On a warm summer night in 1978 , Robb Dunfield and two friends climbed up into a house under construction near Jericho Beach to get a better view of the pillowy tall ships floating in the harbour.

They stepped out onto a balcony where the railing had not yet been built. Instead, there was merely a board tapped into place with a nail at either end.

It gave way quickly and Dunfield, then an athletic 19-year-old with a zest for adventure, plunged 30 feet into the darkness. Down, down he went, crashing into an abyss. In those few moments, his life changed irrevocably.

A church minister who was out walking his dog found him and called an ambulance.

When Dunfield regained consciousness several days later in the hospital, he remembers apologizing to his parents for all the trips they were having to make to his bedside.

In those first days, his life hovered in the balance.

He was under a "do not resuscitate" order. He went into cardiac arrest. That same church minister, who happened to be a friend of his family, gave him the last rites.

Slowly, reality sank in. Having broken his back at the second vertebra from the top of the spinal cord, he would never use his arms or legs again.

At first, he could breathe on his own and had some movement in his shoulder. But within a couple of days, he lost that, too. He was told he likely wouldn't live beyond another two years.

Thirty-four years later, Dunfield, at 52, sits in a wheelchair, his body completely immobilized from the neck down.

See the original post here:
Living with a spinal cord injury

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