A Moving Experience One Year After Saving A Child, Quadriplegic Tom Higgins Is Making A Slow Comeback

He could hear his breath. It was shallow and labored and it rasped lightly as it passed through his throat and over his lips into the cold winter air.

Tom Higgins lay in the snow and wondered at this sound. Was it the sound of an exit? Was it the sound a man with a broken neck makes right before he stops breathing? Right before he dies?

A year ago today, the clinic nurse scooped a 7-year-old child - a stranger - from the path of a large sled racing down a hill at Holmberg Park. The sled struck Higgins and sent him, and the boy in his arms, flying.

The child landed - without his boots - unharmed. Higgins landed and broke his neck, becoming profoundly paralyzed. The community hailed him as a hero.

After months in hospitals and in St. Luke’s Rehabilitation Institute, Higgins found these things left to him: He could shrug his shoulders, flex his bicep and tricep and slightly move a wrist. He could wiggle a few fingers on his left hand. From his toes to his hip, there was a tiny bit of movement in his left leg.

His wife, Loretta, and their three sons - Kris, 13; Jon, 11; and T.J., 7 - took it all as a gift. Tom took them as beginnings and spent the rest of the year laboring every day for the return of movement and feeling.

“I have no doubt that I will eventually be out of this chair,” said Higgins, 38.

For the past year, he has worn a bracelet on one wrist. Woven into the strands are four small beads that spell HOPE. He won’t take it off for anything.

He has therapy seven times a week and then he and Loretta work on his body at home. It is their full-time job, they say. It has paid dividends.

Tom’s speech is now fluid and full. The accident paralyzed his chest muscles and took his voice. He had to learn to flex his diaphragm and force air over his vocal cords for words. When he started, he spoke between gasps, like a man who has nearly drowned.

Enough movement has returned in his right arm that he’s trying to use a joystick to drive his wheelchair. He can make a tiny kick with one leg. He can move a few fingers in one hand.

He can stand with the help of a therapist. But without feeling, he must watch himself in a mirror to stay balanced.

He’s been able to feed himself with a special device. But this is what he must focus on to get a single banana slice into his mouth: Move arm back; contract bicep; bend wrist; contract chest muscle; pull arm back again; bend elbow and bend wrist.

“It is mentally and physically exhausting,” Higgins said.

All the while, his family has remained moored to his side, keeping him afloat. His children brush his teeth. His wife gets him out of bed with a hydraulic lift. He is dependent on them for everything.

“For something like this to happen, you could see how it could strain a marriage or a family,” Higgins said. “But all I’ve seen is it strengthen the bonds.”

Outside of Tom’s rehabilitation, one of the family’s biggest jobs is trying to figure out how to say thanks to a community that is still sending help and prayers.

Individuals and groups have done everything from dropping off notes of encouragement to remodeling the family’s house so Tom could come home. Loretta writes thank you notes. Tom speaks at schools. They can’t say thanks enough.

“Before the accident I never thought about this stuff,” Tom said. “But little things - just a card saying `We haven’t forgotten you’ - mean so much.”

While having much to be grateful for, there is also fear. They are afraid Tom’s insurance won’t continue to cover his therapy. They are afraid of him getting sick. In its paralysis, the only warnings Higgins’ body gives of illness is a fever and high blood pressure. If he gets a sore on his body, it’s up to Loretta to spot it.

“My biggest fear is that I might not identify something,” she said. “Talk about feeling helpless.”

The couple hadn’t given much thought about how to celebrate New Year’s Day 2001. Just hearing the question made them go silent for a while.

“I wonder. Should I get in the van and go to the park around 2:30 and reflect?” Higgins said.

Loretta has already visited the hill where Tom was injured. She went alone two months ago. She prayed for healing.

“I suspect we’ll be surrounded by our friends,” Loretta said. Like every day, the Higgins family will focus on what they have and be thankful for what gifts have returned to Tom.

One morning this summer, Higgins woke and asked Loretta to hold his hand to her face. Feeling had returned to his fingertips. He felt the smoothness of her skin for the first time since the accident.

“You have no idea,” Higgins said, “of how much we take for granted.”