Friday, July 06, 2001
Boxer Page 'has come back from the dead'
Ex-heavyweight champ regaining faculties after Erlanger fight
By Neil Schmidt
The Cincinnati Enquirer
LOUISVILLE — Greg Page was wheeled into the news conference strictly for a photo op. Reporters were told not to ask questions of the former world heavyweight boxing champion, who still is regaining his speech But Page didn't need prompting.
Greg Page at a hospital news conference Thursday.
(AP photo)
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“It's the hardest fight I've ever had in my life,” he slurred.
And so continues his biggest bout, trying to overcome a brain injury from a fight in Erlanger almost four months ago.
Page, 42, was discharged Thursday from the Frazier Rehab Institute after 13 weeks of inpatient therapy. His mother, Alice Page, teared up when he made his short, impromptu speech to the media, then called him “a miracle in progress.”
He's a long way from his weeklong coma at Cincinnati's University Hospital in March. Doctors there told his fiancee, Patricia Love, that Page “was probably going to be a vegetable,” she said.
“Greg knows and understands he has come back from the dead,” Ms. Love said. “But I'm not sure he has a full appreciation for how far he has come.”
Previously fed through a tube in his stomach, Page is now eating normally — even favorite foods such as burgers and fries. He is talking. He has begun bearing weight on his legs, and doctors are hopeful he will walk again.
“Greg is a fighter in the true sense of the word,” said Dr. Karen Bloom, who is overseeing Page's rehabilitation at Frazier. “He is fueled by his determination to recover.
“When we went back to Cincinnati (in June), the surgeons there could not believe how well he was doing.”
The handling of his March 9 bout at Peel's Palace, fighting 24-year-old Dale Crowe for the Kentucky heavyweight title, remains in dispute. Though a ringside physician was on hand and Page was given a prefight physical, no emergency medical personnel or oxygen were present. The state's rules require oxygen.
“One thing Greg made me promise him is I would not let this happen to someone else, and we would work with legislation to change any laws that need to be changed and enforce any laws that are on the books,” Ms. Page said. “I think it's common knowledge that there were things done that night that should not have been done, things that should have been there that weren't.”
Ms. Love said Page plans to follow in the footsteps of his hometown idol, boxing legend Muhammad Ali. As Ali is a walking symbol for the fight against Parkinson's disease, Page plans to be a spokesman for the Brain Injury Association.
Ms. Love decried the death Monday in New York of another boxer, Beethavean Scottland, six days after injuries suffered in a nationally televised bout.
“Maybe Greg can help educate some people about safety in boxing and about brain injury,” Ms. Love said.
An estimated 5.3 million Americans — a little more than 2 percent of the U.S. population — live with disabilities resulting from brain injury, according to a 1999 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Each year, a million people are treated and released in hospital emergency rooms, and 50,000 people die.
Page, who won the World Boxing Association title in 1984 and lost it six months later, suffered a traumatic brain injury that has affected the left side of his body.
Ms. Love has arrived at Frazier daily at 7:30 a.m. to begin her fiance's rehabilitation work. Her 19-year-old daughter, Teisha Love, gave up her apartment in Scottsburgh, Ind., and moved back home to care for her 7- and 8-year-old sisters while her mother attends to Page.
Page has regained some of his personality. When his voice fades after a long workout and speech therapist Stephanie Schen asks what he is saying, he'll joke, “That you've got a hearing problem.” When reporters asked Ms. Love about Crowe, Page drew laughs by saying, “I'm going to knock his damn teeth out.”
Page will continue to receive outpatient therapy five days a week at Frazier, six to seven hours a day. There is no prognosis for how much further he will recover.
“Greg is a wonderful man, and to see his feet kicked out from under him like this was heartbreaking,” Ms. Love said. “But he's getting stronger every day and says he'll walk again. He's a champ in the true sense of the word.”
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