WinterSports2002.com, Friday, February 08, 2002

Torch relay a victory walk for Utahn

Doctor is overcoming paralysis after accident

By Lois M. Collins
Deseret News staff writer

Dr. Dale Hull knew he was in trouble when he heard his neck pop. He was paralyzed from the neck down before he really had time to realize he'd been severely injured on a trampoline.

Doctors predicted he would never walk again.

The Utah physician will carry the Olympic torch Friday at 3:15 p.m. — and he will do it without wheelchair, walker or cane. The challenge, in fact, will be getting a proper grip on the torch.

Hull has been practicing for weeks, first with an aluminum baseball bat with a weight on it and later with the torch of the 2002 Winter Games carried by a friend who ran earlier in another state.

He has been incredibly blessed, he said, though his injury has put an end to his career as an obstetrician-gynecologist. Instead, he's now a medical adviser to a genetics company.

"I just keep going and keep working at it," he said. "Unless science makes huge strides, I'll never be like I was before. But I am 15 times what they thought I would be."

The husband and father of four boys went through a fusion surgery and spent more than four months at University Hospital before moving into rehabilitation. Shortly after, he began to regain a "light touch" of sensation.

"I could feel the wrinkles in my sheets, but I couldn't move," he laughs.

Slowly, he regained some motion, the legs coming along faster than his arms. Within six months, he was in a walker, then using two arm crutches. Now, most of the time, he walks with a cane.

A year into his rehabilitation, he panicked. He'd heard that by then he'd probably have back all the mobility and feeling he would ever get.

He deliberately put the "P" word — "plateau" — out of his mind.

"I changed my thinking, and it was very beneficial," he said.

Walking is getting easier, though he still feels like his body has fallen asleep and awakened to the familiar sting of pins and needles.

Once told he might never get any better, "I'm just grateful I can feel anything," he says.

His grip is sometimes problematic, but improving.

Day after day he has gone to the track to practice walking a single lap, carrying the torch in his tingling hands.

So Friday at 3:15 p.m., he will make his victory walk along 700 East, between 7950 South and 8100 South.

"I will be the only human holding a symbol that all humanity recognizes," he said. "And all the people who prayed and fasted and helped me will have a piece of that."

E-mail: lois@desnews.com

© 2002 Deseret News Publishing Company