Franklin's Hunter Garstin, 15, shows remarkable improvement 100 days after getting hurt during a match
Hunter Garstin works with his
occupational therapist Patty Antcliff at The Shepherd Center in Atlanta, Ga. on
Friday Feb. 21, 2014. Garstin, a freshman at Independence High School in
Franklin, suffered a catastrophic injury during a high school wrestling match in
December 2013, which left him a paralyzed from the neck down. In just two months
time, Garstin has regained function in his arms, but does not yet have full
feeling or functionality in his fingers or legs.
ATLANTA — If Hunter Garstin gets the chance to wrestle again — if his body and his parents cooperate — he will.
But the 15-year-old Franklin resident
realizes that’s a long way off.
The Independence High
School freshman suffered a spinal cord injury at a wrestling tournament 100
days ago. He was initially paralyzed from the neck down, but he has regained
full use of his arms and partial use of his hands. He can manually operate a
wheelchair and is working toward walking again.
“I want to get back out there,” Hunter
said between rehabilitation sessions at the Shepherd Center, one of the top
facilities in the country. “I’ve got to see what my physical condition is.
“My dad says, ‘It’s ultimately your
decision, it wouldn’t be fair to stop you,’ but I don’t think they’ll let me.
It’s hard to tell because it’s still so early.”
That he would even consider wrestling
again speaks volumes about him and the sport that he just took up as an
eighth-grader.
“Wrestlers just have something unique,”
said Christian Garstin, Hunter’s father and a former wrestler at Brentwood
Academy and Appalachian State. “Just with having the strength and the will, the
determination, the drive that wrestlers have. I’ve seen that pay off more for
him through this whole process than anything he could get from any other
sport.
“I’ve never seen him more focused and more
determined and work harder than he has to get out of that chair. There are two
options: Walk out, or roll out. He’s decided he’s going to walk out. His work
ethic has inspired me.”
It also has helped Hunter’s mother, Emily
Garstin, a former Brentwood Academy wrestling cheerleader, as she tries to
encourage her son.
“It’s heartbreaking to watch somebody so
young have to work and struggle so hard with something we take for granted,”
Emily Garstin said. “It’s still tough, 2½ months later. But watching him
persevere through that is an amazing feeling in the opposite direction, one I
wouldn’t get to see or feel if this hadn’t happened.
“It’s inspiring to watch all these kids
and the way they support each other. It’s something not many people get to see.
I try to focus on that and not Hunter’s struggle.”
How he got here
Hunter and his dad were caught off guard
by the injury — and its severity — that took place during a tournament Dec. 7 at
Huntsville High School.
“I had my head down and I wasn’t supposed
to,” said Hunter, who weighed in at 121 pounds that day and was wrestling at
126. “We (he and his opponent) were pushing on each other. I stepped back and my
heel got caught in the mat. I fell backward, landed on my butt and all his
weight came down on top of me.
“I didn’t think anything of it. I didn’t
think it was that bad. I couldn’t move anything from the neck down. But I
thought I was going to wake up and everything was going to be better.”
Christian Garstin said he was about 15
feet away.
“I had my camera and tripod set up on the
corner of the mat. It happened right in front of me. It happened so fast, I
didn’t even think there was an injury there.
“He was having trouble breathing; it was
labored. I remember saying to him, ‘Breathe in through your nose and out through
your mouth, you just got the wind knocked out of you.’
“That’s truly what I thought. The trainer
said, ‘He can’t feel his legs,’ but even at that point, I honestly wasn’t
worried about anything. I thought, ‘Now we’re looking at a stinger (a temporary
nerve injury), we’ve got to go through the motions, ride in an ambulance and go
to the hospital.’ I was joking with him about it being my first time riding in
an ambulance.
“I didn’t think it was anything. You can’t
tell from the video. There’s nothing you saw that said, ‘That’s bad.’ ”
Hunter underwent emergency surgery that
night to fuse the C-6 — which had been dislocated — and C-7 vertebrae at the
base of the neck.
“We went into the emergency room thinking
he was going to get an X-ray and go home,” Christian Garstin said. “All of a
sudden he’s getting surgery.
“I don’t know what it’s like to not be
able to feel anything. It wasn’t something I could just fix. I couldn’t put a
Band-Aid on it, pat him on his butt and send him back out.”
Six days after the injury, Hunter was
transported from Huntsville Hospital to Shepherd, on the north side of
Atlanta.
Making progress
Garstin was an inpatient at Shepherd until
Feb. 28. Since then he has been an outpatient there Monday through Friday.
Everything has been geared toward Hunter
becoming more independent. His daily therapy includes occupational, physical and
recreational sessions and goes longer than a typical day at school.
“He started in a power wheelchair; … he’s
progressed to a manual wheelchair where he’s pushing a chair around all day
long,” said his counselor at Shepherd, Cheryl Linden. “He started working on
functional skills like feeding and dressing and bathing, being able to transfer
himself in and out of bed and on and off the (therapy) mat.
“He can feed himself, brush his teeth,
dress himself. It just takes him a lot longer. Fine motor skills where he has to
utilize his fingers in more finite ways are very difficult.”
Fridays are often less structured. Along
with some occupational therapy, a handful of patients will gather in the teen
room. They play air hockey or the “Rock Band” video game. They play ladder ball
in the hallway or shoot pool in an adjacent room. Activities help with the
patients’ recovery while allowing them to spend time in a less intense
setting.
Hunter tends to play air hockey, in
keeping with his competitive nature.
Shepherd occupational therapist Patty
Antcliff said Hunter’s background as an athlete has allowed him to progress more
quickly. From being able to only slightly lift his arms after the surgery and
being able to flex his wrists upon his arrival at Shepherd, he can now lift both
arms and is able to sign his name as well as text.
“I think from being a wrestler, he has an
understanding and awareness of where his body is in space,” she said.
An aspiring marine biologist, Hunter was
always big on swimming and running and had played recreational basketball. That
was before he followed the footsteps of his dad and his cousins Franklin and
Robert Garstin — wrestlers at Montgomery Bell Academy and Father Ryan.
“I probably wouldn’t be eager for him to
participate in any sport right now,” Emily Garstin said. “Whether I would let
him wrestle again is not a good question for me right now, but if he wanted to,
I would let him.”
According to the National Center for
Catastrophic Injury Research, which monitors high school and collegiate
athletics, there were 62 catastrophic injuries (brain or spinal cord) in high
school wrestling from 1982 to 2011. Of those, two were fatal. There were 38 that
were non-fatal, with the athlete sustaining permanent severe functional
disability, and 22 that were severe, but with no permanent functional
disability.
By comparison, high school football
reported 769 catastrophic injuries for the same period — 115 fatal, 341
non-fatal and 313 severe.
Over that period, the number of
catastrophic injuries per 100,000 participants was significantly less for
wrestling (0.03, 0.54, 0.31) than for football (0.29, 0.87, 0.80).
Support system
Within 24 hours of his injury, a Facebook
page had been created — Prayers for Hunter Garstin — by Hunter’s former
stepfather, Roger White, and Sheri Lacy, a friend of Emily’s. The page has more than
17,000 likes.
When Hunter was an inpatient, there was
hardly an inch of wall space in his room at Shepherd that wasn’t covered with a
card, poster, sticker or some sort of well-wishing effort. A poster from the
ceiling to the floor noting Duke’s appearance in the Chick-Fil-A Bowl hung to
the left of his bed, and Alabama football memorabilia signed by Nick Saban and
his wife are among the keepsakes.
“I had no idea just how much support I
had,” he said. “I heard when I was in ICU (at Huntsville), there were lines of
people waiting to see me. All the cards have been coming in, pulling me through
and giving me hope.”
From amateurs such as former Father Ryan
standout Michael Hooker, now at Chattanooga, to professionals such as Lex Luger,
wrestlers have come to spend time with Hunter at Shepherd.
“We’ve had a ton of really inspirational
people,” Hunter said. “It’s not just the people that have been through. It’s the
other patients here. We’ve all been through it. We push each other every day, to
get as good as we can.”
Emily Garstin has taken a leave of absence
as a kindergarten teacher at Pearre Creek Elementary School in Franklin and
stays primarily with Hunter. Christian Garstin, a Nashville attorney, typically
spends long weekends in Atlanta.
“I don’t really know what to expect with
the costs at this point,” Emily Garstin said. “Just his inpatient stay at
Shepherd has been $2,500 a day.”
Once the family’s insurance coverage is
maxed out, the Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association’s catastrophic
insurance coverage kicks in. There is a $10K deductible and a maximum payout of
$350,000 over five years, executive director Bernard Childress said.
Also, more than $10,000 has
been raised through various local fundraising efforts, according to
Independence parent Kim Little. Donations to the Hunter Garstin Benefit Fund can
be made at any area Regions bank.
Hunter’s bedroom and bathroom at his home
in Franklin are being renovated, with ramps and lifts being added to make it
wheelchair-accessible. Much of the work is being donated, Emily said.
The toe
Hunter arrived at Shepherd with what is
referred to as a complete injury — with no sensation or voluntary movement below
the level of the injury.
As the swelling in the spinal cord
decreases, function can return. He now is considered to have an incomplete
injury, which would remain his status regardless of how much more movement he
regains.
But it’s the voluntary movement in the
second toe of his left foot that had everyone excited on Feb. 17.
He has since experienced further
voluntary, though sporadic, movement in the third and fourth toes of his left
foot and his quadriceps and glutes.
Counselor Linden said movement may
continue to return with no rhyme or reason, in no specific pattern.
Of late, Hunter has gained sensation over
most of his body.
“He can feel when you touch him and
massage him and tickle his feet,” Emily Garstin said.
The goal is to be home by the middle of
April.
“There’s something coming down there,
something moving,” Hunter said. “Getting that is a blessing. It gave me hope and
confidence that this won’t be permanent, that there’s more to
come.”