Bills Tight End Kevin Everett Continues Miraculous Recovery From Spinal Damage
Posted September 21, 2007 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Kevin Everett’s already come much further than many assumed he would, and on Friday the Buffalo Bills tight end entered the second phase of his rehabilitation, less than two weeks after sustaining a life-threatening spinal cord injury.
Everett was transferred to Houston’s Memorial Hermann Hospital Friday, where he was wheeled into a medical centre just hours after leaving Buffalo’s Millard Fillmore Gates Hospital where he spent two weeks paralyzed from the neck down after getting hurt making a tackle in the Bills’ season opener against Denver on Sept. 9.
Initially fearing he would never walk again, doctors have since significantly upgraded their prognosis and plan to have Everett try to stand on his own in the next few days.
Dr. Barth Green, chairman of the neurological surgery department at the University of Miami School of Medicine, said doctors are confident Everett could be walking within weeks if not sooner.
“They’re very confident he’ll be walking very soon … in the next days or weeks, not months,” Green said. “I think the future for him is very bright.”
It was Green who suggested Everett continue his rehabilitation in Houston, where he makes his off-season home, saying it’s important for him to have his family and friends nearby.
“I love the Buffalo people, and I’ll hate to leave them,” Everett’s mother said Thursday. “But it’ll be good that we can be closer to home for all our family to come over and see him because they’re worried about him. … He wants to see his family, too.”
Everett’s also received impressive support from his peers, including visits from NFL Players Association executive director Gene Upshaw and NFLPA president Troy Vincent, a former teammate of Everett’s in Buffalo.
Kevin Everett of the Buffalo Bills poses for his 2007 NFL headshot at photo day in Orchard Park, New York (Photo by Getty Images).
