don't know," the therapist laughs. "Maybe you had a spinal cord injury?"
"I'm not really following this one," Devon says.
"You don't have to, as long as your brain does," Mallory says.
Traditional thinking holds that most improvement from spinal cord injuries comes in the first six months after an accident. After a year, there's little hope for change.
But research by Brucker is challenging those beliefs. He uses equipment that can measure electrical responses so tiny they were imperceptible in the past. By seeing that specific motor neurons are still working after an accident, even a little bit, he sees potential to get mobility in muscles that doctors might have given up on before.
And so he hooks electrodes to different muscles, checking to see which ones are still receiving messages from the brain. Then he has patients like Devon watch the graphs to teach themselves physiological responses. The brain, he says, can learn alternate pathways to send messages around damaged parts of the spinal cord.
When Devon started the biofeedback graph therapy in January, his triceps were receiving only about a quarter of the electrical impulses sent from his brain. Now they're getting about 35 percent. His quadriceps, too, are improving. At the beginning of this year, they were receiving just 6 percent of his brain's signal; six months later, they were getting 20 percent. If he can build that to 30 percent, he should be able to stand all day and walk.
"Devon's doing really well," Brucker said at the time. "It's clear that even though the injury was diagnosed as complete initially, he had lots of surviving neurons and they're repairing. He would never get signals this high without biofeedback."
Brucker has worked with more than 9,000 cases since 1981, and claims that more than 90 percent have seen at least some increase in function. His therapy only works if there are surviving brain and spinal column cells.
Devon's injury and therapy are different than those of actor Christopher Reeve, who broke his neck at a higher point. Patients with that kind of injury usually don't survive. While Reeve has worked hard to keep his body conditioned, using electrodes to stimulate movement, he hasn't retaught his muscles to move on his command. Biofeedback wouldn't work for Reeve because too many of his nerve pathways were destroyed.
The neuromuscular retraining program at St. David's is controversial because some doctors believe that any recovery from a spine injury can take place only in the first year after an accident, but Brucker says his program can work years after the trauma.
Barbara Lasiter, director of clinical rehabilitation services at St. David's Rehabilitation Center, says biofeedback is just one more aspect of a complete range of services. "It provides a different option; one that's outside the traditional norm, that isn't mainstream," she said. "It is cutting edge and a little bit unique, but it's definitely a modality that is actually working for our neuropatients. That's why we decided to bring it here and try it - because it's proven to be successful. "
A year after his accident, Devon walked a quarter of a mile from the rehab hospital to Red River Street and back with a physical therapist. He moved slowly, holding his arms out for stability. Even a gust of wind can throw off his balance.
"For you people, it's easy. You walkies," Devon said as he made his way down the sloping street, pausing to lean against a street sign. "Just remember, you do all this subconsciously. I have to think about all this every time I walk. It's like walking with your leg fallen asleep - you can move it, but you can't tell where it's going."
Much of the time, Devon uses a wheelchair, because it's faster and more convenient. Every few days, it seems, he's showing off a newly skinned knee or elbow. ("You got to learn how to fall before you can walk," Devon says.) But he's pumped about his progress.
"Our next challenge is they're just going to drop me off at Mount Bonnell," he jokes. "It's a great place to take a date . . . if you can make it."
Light floods in the arched windows at Anna Hiss Gym at the University of Texas. Ten wheelchairs careen around the wooden floors, their riders tossing a volleyball back and forth. The chairs crash into each other, and someone occasionally falls to the floor.
Among the players is LaRon Minor, 20, one of Devon's closest friends. The two met in chemistry class at Bowie High School, where Devon was a class clown (even now, his e-mail address is a variation of the word "troublemaker.") They have an agreement: anywhere they go together, Devon walks instead of using his wheelchair. And in turn, Minor borrows a wheelchair to join Devon for the occasional game of wheelchair rugby, football, tennis or basketball.
When Devon was injured, Minor spent hours at the hospital visiting. "They told me he was going to survive, but he might not walk again," Minor said. "But Devon's just a fighter. I knew he'd walk. Never doubted it."
This past June, Devon took a part-time job working with developmentally delayed teen-agers at a summer camp program. "Anybody want a snowcone?" someone calls across the gym at McBeth Recreation Center.
"Oh me!" Devon yells, herding half a dozen charges toward the center's kitchen, where they hammer ice into chips on the counter, then flavor them to make snow cones.
"I'm a kid at heart, and I know where these kids are coming from," Devon says. "That helps me with the rapport - they see that I'm kind of like them in that I'm disabled. And they see me out in the real world doing things."
This month, he plans to start classes at Austin Community College, where he'll study communications. "From there, life goes back to normal - maybe get my own place," Devon says.
It's a path that amazes his parents. "In a year, we've gone from a prognosis of total dependency to one of total independence," Mary Saul said.
But Devon has one more thing to do. After the accident, one of his friends gave him a gift certificate for a new pair of tennis shoes.
"When I buy those running shoes, I ain't coming back," he says.
Devon is now walking without support aids and he is improving daily. He is out of his wheelchair probably 25 percent of the time now. . . . . His teenage mind and attitude seem untouched by the accident. Thank you all for your love, caring and support. Devon is doing terrific! - Gary Saul, April 22, 2003
pleblanc@statesman.com; 445-3994
http://www.statesman.com/life/content/life/0817spinal/0817spinal.html
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Biofeedback helps patients like Devon train their brains to find different nerve pathways around the damaged ones to send messages to their muscles. More photos
Sung Park AMERICAN-STATESMAN
By Pamela LeBlanc
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Sunday August 17, 2003
The sun is sinking and the smell of Cajun spice heavy as Devon Saul and a dozen friends gather around a folding table on the back porch of his sister's home in San Marcos.
It's the one-year anniversary of the car accident that broke Devon's neck, just weeks before his high school graduation. For two hours, they whittle away at a mound of crawfish, boiled potatoes and onions. When they're done, Devon turns to a box with reminders of what he's been through.
The box is stuffed with more than 400 cards, notes and letters. They represent the days in intensive care, the struggle to get off the breathing machine, the hours spent learning how to button a shirt and shave again. Devon pulls them out, one at a time, and reads a few excerpts. Then he lights some of the cards and letters, tosses them onto the gravel, and watches the paper crinkle up, burst into flame and glow red.
"This is in no way disrespecting the people who sent these," he says, as a sort of apology to his mother. "She's like, 'I'm not ready for you to burn them. They're memories of love and support.' I'm like, 'Mom, they're my memories, and they're bad memories.' "
He calls his closest friends forward, giving each a stack of cards to burn. "Y'all were the guys there for me," he says as the flames lick the April night air. "Just think, a year ago I couldn't even breathe on my own."
Doctors doubted then that the Bowie High School wrestler would never walk again. But they didn't know yet his determination and how he'd apply himself to a new biofeedback program for rerouting his nerve impulses.
When the carton of cards is burned up, Devon hugs his buddies and kisses his sister. They walk inside together.
Devon was a passenger in an auto wreck Thursday night and broke his neck. He is currently in ICU and survived a major neck surgery to reinsert a cervical vertebra. We are hoping to see him off assisted breathing in the next few days. He has sensations in his face, shoulders and biceps. . . . I believe we have experienced one of the parent's worst nightmares. - e-mail sent April 19, 2002, to family and friends by Gary Saul, Devon's father.
The 17-year-old wasn't wearing a seat belt - "the biggest mistake of my life," he says - when the Pontiac Sunfire his then-girlfriend was driving went out of control while rounding a corner on FM 1826 about 8:30 p.m.
They'd gone to pick up barbecue at the Salt Lick Pavilion. Just a mile from the restaurant, the car crossed into the opposite lane, swerved back, then skidded into a culvert, striking a tree and hurtling into a fence. Devon was thrown into the back seat.
"All I remember is starting to spin," Devon said. When he looked up, a firefighter was bending over him. His C5 and C6 vertebrae - the two vertebrae just above the bony knob at the base of his neck - were sublixated, or popped out of place. His girlfriend, whom he no longer dates, wasn't injured. She was ticketed for driving at an unsafe speed.
Gary Saul, who works for Texas Parks and Wildlife, was making reservations to visit Florida State University with his son when he got the phone call. He and his wife, Mary, an assistant principal at Bowie, drove to the scene, not far from their house. When they arrived, ambulance crews were struggling to get Devon out of the car. He was lying on his back, not moving.
The last thing Devon told me before they wheeled him into the emergency room was 'Don't worry Dad, I'm invincible.' He is a typical teenager - and I pray his recovery will show that he was invincible, this time. - Gary Saul, April 29, 2002
Going into surgery at Brackenridge Hospital, doctors believed - as did Devon's parents - that he would be paralyzed.
The surgeons injected steroids to prevent swelling in his spine, a main culprit in spinal cord damage. They fused the damaged vertebrae, then put in a steel plate, screws and wires for support. And they waited to see the damage, because every spinal cord injury is different.
"I am not sure I can relate the feelings you have when your child, in the prime of his development, faces such a devastating life change," said Gary Saul. "Our hopes and dreams for him were seemingly shattered, and the hurdles that he would have to overcome - just to survive - seemed monstrous."
A doctor told the Sauls he was surprised Devon was even alive. He said their son might not walk again, or be able to breathe on his own. While that was a possibility to the experts, it wasn't to Devon.
"At first, you always have the worst thoughts," he said. "But I always knew in the back of my mind I would get up and walk again."
(Devon) currently has limited use of his right arm (bicep and shoulder) and more limited use of his left arm . . . He has no motor functions within the trunk of his body other than his diaphragm, and he cannot move his legs or feet. He has just gotten feeling back in his feet and left knee (which means some nerve signals are getting through!). He is making great progress each day. . . . - Gary Saul, April 29, 2002
The varsity wrestler essentially was a quadriplegic. He had become one of between 150,000 and 250,000 Americans - an inordinate number of them young men - living with a spinal cord injury. In the next few weeks, he lost nearly 50 pounds off his 6-foot-2-inch frame. He transferred from Brackenridge to St. David's Rehabilitation Center.
And he began to fight back.
Hundreds of visitors filed through his hospital room, and his parents tried to make sure only positive energy went in with them. Still, a month after the accident, a physical therapist was convinced Devon would never walk.
"Devon got livid," Gary Saul said. "He said to me, 'I'm going to walk out of rehab.' "
Devon has several things going for him. He's young, he's athletic and he's motivated. He has a spirit that doesn't allow him to dwell on the negative. "You can't spend your whole time being depressed - that's no fun," he says. "I look at where I am and my function, then I look at other guys who aren't as fortunate."
He's out to prove that a broken neck doesn't mean a life sentence of using a wheelchair.
"(My therapists) told me to slow down, but I choose not to," Devon said. "You only get better when you push yourself further than you can actually go. The second I saw I was able to move my legs and wiggle my toes (a few weeks after the accident), I was like, 'You can't give me enough therapy to tire me out . . . Let's go.' "
Devon graduated with his high school class in May 2002 - a wrestling teammate pushed his wheelchair across the stage to a standing ovation. He went to senior prom with his buddies - a moment his sister Katie calls a turning point, because he decided to take his injuries public, instead of staying at home as some people who are paralyzed do. He wore the tuxedo he'd rented before the accident, and stayed about an hour. "I mostly sat around and stared at people," Devon said.
In the weeks afterward, as his friends were getting ready for college, Devon's mission became simply to get better. His days were filled with physical therapy. But he made progress. Slowly, his muscles began to respond. On July 11, with his family members supporting him on each side, he walked a few steps.
At home, his parents moved to an upstairs bedroom so Devon could live downstairs. They knocked out a wall in the bathroom and ripped the carpet out of the bedroom to make it wheelchair accessible. Even though Devon could take a few steps here and there, he needed a wheelchair to get around. In January, he started biofeedback sessions in St. David's new Neuromuscular Retraining Program. The technique, developed over the past 30 years by a Florida doctor, helps patients train their brains to find different nerve pathways around the damaged ones to send messages to their muscles.
Dr. Bernard Brucker, of the University of Miami School of Medicine, says nearly all his patients with paralysis regain at least some function. Brucker says he's taking patients past the point they normally show improvement. "It's not supposed to happen," he said.
"I'm their guinea pig," Devon says, as therapist Jared Mallory glues half a dozen electrodes along each side of the now 18-year-old's lower back.
Today, Mallory wants to work on Devon's hip muscles. "When he's walking, he tends to bend forward with his trunk. We're going to try to make it a little prettier," Mallory says.
He dims the lights, and two graphs glow brightly on the computer screen. The top graph shows signal reaching the muscles on Devon's right side; the bottom graph shows signal reaching the left side. Devon looks at both and concentrates on keeping the lines high as he squeezes his muscles.
"Control it, control it," Mallory coaches.
Devon spreads out his arms to keep his balance, and grimaces as he flexes his muscles. His leg starts to quake. "That's not cool," he moans, disappointed. "I don't get it. Why's it not working?"
Mallory pushes him on, teasing at the same time. "I don't know," the therapist laughs. "Maybe you had a spinal cord injury?"
"I'm not really following this one," Devon says.
"You don't have to, as long as your brain does," Mallory says.
Traditional thinking holds that most improvement from spinal cord injuries comes in the first six months after an accident. After a year, there's little hope for change.
But research by Brucker is challenging those beliefs. He uses equipment that can measure electrical responses so tiny they were imperceptible in the past. By seeing that specific motor neurons are still working after an accident, even a little bit, he sees potential to get mobility in muscles that doctors might have given up on before.
And so he hooks electrodes to different muscles, checking to see which ones are still receiving messages from the brain. Then he has patients like Devon watch the graphs to teach themselves physiological responses. The brain, he says, can learn alternate pathways to send messages around damaged parts of the spinal cord.
When Devon started the biofeedback graph therapy in January, his triceps were receiving only about a quarter of the electrical impulses sent from his brain. Now they're getting about 35 percent. His quadriceps, too, are improving. At the beginning of this year, they were receiving just 6 percent of his brain's signal; six months later, they were getting 20 percent. If he can build that to 30 percent, he should be able to stand all day and walk.
"Devon's doing really well," Brucker said at the time. "It's clear that even though the injury was diagnosed as complete initially, he had lots of surviving neurons and they're repairing. He would never get signals this high without biofeedback."
Brucker has worked with more than 9,000 cases since 1981, and claims that more than 90 percent have seen at least some increase in function. His therapy only works if there are surviving brain and spinal column cells.
Devon's injury and therapy are different than those of actor Christopher Reeve, who broke his neck at a higher point. Patients with that kind of injury usually don't survive. While Reeve has worked hard to keep his body conditioned, using electrodes to stimulate movement, he hasn't retaught his muscles to move on his command. Biofeedback wouldn't work for Reeve because too many of his nerve pathways were destroyed.
The neuromuscular retraining program at St. David's is controversial because some doctors believe that any recovery from a spine injury can take place only in the first year after an accident, but Brucker says his program can work years after the trauma.
Barbara Lasiter, director of clinical rehabilitation services at St. David's Rehabilitation Center, says biofeedback is just one more aspect of a complete range of services. "It provides a different option; one that's outside the traditional norm, that isn't mainstream," she said. "It is cutting edge and a little bit unique, but it's definitely a modality that is actually working for our neuropatients. That's why we decided to bring it here and try it - because it's proven to be successful. "
A year after his accident, Devon walked a quarter of a mile from the rehab hospital to Red River Street and back with a physical therapist. He moved slowly, holding his arms out for stability. Even a gust of wind can throw off his balance.
"For you people, it's easy. You walkies," Devon said as he made his way down the sloping street, pausing to lean against a street sign. "Just remember, you do all this subconsciously. I have to think about all this every time I walk. It's like walking with your leg fallen asleep - you can move it, but you can't tell where it's going."
Much of the time, Devon uses a wheelchair, because it's faster and more convenient. Every few days, it seems, he's showing off a newly skinned knee or elbow. ("You got to learn how to fall before you can walk," Devon says.) But he's pumped about his progress.
"Our next challenge is they're just going to drop me off at Mount Bonnell," he jokes. "It's a great place to take a date . . . if you can make it."
Light floods in the arched windows at Anna Hiss Gym at the University of Texas. Ten wheelchairs careen around the wooden floors, their riders tossing a volleyball back and forth. The chairs crash into each other, and someone occasionally falls to the floor.
Among the players is LaRon Minor, 20, one of Devon's closest friends. The two met in chemistry class at Bowie High School, where Devon was a class clown (even now, his e-mail address is a variation of the word "troublemaker.") They have an agreement: anywhere they go together, Devon walks instead of using his wheelchair. And in turn, Minor borrows a wheelchair to join Devon for the occasional game of wheelchair rugby, football, tennis or basketball.
When Devon was injured, Minor spent hours at the hospital visiting. "They told me he was going to survive, but he might not walk again," Minor said. "But Devon's just a fighter. I knew he'd walk. Never doubted it."
This past June, Devon took a part-time job working with developmentally delayed teen-agers at a summer camp program. "Anybody want a snowcone?" someone calls across the gym at McBeth Recreation Center.
"Oh me!" Devon yells, herding half a dozen charges toward the center's kitchen, where they hammer ice into chips on the counter, then flavor them to make snow cones.
"I'm a kid at heart, and I know where these kids are coming from," Devon says. "That helps me with the rapport - they see that I'm kind of like them in that I'm disabled. And they see me out in the real world doing things."
This month, he plans to start classes at Austin Community College, where he'll study communications. "From there, life goes back to normal - maybe get my own place," Devon says.
It's a path that amazes his parents. "In a year, we've gone from a prognosis of total dependency to one of total independence," Mary Saul said.
But Devon has one more thing to do. After the accident, one of his friends gave him a gift certificate for a new pair of tennis shoes.
"When I buy those running shoes, I ain't coming back," he says.
Devon is now walking without support aids and he is improving daily. He is out of his wheelchair probably 25 percent of the time now. . . . . His teenage mind and attitude seem untouched by the accident. Thank you all for your love, caring and support. Devon is doing terrific! - Gary Saul, April 22, 2003
pleblanc@statesman.com; 445-3994
http://www.statesman.com/life/content/life/0817spinal/0817spinal.html