Мебель. Всё о мебели. Большой выбор мебели.

Medically speaking, the break in Matthew’s spine is incomplete, meaning there is hope. Mobility and feeling could come back at any time in the next two and a half to three years, his doctors tell him.

With mom as driver and devoted friends along to ensure safe transport, the prom-mobile made three stops Saturday.

His prom date, Erin O’Quinn, had called a few times while Matthew was in rehab.

Prom night

Then God began changing Matthew’s plans.

During the Christmas break, his friend and prom date found out she was moving to Florida before the start of the next semester.

With a commitment from a good friend for a date, Matthew went on with his life, also known as football.

Deborah, 11, plays nurse, too.

“She called just to talk, but I didn’t say much,” he said.

His mother, a home health sitter by trade, has been his constant nurse, including getting up every two hours each night to rotate her oldest son in his bed.

“I don’t beat him up anymore,” Matthew said.

And Matthew didn’t even know if attending prom was possibility.

The defensive lineman on the soon-to-be state championship football team asked a beautiful junior if she would be his date.

But with prom exactly a month away, Matthew’s life certainly wasn’t where he’d expected.

The duo isn’t boyfriend and girlfriend, just friends, they said, but Saturday night they stuck together.

Matthew wakes up every day and tries to move his legs.

“She’s been a great mom,” Matthew said. “She’s been with me ever since the wreck, and she’s sacrificed a lot for me.”

He was the back seat passenger in a GMC pickup truck full of his friends when it smashed into a tree at the end of North Canal Street early on New Year’s Day.

After a setback and a surgery in early February it was back to rehab where Matthew had regained significant arm mobility by mid-February.

“All I thought about was him making it through,” Matthew’s mother Dorene Fos said. “The doctors told us he’ll never have any use of anything, and he’ll be on a ventilator for the rest of his life.”

“I didn’t sleep when he was running the roads with his friends, and I don’t sleep now.”

And though self-doubt left Matthew worried she wouldn’t come, Erin never questioned it.

Erin O’Quinn drove six and a half hours to go to prom with Matthew.

“I get him whatever he needs,” she said. “I remember feeding him ice cream.”

Austin and Deborah are now protective of Matthew, Dorene said, and when they are apart, like on prom night, everyone is thinking about Matthew.

Two days before she left, Matthew’s life changed forever.

William Austin, a former Natchez Police officer paralyzed in a fall, loaned his wheelchair-accessible van to the couple for the night.

And on March 17, he was home.

Erin traveled in style most of the night — in Matthew’s lap. Their limo wasn’t long and black, but was special all the same.

Right now, Matthew has feeling down to his nipple line and has good movement in his arms, though they are still weak.

“He’s got a lot of will and want in life that is going to get him where he wants to be,” Dorene said.

“I didn’t know if Erin still wanted to go to prom.”

Arm movement came back suddenly, he said, and he’s hoping his legs will work again, too.

Four months into constant care and Dorene won’t admit to being tired.

Fifteen-year-old Austin moved into his brother’s room after the accident and serves as Matthew’s midnight legs at least two or three times a night, Matthew said, sometimes after a brotherly threat or two.

“I was committed to it, and I love Matthew,” she said.

He has six hours of therapy a week, half physical and half occupational.

But Matthew began debunking that prognosis even before leaving Our Lady. He came off the ventilator the day before he was transferred to Methodist Rehabilitation Center in Jackson.

Getting on with life

She said yes.

Matthew spent the next 28 days at Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center in Baton Rouge.

Though teasing continues, Matthew admits that Austin is now the strongest.

In fact sleep routines are different for much of the Rymer-Fos household now.

His team, the Trinity Episcopal Saints, went 12-3 and Matthew recorded a team-leading 104 tackles.

Matthew didn’t attend prom the year before, and he really doesn’t like to dance in front of a crowd, but senior prom is a memory everyone wants to make.

“It’s your child,” Dorene said. “You do what you’ve got to do for them.

In the beginning his mother could only visit him for two hours a day.

Current goals are to build up enough arm strength so Matthew can transfer himself from his electric wheelchair to the car or bed.