After an unexpected injury, an athlete makes a second chance.
A BLACK FRAME hangs on the wall of Reggie Brezeault’s stairwell. It holds a Charlotte Checkers hockey jersey, cut with scissors down the sides. A plaque recalls the date his career as an athlete ended: December 4, 1999.
As if the pain he feels each day isn’t reminder enough.
That night, Brezeault’s minor league hockey team, the Checkers, had a home game. He was on o offense, playing left wing. As he skated down the ice of Independence Arena, now Bojangles’ Coliseum, he neared the corner. An opponent chased him down, lifted his stick across his chest and shoved Brezeault, cross-checking him from behind. Brezeault’s head hit the boards, then he hit the ground. He was unconscious. He recalls coming to in an ambulance as paramedics rushed him to the trauma center at Carolinas Medical Center. He couldn’t feel his limbs. He was temporarily paralyzed. It was reminiscent of the injury Travis Roy, a Boston University student, suffered from a hit in 1995. Roy was paralyzed, and still is today. The similarities rushed through Brezeault’s mind in his moments of consciousness.
When he woke again, he was in the trauma center. Medics had cut through his gear, from his shoulder pads to his padded shorts. As the hospital staff prepped him for surgery, hoping to relieve the four bulging discs pressed against Brezeault’s nerves, the feeling came back. He could feel everything.
The frame in the living room is a visual reminder of that day, but even when Brezeault can’t see it, he doesn’t forget.
“I feel it every day,” he says. The left side of his body is stiff, and it takes a morning routine of stretching and working out to move around normally. Some days, it takes more than half an hour on a treadmill for the stiffness to lessen. To Brezeault, that’s just the cost of being an athlete.
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