Dennis Byrd and Paralysis
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On November 29, 1992, a peaceful Sunday afternoon in Giants Stadium, Dennis Byrd of the New York Jets suffered a career ending injury. Dennis was sprinting up the field to sack the opposing quarterback when he ran into his teammate, Scott Mersereau. Dennis knew it was serious when he could not unstrap his chin strap from his helmet. The paramedics carefully got Dennis on a stretcher to rush him to the hospital in an ambulance. Dennis was just one of the 10,000 Americans afflicted each year by paralysis ("Tackling Spinal Trauma" 57).
The doctors took a CAT scan and an MRI scan. They found out that Dennis had fractured his fifth cervical vertebrae in his neck, one of the seven bones in the neck. Injuries to the fourth cervical vertebrae and higher are very dangerous because they can paralyze respiration, but Dennis could luckily still breathe on his own. Dennis could not move anything from his shoulders down, and he was considered quadriplegic which is the paralysis of the arms and legs.
The other form of paralysis is paraplegia which is the paralysis of the legs...