Pat Rummerfield - Injury and Rehabilitation

Injury and Rehabilitation

On September 20, 1974, at age 21, Rummerfield and a friend were in a near fatal car accident while traveling at (135 miles per hour (217 km/h)). He has admitted he had been drinking before the accident. He was paralyzed and given less than 72 hours to live. While surviving despite his doctor's expectations, he had fractured all his ribs, broken his neck in four places, shattered his collar bone, suffered massive head injuries, and had one of his eyes placed back into its socket. As he was unable to move from the neck down, his chances of long-term survival were not good, and doctors recommended he be sent to a convalescent home. He decided not to follow the doctors' orders, and chose intensive rehabilitation. While learning to operate a wheelchair with his mouth he experienced his first rehabilitative breakthrough. He recalls, "I was lying in bed one night, thinking how much I loved to play basketball and dreamed of driving a race car one day when my big toe moved." He spent the next three years learning to walk and to use his hands again.

Over the next fourteen years, he struggled with balance and coordination problems caused by the accident. He eventually regained the ability to jog and ride a bicycle without falling down. He went through six knee surgeries and total reconstruction of his right ankle and right wrist. To this day, nerve damage to the right side of his body has left him with an off-kilter gait.

Doctors have partially credited his recovery to his commitment to a then daily regimen of intensive physical therapy, including weightlifting, jumprope and stationary bicycle. However, this level of recovery from quadriplegia was at that time unknown.

After seventeen years of intensive rehabilitation, he is now capable of essentially normal walking, despite having over 85% of his spinal cord destroyed at C-4.

Rummerfield is sometimes described as "the world's only fully recovered quadriplegic". While his physical mobility is essentially normal, Rummerfield still experiences loss of sensation in his lower legs, impaired bowel and bladder function, reduced strength in his hands, and difficulty regulating body temperature.