Buffalo, N.Y. – Patricia Dugas reached out, touched Kevin Everett’s arm and asked her son if he could feel her hand. Everett – lying in a hospital bed, barely awake and hooked to life support systems – nodded yes.
“I can’t even explain it to you; he’s like a miracle,” Dugas said Wednesday, her voice breaking in a telephone interview.
Doctors aren’t calling it a miracle yet, but they expressed “cautious optimism” now that the Buffalo Bills’ reserve tight end is showing significant signs of improvement.
Everett can wiggle his toes, bend his hip, move his ankles, elevate and kick his leg, as well as extend his elbows and slightly flex his biceps, said Dr. Kevin Gibbons, the supervisor of neurosurgery at Buffalo’s Millard Fillmore Gates Hospital.
But Everett, who’s breathing on his own after being taken off a respirator Wednesday, cannot move his hands after sustaining a life-threatening spinal cord injury.
“There are some answers now. And many more questions remain,” Gibbons said. “The patient’s made significant improvement. But no one should think the functions in his legs is close to normal. Not even close.
“If you ask me, ‘Would he walk again?’ I would tell you that I wouldn’t bet against it. ”
Bills orthopedic surgeon Andrew Cappuccino improved his prognosis, too, saying he’s “cautiously slightly more optimistic.”
That’s a big improvement from Monday, when Cappuccino said Everett’s chances for a full neurologic recovery were “bleak, dismal.”
Dugas left her home in Port Arthur, Texas, on Monday not knowing whether her son would ever walk again. Everything changed Tuesday, when she watched her son move his limbs and feel her touch when he was partially awakened from a sedated state.
