November 3, 2009

Jenny Dial

Before Justin Duke put on his pads, tied up his cleats and pulled the blue-and-white No. 51 jersey over his head on Oct. 2, he hadn't shed a tear. Not when he ran headlong into a wall at a junior high basketball game more than three years ago, not when an MRI showed a break in his C2 vertebra and he was airlifted to Texas Children's Hospital, and not when he was told he was paralyzed from the neck down.

Justin, now 18, woke up that January day in 2006, went to school and, after his eighth-grade classes, hopped on a team bus headed to Silsbee to play a basketball game.

Early in the third quarter, Justin chased a loose ball and ran, head down, into a wall about two feet out of bounds.

Justin was in the halo for 12 weeks. An MRI showed his neck had healed, and after a few more months of therapy, he wanted to start exercising and working out, with the hope of playing football again. But while lifting weights in September 2006, he began to lose feeling in his hands. A syrinx, or fluid-filled cavity, had developed in his spinal cord.

Houston Chronicle