newjerseynewsroom.com

BY BOB HOLT

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

"Believe" is more than a motto for paralyzed Rutgers football player Eric LeGrand.

"I believe that I will walk one day," LeGrand said, in his first interview since his injury. "I believe it. God has a plan for me and I know it's not to be sitting here all the time. I know he has something planned better for me."

NJ.com reports the ESPN segment, taped at Kessler Institute for Rehabilitation in West Orange, showed LeGrand sitting in a wheelchair dressed in Rutgers gear. His mother, Karen, his sister, Nicole, and Rutgers coach Greg Schiano were also interviewed.

LeGrand has showed astounding progress since the injury. Six days after surgery, he moved his shoulders for the first time, according to ESPN New York. When he was removed from a ventilator for the first time the week of Thanksgiving, doctors were cautious about how long LeGrand would be able to breathe on his own.

"The doctors said I might be able to breathe for a minute," LeGrand said. "I lasted an hour and a half."

According to scarletknights.com, doctors initially believed that he would not regain any feeling or movement below the neck, but LeGrand has exceeded their expectations. His paralysis has been diagnosed as incomplete, and he has been breathing on his own since late November.

After nine hours of emergency surgery to stabilize LeGrand's spine, doctors initially gave him a 0-5 percent chance of regaining neurologic function. LeGrand's mother, Karen, said that she never told Eric that information.

"I didn't want to hear that two percent of the people with this injury can walk, I didn't want to hear about percentages because my son, in all honesty, is not a percentage," Karen said. "My son is my son. ... And nobody knows him, nobody knows the will that he has, nobody knows the faith that we have."

"All of these people are working on your son and he's laying there and you're standing there totally helpless," Karen LeGrand said. "I just wanted him to see my face, to know that I'm right here, that Mom is right here. To just hold on, it's going to be OK. But I had a feeling of helplessness. There's nothing I can do to fix this."

"Sometimes you tear up because you miss your friends," LeGrand said. "Just think back on everything you just start tearing up a little bit. But then you know that you have to get yourself together otherwise I'll be stuck here if I ever get down. So I won't let myself get down."

He believes.