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| Skater And His Dream Refuse To Die
After Fall |
Mercifully,
Paul Binnebose doesn't remember fracturing his skull in the strangest
of accidents. He doesn't remember convulsing on the ice, emergency
brain surgery, 11 days in a coma, three more weeks of unconsciousness,
a heart infection, blood infection, collapsed lung and pneumonia
that nearly killed him when his swollen brain didn't.
Twice he died.
Twice he came back. "I didn't see the light either time," Binnebose
says of the times his heart and lungs ceased functioning.
"I was ripped
off," he says, laughing. "The good side is that when I really die,
maybe I'll see two, like the headlights of a truck."
Binnebose
laughs a lot for an athlete whose world literally shattered. At
practice last September 29, Binnebose was holding his partner, girlfriend
Laura Handy, above his head when they crashed to the ice. Now the
22-year old pairs figure skater, eternally optimistic, is learning
to live again.
He is completely
without embarrassment about his appearance now. Once boyishly handsome
with blonde curls, the right half of his face is paralyzed. He wears
a black patch over his right eye that wanders and weeps. His arms
and legs are spindles where once-powerful muscles twisted and tossed
his petite partner.
He doesn't
care about any of this because he is alive.
Binnebose
spends his days learning to swallow without choking, coaxing his
paralyzed face to move and gaining the 50 pounds he lost wasting
away in a hospital.
He spends
hours each day lifting weights that leave him exhausted, sweating
and gasping for breath. What once was easy now takes his body to
the extremes of fatigue and pain.
"I'm horribly
weak," he says.
Don't feel
sorry for Binnebose, though because he surely doesn't. He is happy
to show the three quarter-sized scars on the right side of his body
where tubes sucked out the fluids that swelled his body beyond recognition.
Two weeks
ago, he laced up his skates for the first time since the accident.
Binnebose was so tired after putting on his first skate, he had
to rest. He wore a specially designed helmet, what he calls his
"crash pad," and took the ice.
Everyone
at the rink watched. There were tears; there was applause. But most
of all there was the sense this story might have a happy ending.
Binnebose
had been on track to make the 2002 Olympic team with Handy, his
partner on and off the ice since 1998, when he crashed to the ice,
splitting his head in half, a vertical break from his neck to his
forehead. He went into seizures at the University of Delaware arena,
blood seeping from his ears and nose.
Later that
night, Binnebose crashed again, this time in medical terms. He stopped
breathing as his mother, Judy, and sister Rhonda stood helplessly
by his side.
"We were
in the depths of despair," Judy says.
With her
son's brain swelling 3-4 inches outside the skull, doctors had only
one way to save Binnebose's life. They made an incision from one
ear up across his forehead to the other ear and cut out a rectangular
piece of brain plate above his eyes.
"It was a
last-ditch effort," says his neurosurgeon, Bikash Bose. "Otherwise,
he would have died."
The piece
of skull was put in a freezer at -70 degrees with Binnebose's name
on it. His head was wrapped in gauze with a message: "No plate,
no pressure." It was a warning not to touch the exposed area of
brain, covered only by a thin layer of skin.
Next to Binnebose
was a Vermont teddy bear with his tiny head wrapped and the same
message: "No plate, no pressure."
After surgery,
Binnebose's brain was put in suspended animation. A barbiturate-induced
coma slowly allowed the brain to heal. Still, there was no assurance
Binnebose would live. And if he did, would there be brain damage?
Someone was
always in the room. Binnebose's sister slept at the hospital the
first month.
If Binnebose
died, he wouldn't be alone.
The answers
came after five weeks of unconsciousness.
Binnebose,
too weak to talk, began mouthing words. He responded to commands,
blinked his eyes, and moved his thumb up and down. He did this for
a week, but doesn't remember any of it. He doesn't even remember
mouthing "happy birthday" to Rhonda the day she turned 25.
His first
real moment of consciousness came a week later when he told his
mother he needed to call his friend Dave to cancel weekend plans-
from two months before. His last memory before the accident is driving
to Baltimore to try on new outfits.
"I knew I
was in the hospital, but I didn't know why," Binnebose says. "I
knew my head was misshapen; you could see my brain throbbing."
There were
nights, many nights when those who loved him believed that Binnebose
would die. Doctors gave him only a 10% chance to live a normal,
functioning life.
"Those thoughts
crept in," Judy says. "Then I'd feel guilty about allowing myself
to have negative thoughts when he was fighting for his life. I wasn't
going to give up on him."
Rhonda feared
her brother would survive but would be brain damaged.
The
morning of the accident Judy was at the rink videotaping the practice.
The video shakes as her son hits the ice."
"I haven't
seen it," she says. "There was too a long a time I could close my
eyes and still see it. I don't need a video."
Once Binnebose's
brain decompressed, Bose thawed his brain flap and reattached it.
"A perfect fit," he says.
For Binnebose,
those five weeks are time forever lost. He feels empathy for those
who remember.
"The first
time, I was only dead for 35 seconds," Binnebose says. "The second
time, I wasn't breathing. My eyes were fixed and dilated. I would
never want to carry around some of those memories. When I was bloated,
I had a halo screwed onto my skull. They faced me for eight hours,
down for 10 hours, because there was so much fluid. Ooh, I can't
imagine. Parents don't want to bury their children."
Why did he
live? "It just wasn't his time," Judy says.
The reason
Binnebose fell was because of an earlier back injury. Years ago,
he had fractured vertebrae in his lower back but never realized
it. He will only be able to skate again if his back is strong enough.
Surgery won't help.
Binnebose
was depressed, only briefly. He returned to his normal cheerful
state after spending two weeks at a rehabilitation facility for
head-trauma patients. He had seen men and women in permanent vegetative
states and realized he was a two-time miracle.
Because of
his facial paralysis, Binnebose has double vision in his right eye.
Doctors believe he will have normal vision in six months to a year
as his brain heals. Until then, he'll wear a patch and glasses.
The paralysis
also makes it difficult to eat. Half his teeth bite the food, the
other half bite his lips. It's hard to swallow without coughing.
As he practices drinking, he tells his therapist: "If I drown, I'm
going to be upset."
When his head
hit the ice, the impact sheared off the nerves responsible for the
sense of smell. That will never return. Binnebose faces surgery
if his right lung doesn't expand. A portion of his lung is forever
useless.
"With all
the therapy, I'll come back and be stronger," he says with a half-smile.
"With every experience, you learn something." His doctors say he
can skate without his helmet in 12-18 months.
His mom wants
him to quit skating competitively. "It scares me," she says.
Binnebose
wants to stay in the sport, not just because he loves it but also
because his family has sacrificed so much for him to reach the elite
level. He cringes at the suggestion he retire from the sport that
nearly killed him.
"Forget the
skating? I've been doing it for 17 years," he says. "It would be
more selfish to stop…I want to make an Olympic team.
It is unlikely
he and Handy can make the 2002 Olympics. Now they must wait for
2006. But the more time the pair is off the ice, the more of an
edge competitors gain. The couple finished third at the U.S championships
last year and made the U.S. team that competed in last season's
world championships.
Handy, 5-4,
100 pounds, initially feared that she caused the accident because
she weighed too much. She stopped eating and developed mononucleosis.
She is healthy now, realizes that she is not overweight and is eager
to begin their skating comeback. She is not interested in another
partner.
Binnebose
calls Handy "my little lifeguard." When the U.S. Figure Skating
Championships begin next week in Cleveland, Handy and Binnebose
will be honored at the opening ceremonies.
"I think we'll
all be crying," Handy says. If Binnebose cannot skate again, he
says he might become a coach. He says it without enthusiasm.
What does
interest him is getting better.
Insurance
will cover most of Binnebose's $400,000 hospitalization bills. But
his policy only allows $3,000 a year for rehabilitation, and Binnebose's
daily costs are $300-$500.
"He's a fighter"
coach Tracy Poletis says. "If you had someone not as strong-minded,
they might have surrendered. I really do think it's possible for
Paul to come back."
What a story
that would be.
"Good things
happen to good people," Binnebose says of his ordeal. "I didn't
die either one of the times. I got rid of the pneumonia. I don't
have to have heart surgery. I don't have brain damage. As far as
the skating goes, I don't think we will know until I get stronger.
"It's never
a good idea to sit around and say, 'Why did this happen to me?'
I've been skating for 17 years, and this is the fourth time I've
ever dropped a girl."
Says Binnebose:
"I fully intend to have great things come from this."
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