Berkeley balcony survivor hopeful, but says she may never walk

Berkeley balcony survivor hopeful, but says she may never walk Clodagh Cogley, 21, spoke out in an emotional Facebook post that marked one of the first statements by a victim of the June 16 disaster, which occurred during a friend’s 21st birthday party at a fifth-floor apartment near the UC Berkeley campus. “Hey friends, just an update to let you guys know how I’m getting on (slowly catching up with the individual messages I promise!),” she wrote. The fall from the balcony left me with 2 collapsed lungs, a broken shoulder, a broken knee, 5 broken ribs and a broken spinal cord ... Who knows maybe legs have been holding me back all these years and I’ll realize my talent for wheelchair basketball. Many of the students, though, won’t immediately return home after leaving the hospital due to the nature of their injuries. Beary and Waters remain in the intensive care unit at Oakland’s Highland Hospital with “more extensive injuries,” while Halpin and Flynn, who are at Walnut Creek’s John Muir Medical Center, are “looking forward to their eventual discharge,” Grant said. Many of the students will transfer from the hospital to more specialized centers that concentrate on the types of injuries they sustained, including repairing shattered limbs and nerve damage.