Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, October 11, 1994 TAG: 9410110069
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: KEN DAVIS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RADFORD LENGTH: Long
Tony Shockley still has some good memories from the early morning hours of June 19, 1991.
He remembers the pristine beaches of Panama City, Fla., where he and 11 friends were vacationing in honor of their recent graduation from Blacksburg High School. He remembers the clear night skies, and the warm breeze floating in from the Gulf of Mexico.
But the bad memories are even more vivid, Shockley said, such as the irrevocable moment when he dove blindly into the Gulf's wake, striking his head on a sandbar and leaving him paralyzed from the neck down.
"I could feel the waves going over me, but I couldn't figure out why I couldn't move my body," he said. "It was the eeriest feeling."
More than three years later, the 21-year-old Radford University junior is spending every day enjoying what many experts told him might never be possible.
Walking.
"No doctor will give you false hope," he said, his legs propped up comfortably on a table. "They tell you to be prepared for the worst. I'm just very lucky."
Shockley's luck has involved spending almost three months in hospitals and two months in a large, iron Halo Vest designed to support his neck and keep it immobile. He has lost about 50 pounds, been through two surgeries, taken more than two years of physical therapy, and still has almost no motor skills in his right hand.
But Shockley doesn't think about the hard times he has been through, preferring to meet every challenge with a positive, yet realistic, attitude.
"Willpower and positive thinking is great; you've got to have it," he said. "But the best way to deal with it is to accept that it's happened and just be thankful you're alive."
It is an attitude he has kept from the very beginning.
Moments after the accident, Shockley was pulled from the Gulf by four friends who carried his 200-pound frame back to the beach house.
Believing the situation was not as serious as it seemed, Shockley and his friends spent nearly 30 minutes hoping the paralysis would wear off like the lingering effects of a bad dream.
It didn't happen.
Shockley was rushed by ambulance to Bay Medical Center in Panama City, where doctors performed surgery a few hours later and found he had broken his neck and bruised his spinal cord.
Although a bruised spinal cord is not necessarily as serious as a severed one, Shockley was forced to accept, with the help of his doctors and nurses, that he may never walk again.
For his friends, who were waiting in the hospital lobby hoping that all would be OK, the bad news did not come easily.
"An intern went outside and said to them, 'Your friend has broken his neck and probably will never walk again,' then turned around and walked away," Shockley said.
Within seven days, Shockley was transferred to Blue Ridge Hospital in Charlottesville for intensive physical therapy designed to help him regain his strength.
"He was really nervous in the beginning," said Karen Vogel, a physical therapist who worked with Shockley at the hospital. "As he started to get more and more back, he would get so happy and so thankful. That's what's special about him. He's always been really thankful and doesn't take anything for granted."
Shockley said strength and movement were coming back so fast, he pushed himself to make progress every day. However, he reminded himself that there were no guarantees.
"I had to realize that being a quadriplegic is not the end of the world," he said.
He and Vogel took it step-by-step: from lying, to sitting, to standing, to walking with the aid of parallel bars while Vogel helped him move each foot.
By the time he left Blue Ridge nearly six weeks after he had arrived, he was moving with a rolling walker.
Shockley was sent to Woodrow Wilson Rehabilitation Center in Fishersville for additional physical therapy and for learning to live independently with a disability.
Exactly one month later, he left both hospitals behind and returned to Blacksburg with two canes, the only assistance he needed to walk.
Shockley said he knew then that he would soon be walking on his own.
"Through it all, I just never really thought about not walking again," he said.
In January 1992, Shockley entered Radford University, where he is studying therapeutic recreation in hopes of one day helping other victims of spinal cord injuries.
"I think he'll be good," Vogel said. "He knows where they've been."
Although Shockley said he doesn't want others to look at his success and be overly optimistic, he believes he can help them realize that life is what they make of it.
"It's easy for me to be so positive, not sitting here in a wheelchair," he said. "I don't want to give anyone false hope, but I think it's important to live for today and just be happy and thankful for what you have, not what you don't have."
by CNB