Apr 17, 2008 7:29 pm US/Eastern
SMILE: Track Star Becomes Ex-Quadriplegic
Adrian Gordon To Walk Out Of Hospital After Horrific Injury
BAY SHORE, N.Y. (CBS) ―
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Adrian Gordon planned on walking out of the hospital on his feet after being a quadriplegic three months earlier.
CBS
Doctors are calling it a near-miracle, the recovery of a young track star whose spine was crushed in a horrific car crash.
When Adrian Gordon awoke in the hospital, his mother at his side, he was completely paralyzed.
I thought I was going to die," Gordon said. "I told my mom, 'I think I'm going to die.'"
Gordon, 20, awoke in the hospital a quadriplegic. His family had to tell him the horror: He wasn't wearing a seatbelt and when his friend's speeding car blew a tire on the Long Island Expressway last winter, Gordon was ejected.
A doctor showed CBS 2 HD a model and where he fractured his spine.
His doctors had to break the news -- Gordon, a former track star, would never walk again. For weeks able to move only his eyelids, until one night a sensation in his foot awoke him in the ICU.
"I looked at my toes and saw them moving because I knew when I went to sleep they weren't moving," Gordon said. "I made sure I stayed up all night, because I'm like … look, if they're moving now, I'm going to keep moving them all night, so it won't go away!!"
His physical therapists credit Gordon's determination and will, but he calls his recovery miraculous.
"Oh by all means it's a miracle," Gordon said. "It taught me that there's a purpose for my life."
That new purpose began with his first steps -- three and half months after his accident -- with a hospital staff in tears.
"I have prayed and asked God to get better -- and I will try my best to be a much better person than I was before," Gordon said.
Gordon will begin preaching seatbelt use, and soon continue his studies at Manhattan Community College with a new major: Sports-Medicine.
Gordon says his miracle continues Friday when he walks out of the hospital, with the aid of crutches, and rejoins his family in the Bronx.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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