At last month’s Beanpot and select hockey games at Agganis Arena, the Boston University hockey family helped raise money for 15-year-old Matt Brown, a Norwood High School hockey player who broke his neck during a game in January.
BU never imagined a scare of its own would hit campus just a few weeks later.
On Feb. 20, junior forward Holly Lorms damaged the ligaments between her fifth and sixth vertebrae after a clean hit during a game against the University of Maine. Lorms was hospitalized for a few days at Boston Medical Center two weekends ago before returning to campus last Wednesday. Lorms will have to wear a neck brace for the next month.
“I’m doing much better than I was last weekend,” Lorms said. “I maybe ran into a bit of fortune, some count-your-blessings kind of thing.”
After the hit, Lorms said she lost feeling in her lower extremities. She was taken from the ice on a stretcher. According to National Spinal Cord Injury Association, the C-5/C-6 area of the spine, where Lorms damaged ligaments, controls movement from the elbow and forearm area down. Severe damage to that area sometimes results in quadriplegia.
“I remember the hit and then I remember the doctors and the paramedics who were out there,” Lorms said. “Other than being a little bit scared, I was in pretty good hands from top to bottom. It wasn’t so much life-threatening as it was life-changing, at least for the first few hours before I got feeling back in my lower extremities.”
Lorms credits her recovery both to luck and to the care she received from doctors. She is also very grateful for her teammates, whom she says have helped her get through this whole ordeal.
“I think the best thing you can call it is family, and I couldn’t be luckier in terms of that,” Lorms said. “They’ve been there, my roommates all the way up through our captains have been there through all of it. It’s my family in there.”
Lorms should be able to play hockey again next season, said she. Her focus, however, is not on what she will be able to do next season, but rather what the team still has left to accomplish this year.
“What I look for in the future is the team sitting in that locker room taking the championship next week,” Lorms said. “If this team continues to win and play as well as they did [Sunday in a win versus Boston College], they’ll get an opportunity to play through the end of the season. I’m just doing what the doctors say and trying to be there for them in other ways.”
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