Terry is a Real Life Survivor of a diving accident that has left him a quadriplegic.

The day of my accident I’ll never forget. It was a hot summer day four days from my twenty first birthday, I was invited to a beach graduation party for my friends in two thousand one. I got up, jumped in my truck and drove to St. George on route to Canal Beach. When I made it to the town I stopped at the liquor store and bought a six pack of beer. I arrived to the beach and started drinking, about my third drink I noticed girls in bikini’s at the point of the beach. Around the point of the beach there is a drop off in the lake we always ran and dove into. While showing off and not paying attention to what I was doing, I ran into the water as fast as I could thinking that the water was deep enough as I dove in. 

I soon come to find out that it was not. I hit my head and instantly couldn’t move my whole body. So now I’m face down in the water waiting for friends to notice that I can’t flip over to get air. I remember being on my last breath and my dead Gramp who past away six months prior coming to me and saying its not your time and not even a second later a friend flipped me over. They then lifted me in the water to reduce any swelling and held my neck so I couldn’t move it. I then felt waves coming over my face from boats stopping to see what was going on. I was lucky and had an EMT friend with me and there was nurses on the beach to assess me. It seemed like forever for the ambulance to get on scene. I was about a mile away from where the accident happened to the ambulance so they put me on my friends party barge and boated me to the ambulance. I never once blacked out. I arrived to the St. John Regional Hospital had an X-ray done and the doctor never seen any damage, so they gave me an MRI and that’s when they found that I severed my C-3 and C-4 vertebrae in two. They gave me a one percent chance of living from the injury. I was in the unit for a week and was stabilized so they could do the surgery to fuse my neck back together. Do to my injury I was having a hard time to cough up the anesthetic, because of my weak lungs, and because of that I ended up developing  pneumonia. I fought it off and remember laying there being afraid of what would be next. I was in the Regional Hospital for about five weeks before I was released to go to the rehab.

I arrived in the rehab in Fredericton in July, I then was in for learning my new body. Over the next seven months they taught me and my family how to properly take care of my needs. I learned there, how hard day to day preparation would be to just get me dressed, stretched and up in my wheel chair. Before my accident I could make plans out of the blue, not anymore as I had to make plans ahead of time to make sure I had a worker scheduled, catheters done on time, etc. One of the biggest things that I lost was being able to feed myself, do to the accident I now have to have someone help feed me.

My very first day they took us out on an outing and it was very uncomfortable as it felt everyones eyes in the theatre was on me. Then I found a skill I still use as of today, I put a pencil in my mouth and started to draw a picture of Pluto, at first it was hard but now I can draw quit well. I returned back to work at the superstore and it felt good being around the work field again. I was invited to Las Vegas to present a drawing I did for the retired WWE wrestlers. I got to hangout with Steve Austin and Morgan Dollar and family for six days. 

When I was released from the rehab I went and made a safety video with the party program, telling the kids on a DVD my testimony to try and prevent them from making the same mistake that I did. After the DVD was made I started talking to students in schools around New Brunswick, and in 2009 I won the Ambassador of the year award from Ability New Brunswick. I was hospitalized for a month and had pneumonia for the second time almost not pulling through this time.

My drawings continued to get better, so each calendar year I make a yearly calendar of my artwork and sell them. I also do commission drawings. I took a graphic designing course and graduated with high honours. I am now looking into taking a autocad course on my computer. 

It has now been twenty years since that day at the beach that changed my life forever. I actually returned to the scene of my accident, facing all my fears. After the accident with this new body that I am still learning, I came across problems with break downs in my skin leaving me bed bound for periods of times until they heal. 

I am about to start my drawing again for the first time In a year, due to covid I couldn’t put anything in my mouth! In ending, 

“I live every day of my life to the quote..

“NEVER GIVE UP!”