When a high school lacrosse player suffered a traumatic spine injury in the middle of a game, doctors thought he may never walk again.
But on Thursday — just three weeks after the Fort Lauderdale teen was airlifted across the state to receive surgery and therapy — he shocked doctors and therapists.
Chase Lalonde, 16, stood up from his wheelchair in the lobby of Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital in Hollywood and walked.
Lalonde was playing for Westminster Academy in a March 2 game in Immokalee, near Florida’s west coast. About five minutes into the game, he was hit and fell to the ground. His coach rushed over when he was unable to get back up and heard Lalonde’s terrifying words: “Coach, I can’t move.”
Lalonde was stabilized and flown to Memorial Regional Hospital in Hollywood for hours of trauma surgery. Following surgery, he went through weeks of physical therapy at Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital.
Lalonde said immediately after he was injured, he was fearful, but standing in the hospital lobby on Thursday to the applause of nurses, doctors and family, he said he felt relief.
“When I first moved, it wasn’t controlled, but when I could slightly move my body, I felt happy,” he said.
Doctors said Lalonde suffered a blow to the back of his neck between his shoulder pads and helmet, which created a herniated disc and rendered him an incomplete quadriplegic.
“Incomplete quadriplegia” describes partial damage to the spinal cord. Since Lalonde was able to move his fingers after his injury, doctors considered it incomplete quadriplegia.
Dr. Andrew Rosenthal, director of trauma at Memorial Regional Hospital, described the day Lalonde was brought into the hospital.
“In the trauma world, we see a lot of devastating injuries,” he said. “There’s nothing more rewarding than seeing someone who’s recovered nearly completely from something that made us more worried than we could have possibly been.”
Rosenthal said there are few things that worry trauma doctors more than spine or brain injuries.
“The call that we got said that Chase was being flown over from the west coast of Florida with incomplete quadriplegia from a devastating spinal cord injury, and when he arrived to us it was as bad as it looked in terms of his ability to move his arms or his legs. It made us immediately concerned that this would be a permanent quadriplegic,” he said. “This is the best possible outcome we could have hoped for.”
Rosenthal said they treat injuries like this about once per sports season
“This is not uncommon with contact sports like rugby football and lacrosse,” he said. “It’s rare for people to have this good of recovery this quickly. The pace of his recovery as well as the degree of near-complete recovery were what is most remarkable.”
His mother, Amy Lalonde, said through tears she did not know the doctors thought her son may not walk again.
“I’m crying because this is the first time that I heard that they thought he would be quadriplegic, and I’m grateful that none of you told us that,” she said. “I think it might have made a difference in how we moved forward. We never thought for a minute — they just told us that he’s a 16-year-old boy and they had every reason to believe that if he put his mind to it, he could recover, so that’s what we believed.”
Westminster Academy lacrosse coach Matt Salvatoriello said he was shocked when he ran onto the field and Lalonde told him he could not move.
“I was not expecting, when I went out there, to have my captain, one of my players, say that,” he said.
“We look forward to having him back on the field and having him back so he can have some normalcy back in his life. It’s very gratifying seeing him here, but I’m looking forward to seeing him take the next steps and being able to acclimate himself back into his life because I know that’s what he wants.”
Without hesitation, Lalonde said his first choice to attend college is Florida State University.
“I’m going to try to work my body a little bit until I can play next year because I really do want to play again,” he said. “It’s a really fun sport and I’m just going to work hard so I can get into the college I want to get into. Until then, I’m just going to relax with my friends and hang out.”