Giant Steps : Dennis Byrd Has His Doctor ‘Astounded’ by Walking Three Months After Injury

NEW YORK — The boardroom door on the fifth floor at Mount Sinai Medical Center opened Thursday and Dennis Byrd walked in.

Walked right in.

Supported by crutches, trailed by his physical therapist and his wife, the football player who suffered a broken neck on the field in November stepped slowly, perhaps 15 feet toward a chair and sat down.

Byrd, the former New York Jet defensive lineman who was paralyzed in a collision on the field at Giants Stadium, is not supposed to be walking. Not this soon. Not with this kind of injury.

But on the day before he was to leave the hospital and return home to Tulsa, Okla., Byrd shook hands with his doctor, then stood on his own behind a podium to celebrate the unexpected recovery from his spinal cord injury.

“I am astounded,” said Dr. Kristjan Ragnarsson, chairman of the department of rehabilitation medicine at Mount Sinai. “He’s beaten the odds many times over.”

Then it was Byrd’s turn to speak. There was a microphone on a table in front of where he sat. That would not do. Slowly, he stood and stepped to the podium.

“Well,” he said, letting the word out slowly, “I’m proud to stand

before you today.” Then he paused. “Quite frankly, I’m glad to be standing anywhere today.”

Then Byrd went through a four-page prepared statement, thanking the people who had helped him reach this point, doctors and staff at Mount Sinai, other patients.

Twice, he choked up, stopping to collect himself as his wife, Angela, wiped away a tear.

“I don’t know how to thank them for what they’ve done,” he said. “I thank God for sending these people my way.”

Again, he tried for humor. “You’d think I was accepting an Academy Award,” he said.

And as he made his way back to the chair, the professionals in the room did an unprofessional thing. They applauded.

Byrd had said from the beginning that he would walk again.

“I knew I could do it,” he said. “This was something I felt in my heart. It was something I set my goals to. I’m grateful and thankful.

“The most meaningful steps for me were those with the crutches. They meant a lot of freedom. There was no water assisting me with gravity, no parallel bars. It was the freedom to walk where I want to walk and do what I want to do.

“It feels great to recapture a part of life I want so dearly back. One day, I’ll throw the crutches aside. That’s my next goal.”

Byrd said the steps he took into the boardroom were hard because he was nervous.

“It was difficult, very difficult,” he said of the short trip. “I’ve walked further than that with greater ease.”

Byrd said one of the moments of his rehabilitation that will stick with him occurred in a hotel room with his wife and mother-in-law.

“It was a Sunday night,” he said. “I stood and said, ‘Let’s go for a walk.’ They stood on each side and I walked from one room to the other and back. That was very special.”

As Byrd took those tentative steps, his 2-year-old daughter, Ashtin, watched. Angela Byrd recalled the moment. “She said, ‘Are your legs better, Daddy? Are your legs better?’ ”