Wicked Local Norwell

A time to heal: Golf tourney will help cover man's medical expenses:

By Matthew J. Gill
Wed Jul 16, 2008, 10:02 PM EDT

Norwell -
Last spring, Tim Morris received his master’s degree in kinesiology from the University of New Hampshire and he was working as a personal trainer.
While in college he’d got into bodybuilding and he’d also been active in numerous intramural sports, so he was in great shape.

He would need every ounce of the strength he’d built up in his young body to survive a car crash that summer.

During an interview this week, Tim, who graduated from Salem High School (N.H.) and earned an undergraduate degree from Quinnipiac College, talked about the day — July 20, 2007 — that changed his life, and the unique therapy he’s been undergoing ever since.
It had been raining that day, and when Tim was driving two of his friends home that night, the roads were slippery.

Tim cannot remember what happened next.

Police, however, have told him that he took a turn too quickly and that the jeep he’d been driving had rolled over.
Phone records from the time say Tim may have received a call prior to the crash.
One of his friends was not injured, one banged up a knee, but Tim, who had not been wearing his seatbelt and was ejected from the vehicle, was injured severely.
His back was broken, his neck was broken and he sustained some swelling of the brain.

He’d punctured a lung and he’d broken some ribs, his shoulder and his hand.

There were other injuries too, but the worst, was that sustained by the T-4 and T-5 vertebrae in his spinal cord.
He was paralyzed from the chest down.
Tim, 27, is the son of Bob Morris, a New Hampshire resident who works in Sullivan Tire & Auto Service’s West Bridgewater office as sales manager overseeing the company’s commercial department.

This year, the Norwell based company has decided to use its annual fundraising golf tournament — The Bob Sullivan Memorial — to help pay for Tim’s participation in Journey Forward, a program whose goal it is to improve the quality of life for victims of spinal cord injury through intense exercise programs.

The tourney will be held Thursday, July 31, at the Pinehills Golf Club in Plymouth.
“Tim is part of the Sullivan Tire family, and we want to do what we can to help him through his recovery,” said Paul Sullivan, the company’s vice president. “The golf tournament is the perfect opportunity for us to come together as a company and as a community to support Tim and his family.”

“It’s one of those stories that unfortunately you read too much about,” Sullivan added. At the time of his accident, Tim had just started in a new job, Sullivan said, and had yet to qualify for medical benefits.

“We’re going to do everything we can to help him,” Sullivan said, adding that Tim has shown a great outlook in the aftermath of the accident.
“When you have life,” he said, “there’s hope.”

A long, slow process
According to his doctors, Tim’s athletic build helped him survive the crash, but he’s had, and will continue to have, a long and difficult road of healing.
“I’m in a wheelchair,” said Tim. “I’d hope the way I’m progressing, a year from now will be a different story.”

Following the accident, Tim was in the intensive care ward at Mass General Hospital for about a month. After that, he was in Northeast Rehab in Salem, N.H. for about three months.

His weight plummeted from 190 pounds to 140 pounds.
During rehabilitation, Tim said he heard talk or suggestion that he should steel himself for life in a wheelchair.
Tim’s sister Chris, though, learned about a place in California called Project Walk, a facility that tries to help patients reinvigorate movement in their legs through the help of machinery.

In December, Project Walk opened a facility in Canton, Mass, called Journey Forward, and Tim is currently undergoing workouts and rehabilitation there.

“It’s been really good,” he said. “It’s a slow process. “Friday [July 11] was a really great day. My core strength was really strong, really stable. I was doing things I used to not be able to do. I was doing them very easily.”
If I’m sitting up, he added, it would take a strong push to knock me over, whereas before they were worried about me when I was sitting up.

According to Tim, many people who are paralyzed get muscle spasms in the limbs where they have no feeling. What Journey Forward tries to do is work with those spasms, Tim said, to strengthen them and eventually, hopefully, to be able to transform the spasm into a controlled movement.

Tim said he’s doing lots of exercises, trying to “hammer” his trunk muscles, his abdominals and his back, with help from the team at Journey Forward. He said he can get his leg to extend just by rubbing his leg muscle. Now, he’s working to extend the leg on his own, and to hold it up.

“They’re trying to build the connection from bottom up, and I’m trying to build the connection from my mind down,” said Tim. “I’m not going to be satisfied with just a little return. I’m going to keep working until I’m walking again.”
At present, Tim said the feeling in his legs is coming back. In his back and in his hips, he has “patchy sensation,” he said.

He can stand for two minutes or so, and he said he hopes one day he’ll be able to stand entirely on his own.

“It hasn’t been a real long time,” he said, “but it seems like light years. My background is such that I can work [at Journey Forward] as a trainer. Unfortunately, I found this place as a client.”
“Journey Forward has been inspiring for Tim,” his father Bob said. “He goes three days a week, he goes for about two hours each day. They work him hard and he’s certainly had improvement.”

“It’s a long process,” he added, “and it’s small improvements but with every one he builds on it. It’s kept his mental attitude up, and it’s really a lifesaver for him.”

“He’s determined to walk again.”
Following the accident, Tim said his family has done everything they could for him.
“I’m lucky to have such a great family,” he said. “My father and my sister and her husband built a house for me.”

To register for the golf tournament or to sponsor a hole, call Pat Greene at (781) 982-1550. Pinehills Golf Club is at 54 Clubhouse Dr., Plymouth. Player registration will begin at 8 a.m. with a shotgun start and scramble format at 9 a.m.

For more information about Morris and the fundraiser that will benefit him, check out the website: www.fortimmy.org.