A 53-year-old man, who previously played professional soccer in his native Poland, hopes to play again one day, after a fall that nearly claimed his life and left him paralyzed.
Earlier this summer, Janusz Dobrowolski fell from a ladder while cleaning the windows of his daughter’s home in Calgary.
Thankfully, someone found him unconscious and bleeding from the head and took him to Foot Hills hospitalwhere doctors who had to revive him four timestold his wife he would likely die.
Dobrowolski remained in a coma for three weeks, but defied the odds.
"I'm paralyzed, but I'm very lucky because I'm alive," Dobrowolski told CTV Calgary.
The fall damaged his spine’s twelfth vertebrae, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down.
After performing a risky surgery, doctors told Dobrowolski that, given his age, there was only a five per cent chance he would walk again.
But, after seeing positive signs of movement in his foot, Dobrowolski’s physical therapist thinks he might be on his feet within a year.
For the time being, Dobrowolski, who recently coached and played recreational soccer in Calgary, remains confined to a wheelchair.
His rehabilitation treatment sessions are expected to cost more than $4,000 a month and the Dobrowolskis don’t have disability insurance.
One of Dobrowolski’s daughters has created a GoFundMe page to help raise funds for her parents to help cover the cost of rehabilitation sessions and renovations to the family’s home to facilitate his return.
With files from CTV Calgary’s Ina Sidhu
