Crutches

Sandra Keeney can't stop talking about her daughter Michele's determination and spirit.Reliant on crutches since the discovery of a spinal tumor at 17 months, Michele still learned to ride a bicycle, drive a car and roller skate."

IRVING, Texas -- There was yet another set of crutches in the Dallas Cowboys' locker room after their trashing of the New York Giants Monday night. And with those crutches came an offering of perspective."

When Baltimore challenges the Winnipeg Blue Bombers for first place in the CFL's Eastern Division Saturday, it will shuffle its defensive deck.Free safety Michael Brooks, who played the second half of Saturday's 48-31 win over the B.C. Lions with a broken right hand, is out.Nose tackle Jearld Baylis, who left the Memorial Stadium on crutches, is doubtful this week with a partial tear of his right calf.And linebacker Ken Benson, who had a sack against B.C., was to have the metal plate removed from his previously broken right ankle because three screws came loose.

The morning after wasn't quite as dark as the night before for the Baltimore CFLs yesterday.Tracy Ham wasn't on crutches.Some 12 hours after the Baltimore quarterback suffered a slight tear of his right quadriceps muscle, Ham left open the possibility of returning to the lineup for Saturday's game in Hamilton."

A 17-year-old inmate being treated for a foot injury escaped from custody at a downtown hospital yesterday -- despite being shackled at the ankles and hobbling on crutches, hospital officials said.The youth, last seen near University of Maryland Medical Center wearing a baggy blue prison jumpsuit, was being sought last night.Medical center spokeswoman Jill Bloom said the escape occurred about 10:30 a.m. near the hospital's orthopedic center, when the youth, from the Cheltenham Youth Facility in Prince George's County, asked permission to use the bathroom.

LOS ANGELES -- Throughout Los Angeles, there are hundreds, probably thousands of them. Just look down and you'll see them -- the most common victims of the earthquake.Feet.Feet crushed by falling furniture. Feet slashed by shattered window glass or broken china. Feet fractured from panicky, pre-dawn leaps out of bed. By far, the appendages were the most vulnerable body parts when the land underneath them trembled.Hour after hour -- all night and all day on Monday as well as yesterday -- men, women and children hobbled into emergency rooms leaning on friends and family members.

PRAISEWORTHY ESSAYEditor: Please pass on to Mr. Chester Wickwire my congratulations for and sincere appreciation of his praiseworthy essay, "In Praise of Crutches" [Nov. 7].His use of understated irony was a most effective vehicle in relating the story of his life, which has been considerably inconvenienced but by no means stymied by paralysis. Implicit in his story is not a sense of bitterness or resignation but a profound acceptance of the import of what a man once told him, "Everyone is handicapped in some way and needs a crutch."

In Michael Olesker's column last Thursday on Leo Bretholz, i was stated incorrectly that Mr. Bretholz was arrested at the Swiss border by a German guard. In fact, it was a Swiss border guard who made the arrest and turned over Mr. Bretholz, then on the run from the Nazis, to the German guard.The Sun regrets the errors.He still sees the old woman on crutches inside his head. She will never go away. She is standing there in the cattle car, in the final hours of her existence, and she is pointing one crutch at Leo Bretholz like a weapon.

Nobody knows quite what to make of it.Severna Park resident Sue Bradford, a familiar sight around St. John the Evangelist Church with her leg brace and crutches, went to Quebec in August and came back well.Exactly what happened can be debated, but this much is certain: The 47-year-old nurse suffered from a miserably debilitating condition that had not responded to multiple surgeries and other treatment.The last time Dr. William Smulyan, a Baltimore orthopedic surgeon, saw the woman he had treated for 16 years, she was in "a holding pattern with a significant degree of impairment," he said.

It was a gorgeous, sunny day in 1978 when the accident happened.Sykesville resident John Erwin was mowing a neighbor's five-acre lot with his Ford tractor when he hit a soft patch of soil hidden by weeds. The tractor sank, threw Mr. Erwin forward, then rolled over his right leg. One of the machine's 22-inch blades cut through his heel.Mr. Erwin managed to hop 50 feet down River Road using his left foot until he collapsed. Four youngsters discovered him by the roadside.Eventually, part of his leg was amputated.