John Ortiz a staff writer from the Sacremento Bee had a chance to meet this wonderful young man on his visit to Shriners Hospital. The following is an exerpt from that interview...(don't forget to check out the pictures from this interview at our websalbum)
"When I first came here, I was a walking time bomb," he says. "I hated everyone and everything. I kept asking myself, 'Why did this happen to me?' "
Why is a hard question to answer. What happened, however, is tragically clear.
Garrett's life changed on a cloudy afternoon, Jan. 31, 2001. It was a Wednesday. Garrett and a friend were jumping their bikes off a huge dirt hill at a construction site not far from the rural Napa County home where Garrett lived with his mother, Netta.
"We were ready to leave, but I just wanted one last big jump," Garrett recalls. "I wanted it to be the biggest ever."
Hopping astride his Diamondback extreme sports bike, he pedaled furiously up the hill and flew off its peak toward the slope on the other side.
But instead of a solid two-tire landing like so many hundreds of jumps before, this time his front wheel hit first, twisted sharply and stuck in the ground. Garrett pitched face-first over the front of the bike.
"I just lay there with the wind knocked out of me," he says, matter-of-factly. "Then I realized I couldn't move."
The bicycle that had given Garrett so much joy became his enemy, a blunt weapon that struck him at the base of his neck. The force of the blow shattered his fifth and sixth cervical vertebrae, two bony rings that protect the fragile spinal cord.
Garrett Brumhall, 14, was paralyzed.
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Garrett's injury left him paralyzed just below his shoulders. Had the bicycle struck him much higher, it might have severed the link between his brain and his heart or lungs, killing him instantly.
Early on, Garrett says, he wished for death. Utterly helpless, he turned his anger on the doctors and nurses who were serving him. He refused to eat.
"Then, after about a year, I broke down and cried for the first time," he says. "I realized that I wasn't just hurting myself. I was hurting my family and friends, the people who loved me."
Now, Garrett is a model patient, a leader among other spinal cord injury sufferers at Shriners and the kind of kid his doctor says he got into pediatric neurological medicine to help.
There are many reasons. A caring, attentive hospital staff that refused to give up on their young charge. A loving mother who dotes on her only child. And, of course, free medical care offered through the 81-year-old nonprofit Shriners organization.
"I never would have made it without these wonderful people," Garrett says of the Shriners staff. "They kept me alive."
The Sacramento facility is one of only three in Shriners' not-for-profit 22-hospital system with a special unit devoted to spinal cord injury treatment and rehabilitation.
Since opening its doors on Stockton Boulevard in 1997, the unit has admitted 140 victims of spinal cord trauma, according to hospital statistics.
It is the generosity of thousands of people giving their time and money that makes Garrett's rehabilitation possible.
And so he works twice each day, lifting weights, pushing his wheelchair, retraining his body to maximize the muscles he can control. It's slow progress measured by the inch and the ounce.
With help from Pham, he slides slowly, awkwardly across the wooden board and flops with a thud on the padded bench. He's been working on this maneuver for two weeks.
Pham helps him back into his wheelchair.
"That was terrible," Garrett says in disgust. "Terrible."
"Yeah, that was terrible," Pham says. "But it was less terrible than yesterday. You moved about six inches on your own. That was better than yesterday."
Three years ago, Garrett would never have thought it possible that he could retrain his body to move even a fraction of an inch using only the muscles in his shoulders.
Then, two summers ago, Shriners doctors performed a three-hour operation that gave him hope.
First, they removed a tough, muscle-encasing membrane from Garrett's thigh. Then they attached one end of the membrane, known as the fascia, to Garrett's functioning left shoulder muscle. Finally, they ran the fascia down the back of his left arm and grafted the other end to his forearm.
Last July, doctors performed the same operation on his right side.
The idea was that Garrett would be able to flex his shoulders to move his lifeless arms, much like a puppet master manipulates a marionette.
And if he could move his arms, he could learn to push a wheelchair or brace his body weight for transfers into, say, a bed.
"His rehabilitation is all about re-educating his muscles and strengthening them," said Dr. Craig McDonald, medical director of Shriners' Spinal Cord Injury Program. "I never dreamed we'd get this far. Most patients with his type of injury don't achieve what he has."
The 45-minute therapy session with Pham is over. The next day, Garrett will return home to Chico, where he is a junior at Chico High School. He wants to graduate and then move away from home to attend college and earn a degree in computer design.
"Maybe Arizona," he says. "They've got a good school down there."
In time. Shriners has set up a rehab program for Garrett with a therapist not far from his home. He'll keep working on strengthening his shoulders, working toward the independence he craves.
"I'll get there," Garrett says. "I've got plans."
