Does anyone else know anything about this guy?http://www.thehour.com/284718144144225.bsp
Brandon White walks again
By LEE HIGGINS Hour Staff Writer WILTON -- Brandon White, who was paralyzed from the waist down in a pole vaulting accident a week before his 2002 graduation from Wilton High School, is walking again using leg braces and canes. White, 21, who refused to live in a wheelchair, has been enrolled since February 2003 in Sit Tall-Stand Tall, a rigorous strength-training program in Provo, Utah, for people with spinal cord injuries. On May 5, White put his wheelchair away. He's pledging to stay in the program until he gets rid of his leg braces, too. "I've come a long way. That's for sure," said White. "When I first got injured, I couldn't do anything. You're pretty much helpless. It's just good to feel normal again."
It was on June 15, 2002 that White's life changed dramatically. While warming up for a competition in the pole vault at the Junior Olympics at Southern Connecticut State University in New Haven, White went up for a practice jump, but fell short of the landing mat, dropping 12.5 feet onto a metal pole vault box, which pole vaulters use to launch from. He broke his back in three places. "It was horrible," said White. "It was just unbelievable. I never thought anything like that would have happened. It never would have crossed my mind. As soon as I landed, my legs just collapsed on top of me. I couldn't feel anything. One thing I was just yelling was, 'I can't feel my legs." White was treated for two weeks at Yale-New Haven Hospital, before going to Gaylord Hospital in Wallingford, where he began rehabilitation. He was discharged five weeks later and began a regiment of outpatient physical therapy at Norwalk Hospital, where he recalls doing exercises to build his arm strength, so he could roll his wheelchair around. It wasn't for him. "That's not the type of therapy I wanted," he said. "I wanted to get out of my wheelchair." But there was little hope. White's mother, Shannon, explained that doctors and therapists had ruled out walking for White. "They told him that he would never walk again and to not even think about leg braces because his injury was so high (in his back) and he would never be able to use them," she said. The family prayed for a miracle, and White refused to give up.
He subsequently learned from his grandfather, who lives in Salt Lake City, Utah about the Sit Tall-Stand Tall program, run by Leighton Weber, a physical trainer and former college football player. Since 1983, Weber, 49, has helped 300 physically disabled people improve their lives through weight training in a gym attached to his home in Provo. "It's just this kind of makeshift gym, and so much good comes out of it," said White. While White saw many of Weber's success stories standing before him during a December 2002 evaluation with Weber, he remained skeptical. "I didn't really believe it," said White. "I didn't really want to go. I didn't want to pack up and go to Utah. I just finally came to the realization if I wanted to walk, this is only place I've gott to go." So, in February 2003, White moved to Utah to enroll in the program, spending the first six months living in an apartment in Orem with his older sister, Andrea. Weber, whom White described as "drill-sargentesque," told White to get out of his wheelchair and crawl. "He really pushes you," said White. "He expects a certain amount out of you, and he'll do anything to get it. He'll motivate you. He'll yell at you. He'll get you going. If you're not motivated, you just won't last. You'll go back home." White spent 90 minutes to two hours a day, five days a week, drilling the muscles in his upper body in the gym. Within two weeks, he could crawl 10 to 15 feet. "It was mindblowing," said White. "I never thought I'd be able to do it and it worked. It was just pretty incredible." Within three weeks, White was crawling well. But the workouts took a toll. "I was so tired afterward," said White. "I'd come home and sleep all day long after each workout. I would be so sore. It was a whole new world." But White persisted.
After four months of crawling, Weber decided that White was ready for the next step: Standing up. White hadn't done it in a year, but he got some leg braces and canes and got to work. "It's frightening at first," he said. "You'd lose your balance. You'd fall to the ground." White fell often, breaking two ribs and snapping a titanium rod in his back. But he always got back up. By June 2003, a year after becoming a paraplegic, White could stand again. He frequently spent four to six hours at a time standing in his apartment. "I would stand just because I could," he said. White's mother recalled in June 2003, seeing White stand again when he was home for a visit. "The first time I saw him stand up, I had to leave the room because I started to cry," she said. "That was incredible." White and his family realized that at six feet, he was still tall. Soon White was taking steps, but it was a slow process. "My left side, it just took forever to get that down," he said. "I would walk 10 feet, and I would just be spent. I would be so tired, and I would just sleep all day." While White still has no feeling in his legs, he learned to lift them from his hip and move forward. "You kind of use your arms and upper body," he said. In May, White gave Weber the wheels from his wheelchair and put the frame of it in his closet.
He has since been walking full-time with leg braces and canes. "I didn't want to live in a wheelchair," he said. "I didn't care if it would take 15 years to get out of the wheelchair." White, who is coming home Saturday for Christmas break, explained that his next goal is to reduce the amount of leg braces he uses to walk and eventually walk without them. "However long it takes me, I'm in it for the long run," he said. White's mother, who explained that the Sit Tall-Stand Tall program is not covered by insurance, said she thinks her son has been doing marvelously. "Every time we see him, he's getting faster and better," she said. "Every little step he's taken has been like this little miracle."
White and his friend, Josh Francia, 23, also from Wilton, have been filming a documentary for the past 18 months on White's progress and that of two other young paraplegic men in the program. One of them is Matt Wyffels, 23, a professional snowboarder, who grew up in Minnesota and broke his back in a competition at Copper Mountain in Colorado. The other is Chris Weston, 20, who grew up in California and was paralyzed when doctors removed a cancerous tumor from his spine. Both, like White, are paraplegics. Weber calls them all "warriors." There are 15 warriors currently enrolled in the Sit Tall-Stand Tall program, and only the toughest make it through. Francia, a journalism major and film minor at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, where White has taken three courses, said the film is about "their desire and motivation to walk again and how they've been able to do it." Francia said he has visited Weber's gym and has seen people with spinal cord injuries walk again after doctors crushed their hopes. "When I first went and saw the gym and saw the guys working there, it almost takes your breath away," said Francia. "It makes me motivated to be better in my life." Francia and White have entered a short essay and 50-minute clip of the documentary in a contest sponsored by VISA, hoping they'll win $25,000 to help pay for the film. They're among 10 finalists out of 19,000 applicants and are optimistic about winning based on early voting results, according to Francia. Francia explained that the documentary will be polished up within four months and they hope to enter it into the 2006 Sundance Film Festival. "Our goal is to make it a national release so people all over can see this." Lee Higgins may be reached via e-mail at lhiggins@wiltonvillager.com.
