Buoniconti Must Cope Now, Hope for a Cure in the Future

Marc Buoniconti knows visitors are apprehensive when they walk into the rehabilitation center of the Jackson Memorial Hospital Complex to see him. Buoniconti sees they’re nervous, their eyes unable to meet his.

A broken neck suffered in a college football game 13 months ago very nearly killed Buoniconti. He couldn’t breathe after the injury and was on a respirator until last April. He spent nine months in the hospital’s critical care unit. Now an outpatient, he still is unable to move from the shoulders down.

But Buoniconti is starting to make something of a life that was nearly terminated that awful day last October. He is learning to cope with his injury, and at the same time working to raise funds for research he firmly believes will lead someday to a cure for himself and thousands like him.

And so, when visitors look sad, not knowing quite how to start conversation, Buoniconti says, “Hey, what’s happening? How are you? Come on over and make yourself comfortable.”

Buoniconti had enough sad days in the months immediately following his paralyzing injury. Then he told everybody there would be no more moping, no more feeling sorry for him, not from his mother Terri, his older brother Nick Jr., his father Nick Sr., the former all-pro linebacker, not from anybody he encounters from now on.

One visitor laughs uneasily when Marc tells a nurse, “I’d pinch you if I could, but ‘thank you’ will have to do.” But the one-liners keep coming and the laughter comes easier. Buoniconti was an extremely funny, extroverted young man before he broke his neck while making a tackle. Once again, he’s becoming the life of the party.

On Halloween, when another outpatient rolled in wearing a Dolphins helmet and jersey with the number of a starting defensive back, Buoniconti said aloud, “No wonder the Dolphin defense can’t stop anybody; they’ve got paraplegics playing the corner.”

Buoniconti has mastered the art of making people feel at ease. “People, when they come to see me, aren’t sure of what to expect,” he said. “They know you’re in a wheelchair, and they expect you to be sick, and they walk in feeling bad. But if you spend time here, you know that we broke the wrong bone with a big nerve inside, but the people aren’t sick.”

Buoniconti, 20, feels about as good as he could expect to right now. He gives identity to the Miami Project to Cure Paralysis, an 18-month research effort that has attracted worldwide attention from the scientific and medical communities.

A recent Monday night game between his father’s old team--the Dolphins--and the Jets was dedicated to Marc. Nick Sr. presented a check for $1 million at halftime to Dr. Barth Green, the Miami project co-founder. Marc was largely responsible for raising the money, making appearances and giving speeches whenever possible.

One hardly can imagine the Buoniconti family without football. Nick Sr. cohosts the weekly HBO show, “Inside the NFL.” Nick Jr. played at Duke. In fact, Nick Jr. was playing against Maryland and his father was in the stands at Byrd Stadium in College Park on the afternoon of Oct. 26, 1985, when Marc--playing linebacker for The Citadel--tried to tackle East Tennessee State back Herman Edwards.

Nick Jr. and Nick Sr. couldn’t have known how their lives would be changed when the public address announcer asked that they report to the press box. “I remember the whole thing,” Marc said. “I remember getting hit in the head (by Edwards’ hip) and rolling over, not being able to move. I never even lost consciousness at all.

“At first, I was so sick (in the hospital), I was just lucky to start breathing on my own. I figured if I couldn’t breathe, it just wasn’t worth it. I was bummed out, really depressed. I stayed sick from just being in the hospital, picking up all those viruses.”

He went from 208 pounds with 16-inch biceps to a low of 120 pounds, but has gone back up to 135, thanks to his mother’s cooking.

“Once I felt better physically, I wanted to be myself. I wanted my personality back.

“I can’t do everything,” he said.

“It’s hard to be in bars or some small places where you can’t fit a wheelchair. But I like to invite a lot of friends over for parties . . . . “

Buoniconti is never quite satisfied. His therapist, Jorge Cardenas, said Marc is months ahead of schedule in his rehabilitation. Buoniconti, who has been living at home less than a month and has round-the-clock nursing care, already wants to move out of his parents’ house. But the family is building a new house near the University of Miami campus, and he plans to go back to school in January to take three courses at Miami.

“I want to do my own thing,” he said. “My life is changed, of course, and that will change some things. But I don’t want people changing around their lives for me. I can’t have that. Even if they asked me, I’d say, ‘No way.’

“My mom likes to hang on to me, ‘cause she’s worried. I guess I can’t blame her,” he said. “But I asked her to go up north and be with my dad for a while (in Greenwich, Conn., where he has a business office, and in New York, where the HBO show is taped), take a 10-day vacation and don’t worry about me.”

Not too many conversations with Buoniconti get very far before curiosity intrudes. Does he still like football?

“Absolutely,” he said. “I was doing something I was supposed to be doing (when he was injured). I’d let my children play football. I’d just make sure they were checked out thoroughly.”

The Buoniconti family believes that did not happen for Marc at The Citadel. In June, the family filed suit against the school. They said Marc had complained of a sore neck in the two games before East Tennessee, but that coaches urged him to play, anyway. The suit is pending and Marc has been told not to comment. The Citadel also declined comment on the suit.

Since his injury, Buoniconti has learned that, “I have a congenitally small spinal column, like the guy Tim Lewis of Green Bay who got hurt in that Monday night game. Whew, I was watching that and I could have sworn my body jerked. I was in my room by myself and I yelled for my nurse. I thought for sure he was going to be paralyzed, but he started moving his arms and I was relieved.”

While Buoniconti is talking, he is hooked up to a machine called FES (Field Electrical Stimulation), which uses electric impulses to stimulate his calf muscle; the muscle no longer has direct connection to the brain. The peripheral nerves respond to the electrical stimulation and the muscle can contract, to build volume. A six-pound weight is attached to Buoniconti’s leg, which is moving up and down. “It’s a wonderful feeling,” he said.

It’s part of the voluntary clinical program Buoniconti goes through at least three times weekly, eight hours a day. Cardenas says Buoniconti will soon be able to “ride” the FES bicycle. All of this rehabilitation is part of the controversial Miami project.

It is an interdisciplinary research program that has brought together, among others, genetic engineers, molecular biologists, biochemists, electro-psychologists, behavioral scientists and neurologists from all over the world to try to figure out how to regenerate the spinal cord after injury.

Some members of the medical community believe it is dangerous for their peers--not to mention for the patients--to be encouraged about a possible cure.

Dr. Ake Seiger, a brain and spinal cord transplantation specialist, was recruited from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm to head the research group, and in turn is searching “all five parts of the world” for eight to 10 more scientists.

“The cure part is controversial,” Seiger said. “In principle, it is the goal for everyone here. I would be hesitant, though, to outline a timetable for a cure. It just doesn’t make any sense to speculate on a number of years. But we believe what we are doing is a most significant step in that direction. . . . “

Seiger is just one of the doctors who is amazed by Buoniconti’s vigor in not only promoting the Miami project, but in keeping other patients so upbeat.

“I’ve known Marc for a year,” Seiger said. “And my impression is that he’s coming back, psychologically, to the Marc he used to be. There’s a lot of fighting spirit in him. He’s so very good at getting others to fight their handicap.”

Buoniconti is as straightforward as he is funny.

“It’s going to take a lot of research and that takes money,” Buoniconti said. “ . . . Of course, I’m doing this for myself. I want to walk again. I would do anything I can to help others. But when a cure is found, I plan to be the one up on that operating table . . . .

“The neatest thing happened the other day,” he said. “A guy from California heard about the project and how positive I was about walking again. He sent me the license tag from his car that says, ‘I’ll Walk.’ I’m going to put it on my van.”