TULSA WORLD HOMEPAGE | Saturday, November 21, 2009 | WIRELESS
CONTACT US | SUBSCRIBER SERVICES | SIGN IN SIGN OUT | MY PROFILE PAGE | MY ACCOUNT

Follow us on Facebook Follow us on Twitter Follow us on RSS
Sports Extra!
Follow us on ...
OU | OSU | TU | ORU | HIGH SCHOOLS | COLLEGE FOOTBALL | COLLEGE BASKETBALL | NFL | FANTASY | OUTDOORS | GOLF | PROS | ALL


SPORTS EXTRA BLOGS
    Sports Editor
Mike Strain
Sports Columnist
Dave Sittler
The Picker
Entertaining & Infuriating

LOCAL PROS

ALL SPORTS

PHOTOS & VIDEOS

OUTDOORS

FIND A STORY

EMAIL ALERTS

SOCIAL MEDIA

RSS FEEDS

CONTACT US
BUY PHOTOS & PAGES

TULSA WORLD

ADVERTISE ON SPORTS EXTRA

Newspaper View Newspaper View      Print this story Print      Email this story Email     
Share      Bookmark Bookmark

Wilson tackles his recovery
Sooner vows to walk after devastating crash.

OU's Corey Wilson signs a fan's poster during OU Media Day on Friday. Wilson is confined to a wheelchair following an automobile accident in February. CORY YOUNG/Tulsa World

 
By JOHN E. HOOVER World Sports Writer
Published: 8/9/2009  2:33 AM
Last Modified: 8/9/2009  11:06 PM
Related story: OU Notebook: Quick start.

NORMAN — When Corey Wilson woke up in the grassy Interstate 35 median that sunny day in late February, he listened to the shouts, the reassurances, the cries and, eventually, the sirens. He listened to the silence.

Since the day his sport utility vehicle rolled over and tossed him out — breaking his back and his neck, severing his spinal cord and confining him to a wheelchair — Wilson has listened to family and friends tell him they love him, to doctors tell him he'll never walk again, and to therapists telling him he can get through another painful rehab.

He's listened to his coaches tell jokes or football stories over breakfast in the hospital bed each morning. He's listened to his Oklahoma Sooner teammates tell him every day they're with him, no matter what.

Corey Wilson also listens to his faith, and, ultimately, to himself.

"By the end of the season, definitely, I'll walk out of that tunnel," he said. "I want to lead the team on the field."

Wilson was once a promising wide receiver on the OU football team. After spending a year in redshirt and another as a backup, it seemed his opportunity to play was finally upon him: The Sooners graduated a pair of three-year starters in Juaquin Iglesias and Manuel Johnson.

But
two days before spring practice started — two days before Wilson hoped to establish a foothold on the wideout depth chart — his life changed, and his football career ended.

Wilson was driving home to the Dallas suburb of Carrollton when two vehicles in front of him "kind of clipped each other," he said. "That's kind of what caused everything."

Wilson's memory remains of those few seconds of horror. It wasn't blocked out, and it hasn't faded.

"I was looking in my rearview mirror at the same time to try to get in the next lane, and I looked down and everything had just stopped. So the first thing I tried to do was avoid the car," he said. "I remember flipping, and I remember hitting my head and waking up on the grass in the middle of the highway."

He also remembers being in Oklahoma City's OU Medical Center, fighting for his life, and the first moment that doctors told him he likely would never walk again.

Wilson says it didn't take long for that news to sink in.

"A couple minutes after that, it was just, 'OK, that's what they tell you, they're wrong,' " he said.

Now, 163 days later, Wilson said he goes to sleep each night wondering if somehow he'll be better in the morning. Instead, he wakes up, looks at his wheelchair and comprehends the challenge that lies ahead for someone who is paralyzed from the waist down. But he doesn't just greet the challenge. He doesn't just embrace it. He attacks it.

"He is an amazingly hard worker," said Wilson's physical therapist, Amy Thiessen. "Sometimes I have to slow him down, like, 'Wait, wait.' "

Wilson's original goal was to lead his team onto Owen Field before the Sept. 12 home opener against Idaho State. He has pushed that back to the Nov. 28 home finale against Oklahoma State. Don't count him out.

Thiessen works with Wilson four days a week, up to two hours a day, at the OU Health Sciences Center's Department of Rehabilitation Sciences in Oklahoma City.

She is positive and encouraging, but said she tries to remain impartial, somewhere between doctors' declaration that Wilson is stuck in the chair and Wilson's guarantee that he'll walk someday soon.

Yet her report on Wilson's progress is encouraging.

"I think he'll walk in some capacity," she said. "I mean, how much, how normal it'll look, that remains to be seen. But I'm pretty positive if he wants to walk some, he's going to find a way to walk some. That's the kind of guy he is."

Thiessen assists Wilson's walking efforts herself, and she also works with him on an apparatus called a Lokomat Robotic Gait Training System, on which he wears a harness suspended from above and moves along a treadmill. Thiessen said Wilson performs much of the work himself.

"It's all synched through computers with the treadmill, but we can make it do as much or as little to assist the person as they need," Thiessen said. "Corey does about 60-75 percent of the work himself every session. The better he gets, the more we back the machine off."

Medical research has reached a point where a spinal cord injury is no longer a life sentence in a wheelchair. Some, with surgery and intense rehabilitation, can begin to heal. In this case, even a partial recovery is a victory.

"Right now he has some movement coming back," Thiessen said. "Obviously, we're going to maximize that as much as we can. I don't know if full recovery, like you and I, is going to happen, with the amount of trauma he suffered."

She said some recoveries reach the point of "use it or lose it," meaning without daily rehab and other activities such as stretching and assisted movement, the healing stops.

That won't happen if Wilson has anything to say about it. He said he sees progress with every session.

"Yes, every day, I feel different feelings," he said. "I try to move my legs and I can see little muscles firing up. Every day it's something different. People ask me when I want to walk, I'm gonna say tomorrow, because every day I wake up, I feel like God's going to give me a chance to walk."

Wilson said daily visits from family, teammates and coaches — Bob Stoops and Jay Norvell, his position coach at OU, brought breakfast each morning while he was in the hospital — got him through the tough times.

"Big time," Wilson said. "It meant a lot. (Stoops) would come in there, and the nurses would come in there and bug him for autographs, but he never let that stop him from coming back the next day."

Stoops also has speeded Wilson's return to normalcy by buying, through his Champions Foundation, a new, specially equipped SUV with hand controls for the accelerator and brake.

"It's the biggest blessing," Wilson said.

Thiessen said Wilson is "definitely is mature beyond his years. He really has a poise and a composure that you don't see in a lot of 20- or 21-year-olds. He's very poised and hard-working and confident in himself, but at the same time, he's very humble. He's able to laugh at himself, which a lot of people in his situation don't have much of a sense of humor.

"He's amazing."

John E. Hoover 581-8384
john.hoover@tulsaworld.com
By JOHN E. HOOVER World Sports Writer

Newspaper View Newspaper View      Print this story Print      Email this story Email     
Share      Bookmark Bookmark


COMMENTS 
      Add your comment Show: Most Recent Comment First

12 comments have been made for this team so far. Tell us what you think below!
Report Comment Reporting Comments

If you see a comment that violates our terms and conditions, please help us by clicking the "Report this Comment" link next to a comment. That will alert the web staff to review the comment. Thank you.  -- Web Editor Jason Collington
 

 
Some reader comments for this story were copied from "Coming Sunday: OU's Corey Wilson vows to walk again," which was published on 8/8/2009.
Report Comment
manofGod, tulsa (8/8/2009 9:51:49 PM)
great inspirational story. way to have faith. God bless you
Report Comment
Bullhead, Nicut (8/8/2009 11:05:14 PM)
Go Corey, Go! My prayer is for you to do what is in your heart to do. May God's Blessings pour down on you.
Report Comment
hootie, Tulsa (8/9/2009 1:33:40 AM)
I forgot what all happened and I know this is a stupid questiobn but was he wearing a seat belt?
Report Comment
Herbert Rogers, Jenks (8/9/2009 9:01:28 AM)
Yes, I agree..this IS great inspirational story, yet I happen to also know, if this young man had been driving the Speed Limit or even Under-the-Speed-Limit( God forbid !)...
I guarantee you, he'd still be playing ball!
Whether it's I-35 to Dallas...or I40 East (which is the Worst !)...If you drive the Limit or under...it DOESN'T MATTER who "clips" in front of you...you're gonna be fine.
So, all you young, testostorone-filled,
ball-players...let this be a "heads-up" for you.
Incidentally, there IS NO Emergency, so slow-down!
Report Comment
TheFoundOgle, Mid-town (8/9/2009 9:24:02 AM)
C'mon Herb, seriously?!?! This could happen to any one of us. People get hurt or killed in car accidents, even at 35 mph.

This isn't about football, this is a kid who only wants to WALK again.
Report Comment
T!ger,, Tulsa (8/9/2009 10:11:35 AM)
"to doctors tell him he'll never walk again,"

If he prays over this and truly believes that he is healed in Jesus name, He WILL be able to walk again! May God Bless you Corey!
Report Comment
T!ger,, Tulsa (8/9/2009 10:13:43 AM)
Herb,

have some feelings for the players! a lot of things happen to us. It is not his fault. Likw Ogle said this is about a guy thats wants to be able to WALK again!!
Report Comment
T!ger,, Tulsa (8/9/2009 10:13:58 AM)
for the player*
Report Comment
Herbert Rogers, Jenks (8/9/2009 10:52:04 AM)
When I'm so tempted to go-back and edit/explain my above comments...I look at (them) and think, "no, I shouldn't have to..(they'll) stand-on-their own"...
I log-in 400 miles each day, and have just a bit more time to observe drivers and their habits.
Football players-or no football players.
AS I SAID...this IS an inspirational story!
Report Comment
BOOMER! SOONER!, (8/9/2009 1:33:15 PM)
You have no idea how close the two cars that clipped were in front of his car. Even if he was going 50, if the cars that screeched to a halt in front of him were very close, there's almost no way an accident could be avoided.

Some things are just outside our control. Corey Wilson deserves the prayers of everyone, not cynical criticism.
Report Comment
ourufnek99, (8/9/2009 5:55:19 PM)
I think he missed his chance to make a great impact here. Forget the speed, Wilson's car rolled, and so did the other vehicle that he hit, the difference the other guy was wearing a seatbelt. Wilson has a opportunity to help others avoid this same situation. He should focus on getting kids to wear their seat belts.
Report Comment
cTUnes24, (8/9/2009 9:43:07 PM)
First off there is one big piece of false information in this story. The car that clipped the other car.. wait for it.. was his.. there was not a "mystery car" that drove from the accident. he clipped the red truck driving 80 MPH thats why there was red paint on his hubcaps. Im sorry I cannot call it an inspirational story whenever the truth is not being told. that's why his SUV is in the osbi crime lab being investigated because the OHP wouldn't do their job just because of who was involved in the wreck
 

 
Add Your Comment 
In order to post a comment on this article, you must sign in to Tulsaworld.com. If you do not have a site account, you can create an account for free.

 
Post Your Comment
 



Home | About Tulsa World | Advertise With Us | Privacy | Usage Agreement | FAQ and Help | Contact Us | Today's Headlines
Copyright © 2009, World Publishing Co. All rights reserved.