Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, May 27, 1995 TAG: 9505300026
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MELISSA DeVAUGHN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
The day Henry Tanner was wheeled into his parents' house, paralyzed after suffering a freak stroke, was the day his backpack came in the mail.
What other piece of equipment, which requires strong, working legs to carry, could be more useless, Henry thought. His first urge was to throw the pack across the room.
But Henry Tanner, a college student from Raleigh, N.C., listened to his second instinct instead.
The pack was there for a reason, to remind him that one day he would walk again.
A year later, the 21-year-old and his backpack have a close relationship. He hikes with it all day long and sleeps with it at night. It's his partner on the longest walk ever - 2,158 miles along the Appalachian Trail.
"It was just too weird, because the pack had been three months late and it just happened to come that day," said Tanner, who hiked through Roanoke this week. Tanner started in Georgia on March 4, a year to the day after his stroke. "I don't believe in coincidences anymore. I knew I was going to do something with that backpack."
A year ago, Henry Tanner was just another college student. He liked to party with his friends and hang out with his girlfriend. He ran five miles a day and loved to play tennis. He had just finished midterms at the College of Charleston in South Carolina, where he studies psychology.
"Me and my roommate were just wrestling around, goofing off, and I twisted my neck," recalled Tanner, who goes by the trail name of Skreaming Coyote (spelled with a "k" because Tanner says he really doesn't like to scream). "It felt like a crick in my neck, but then the left side of my body went to sleep."
It took Tanner 24 hours to realize something was seriously wrong. Driving through Charleston that night, he went over a bump and it was as if strobe lights had gone off. Lights were bright one minute, dim the next. Sounds would roar momentarily, then fade to nothing. Scared, he drove home and went to bed.
The next day, Henry Tanner couldn't walk.
"He called in the morning and said, 'Mom, I can't walk,''' Tanner's mother, Sally Tanner, said of that day a year ago. "I said, 'What do you mean you can't walk?' I just thought he was kidding around, because he was laughing. Everybody was extremely nervous, but they were trying to think it was nothing, so they laughed. When I realized he wasn't joking, I told his roommates to get him to the emergency room that minute."
Once at the hospital, doctors ran myriad tests on Tanner. But it wasn't until he went to a Raleigh hospital that doctors determined that Henry Tanner, who was physically fit, didn't do drugs and had never had medical problems, had suffered a stroke at age 20. They said it must have happened during the wrestling match when a blood vessel in Tanner's neck burst, formed a blood clot and reached his brain.
"The doctors said it was so rare that if we tried to stage it again, it probably wouldn't happen," Sally Tanner said.
Before the stroke, Tanner was into camping, but he wasn't a serious hiker. He had ordered the pack for weekend trips on local trails, and now doctors were telling him he might never walk again.
"I went through a big depression period and pretty much locked myself in the bedroom," Tanner said. "I knew I had to get back to school or do something besides sit there."
Two months later, back in Charleston but still in a wheelchair, Tanner had an idea.
Not only would he walk again, but he would walk the most famous wilderness footpath in the world, the Appalachian Trail. The trail starts in north Georgia and winds its way along mountain ridges through 14 states to Maine.
He began going to physical and occupational therapy several days a week.
"Henry's a little bit an exception to the rule," said Rhonda Johnson, his physical therapist. "A lot of our patients take a passive role and allow us to set the limits. Henry came to me with his limits. He said, 'Rhonda, my goal is to hike the trail. Will you help me?' Henry is his own motivating force."
At the start of the journey, Tanner's gait was awkward and he hiked less than a mile an hour, dragging his left foot behind him (he's on his third pair of boots).
"I was falling right and left, and it was hard to watch people - people my age and even retired people - fly by me," Tanner said. "But I really feel like I'm getting better now. I have more rhythm, and I can walk faster."
He now hikes about 13 miles a day, just a little less than most other hikers. The only difference is he limps slightly (more at the end of the day when he's tired) and his left arm is drawn toward his chest a bit.
Tanner shows maturity beyond his years and is not bitter over his accident. He even finds humor in his situation. "People are overnice. When we get to the shelters they ask, 'Do you want me to get your water?' and that's fine with me," he said, smiling. "And when I was in Fontana Dam [near the Smoky Mountains], I had people shuttling me all over the place."
Tanner said being on the trail is the best rehabilitation he could have. "Rehab was working, but I was depressed. That's the one thing I lost, was my soul in that bedroom, in that wheelchair. Out here, I'm learning to follow my heart."
The hardest part of the trip, Tanner said, is the mental aspect, learning to live with his current limitations and missing his family, particularly his girlfriend.
"I skipped a 10-mile section near Raleigh, so after I get back I can finish the last miles with my family," he said.
"Katahdin [the northern terminus of the Appalachian Trail] would be nice to reach, but that's not my goal. I could quit right now, knowing I've walked 700 miles when the doctors told me I'd never walk."
But Tanner, exemplifying what his mother calls "guts and gumption and lots of hard work," doesn't want to quit. He's taking it one week at a time, but feeling stronger every day.
"I want to hike at least 1,000 miles like [Sierra Club founder] John Muir," he said. "John Muir's my hero."
by CNB