THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, November 28, 1995 TAG: 9511280285
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY NANCY LEWIS, CORRESPONDENT
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Medium: 76 lines
William Henderson doesn't remember the long plunge to Earth that broke his back, but he will never forget the terror he felt when he knew he was falling.
``I remember looking up and telling myself, `Oh, (expletive), I'm falling,' '' he said.
Henderson had just finished topping a 90-foot pine and was rappelling down the tree trunk when his pitch-coated rope apparently worked its way out of the ``V'' it was seated in at the tree's top. He plummeted 50 feet to the ground.
The fall shattered his first lumbar vertebra - near the waist - and partially severed his spinal cord.
Doctors feared he would not live, let alone walk again, but the feisty 33-year-old father of four is now on his feet and may be on his way to a complete recovery.
The accident happened at a Birdneck Point home Oct. 23, where Henderson, an experienced tree surgeon with Arbor Grading and Seeding, was working on the tall pine. He had finished sawing scraggle branches from the tree, secured his chain and hand saws in his belt and was on his way down and swinging in toward the tree to push off again when, ``all of a sudden I'm looking up and I'm falling.''
He winces as he tries to remember more.
He ``blacked out'' and has no memory of the long fall - the equivalent of five stories - or of his impact with the ground.
The next thing Henderson knew, paramedics were swarming around him, and he could hear his own screams of pain.
``They said in six months I wouldn't even be doing this,'' he said, making his way painstakingly across a classroom on a walker at Tidewater Community College Wednesday. With words and applause, physical therapy students encouraged him.
Student Ginny Broun, who was assigned to work with Henderson as an intern five days after his first operation, guided him.
He credits Broun with his remarkable recovery, and she says it was Henderson's determination that made it possible.
``It was his positive attitude and wanting to get back into life again that did it,'' she told fellow students.
``To get home is the thing,'' Henderson thought when doctors told him it would be four months before he could leave the hospital. ``I was changing that.''
The first operation took place 24 hours later, and doctors removed the fragments of shattered bone and used a donor bone graft and a piece of Henderson's 12th rib to rebuild the vertebra. But Henderson remained in terrible pain, so a second operation was necessary, and it was more successful. Another bone fragment was removed, and steel rods were screwed in place.
Then Broun taught Henderson how to use a wheelchair, how to walk with a walker, how to get onto an elevated mat and roll over. On Wednesday, he showed students how he could even raise himself up onto his hands and knees, stopping frequently to adjust his red ``49ers'' football cap and let out a ``Whew!'' and an ``Ah!''
``My goal is to walk in two months without help,'' he told students.
``We'll be here,'' they replied in unison.
Henderson, who is divorced, is living with a friend during his recuperation. His boss has told him that when he's fully recovered, he'll be doing estimating work instead of climbing trees, something doctors say he will never be able to do again.
The Virginia Beach native has never had a fear of heights. He fell in love with tree-climbing while a youth on his uncle's Farmville farm. And, until a few years ago, he enjoyed sky-diving.
Henderson says that despite his fall, he still has no fear of heights. Well, almost none.
``I'm scared of the ladder,'' he admits.
KEYWORDS: ACCIDENT GENERAL by CNB