By Alan Burke
SWAMPSCOTT — Tom Smith, 20, won the bad luck lottery.
Or so it might seem. Smith has a very different take on the chain of events that saw him paralyzed — twice. Doctors call it a once-in-a-million thing, the first injury having nothing to do with causing the second.
Today, in the lower extremities, Smith has feeling only in his toes. It could be months before the swelling around his spinal cord fully subsides. Then he'll have a better idea whether he will ever walk again.
"It's really a waiting game," Smith says.
The Pingree graduate doesn't fault anyone or bemoan his fate. Offer sympathy, and he recalls people he's met along the way — some, he says, can only control their wheelchairs with their tongues.
"I don't sweat the small stuff," Smith says.
Playing hockey, hoping to win a scholarship, he was a hard charger. At the Boston summer tournament in 2008, the Swampscott native crashed into the goalie and careened, out of control, head first into the boards.
The results were devastating: he suffered trauma to his neck and spinal cord, and his brain stem was dislocated. He lost significant feeling in his legs.
"I'm a tough guy and I've been around for a while, but that was a really scary experience," Coach Mike Adessa said. As the days passed, he found himself praying for Smith's recovery.
"My parents were told to look for an assisted-living facility," Smith says.
A lot of what Smith faced, however, was psychological. Paralyzed patients, adjusting to dramatically diminished circumstances, often turn to suicide. Smith, however, found plenty of support from family and friends in gaining perspective. He went to work with a vengeance, astonishing doctors and coaches with his devotion to therapy.
As he improved, recalls Buddy Taft, his Pingree coach, "Tom was out in the morning doing sprints (wearing) a parachute. He wouldn't take no for an answer, and he went into therapy that way."
Incredibly, like any hockey player, he had a goal — to get back on the ice.
Not only did he make a spectacular recovery — with the help of The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis — but this fall he decided he was ready to play again. His mother wasn't so certain and demanded OKs from his five doctors, from the Project and from a lawyer. Smith got them.
In a minor miracle, he joined the Boston Bulldogs. Smith was a hockey player again. Further, he soon began to recover his confidence. His coach compared him to Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, who gradually regained championship form after a severe injury.
"It made me feel pretty good," Smith says.
Injured again
Then, in a practice on Oct. 1, playing in Salem, N.H., Smith's skates got tangled with a teammate's. "It happens all the time," he says. Only now, his blades struck a divot on the ice. "My feet stopped, but my head didn't. ... It was a freak thing."
His head went into a lip of the boards, snapping his backbone, this time near the neck, a clean break.
Almost unbelievably, it had happened again. Several doctors would later swear that this injury was completely unrelated to the earlier one.
A helicopter airlifted him to a hospital, where Smith was given a drug that put his body into a coma, preventing further swelling that might have worsened the damage to his spinal cord. He doesn't remember much about those moments after the accident. But he does know the importance of quick action.
"They saved my life," he says.
Also to his benefit, he was in splendid shape, and muscle held the broken bones in place, preventing them from pressing on the spinal cord. "I can't believe this happened again," Smith told his father.
As he starts on the road to recovery all over again, Smith finds his biggest problem is making that psychological adjustment for the second time. Coach Taft has kept in touch and offers no doubts about his former player's dedication.
"He gives 100 percent in everything he does," Taft says. "He's one of the nicest kids I ever met. Loyal. Just a great kid."
Adjusting
The worst of Smith's disability may be the sense of missing the life that everyone his age is expected to live.
"People stare. In a wheelchair, you don't look the way society wants you to look," he says.
It hasn't stopped him from a busy round of activities, including going to football games, gatherings with friends and extensive therapy.
"As bad as it is," he says, "I still have the chance to walk again."
Even so, he's finally given up his dream of playing hockey. "Hockey's the fastest sport," he recalls wistfully. Much of his life has revolved around the game, his coaches and teammates. "I like the bond of brotherhood."
He adds. "I love hockey, but hockey doesn't love me."
Apparently, there are plenty of people who do, including his mother and father, Ken and Diane; his brother, Chris; his teammates and coaches; the Castraberti family, which will open their Prince Pizzeria in Saugus tomorrow for an already sold-out benefit to aid Tom. Comics including Lenny Clarke will volunteer their time.
"I truly believe if you have a positive attitude, it will carry you through," Smith says. "I've got to believe there is some force from God, and he's got a bigger plan for me than playing hockey. I have to believe that everything happens for a reason."
Aiming for a different kind of career, Smith knows what he wants to study and what he wants to do with his life.
"I want to do something with spinal cord patients," he says from his wheelchair, pointing out that so many are young people, often inner-city gunshot or stabbing victims. Not all get the kind of encouragement he's gotten. "I want to do something to help them."
He thinks back to the hockey rink, too, and the fathers who yell and scream over the play of their sons. It all seems pretty sad from where he sits now.
"The fact that your kids can skate and are happy and healthy," he says, "that's all that matters."
The Salem Five is accepting donations for the Thomas E. Smith Benefit Fund.
