Paralyzed Man Told He'd Never Walk Again After Accident. Proves Them Wrong on Wedding Day
Fred Quin had been celebrating the Fourth of July with his family two summers ago when his life was flipped upside down.
They were at a lake cottage near Grand Rapids, Michigan, and had headed out to the sandbar on the lake.
“I decided to go off the front of the boat, and that’s when it gets fuzzy,” Quin said.
Meghan Anderson, Quin’s girlfriend, noticed that something was off and grabbed his shoulder. When he didn’t move, the group called 911 and put Quin on a raft to get him to shore.
An ambulance took Fried to surgery. He had shattered his C-6 vertebrae and his body couldn’t move.
“The surgery was to remove those pieces, put a donor bone in, put a plate in the front side, and on the back side put two rods going down my spine,” Quin said. “And they fused my C-5 to C-7 vertebras.”
After the surgery, he was told he would never walk again and would be in a wheelchair for the rest of his life.
But Quin did not give up hope. He spent every day in therapy, with Anderson cheering for him every step of the way.
After months of rehab, they finally saw progress. “My first moment was with my big toe on my left foot,” he said.
After Quin moved back home, he started intense workouts at Detroit Medical Center’s Rehabilitation Institute of Michigan.
One of the workouts put Quin in a wearable machine that helps increase his strength and endurance. “With the robot, the Exoskeleton, and me, we can get him up, and we can do over 1,000 steps in one session,” Physical Therapist Kyle Weishaupt said.
As Quin continued to progress through his workouts, his relationship with Anderson continued to grow and he proposed to her on a pontoon ride on their eight-year dating anniversary.
“The next goal is to walk down the aisle with Meghan with just with one crutch,” Quin said.
And on May 12, they were able to accomplish just that.
“Whether it’s exactly how we wanted it to happen or not, that’s not what matters,” Anderson said. “It’s that we’re doing it together, and we’re happy.”
Once they return from their honeymoon, Quin plans on tackling the next challenge: walking in the grocery store.
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