Sixteen months ago, Jackson Drum was at Vancouver General Hospital on a ventilator after breaking his neck while participating as a visiting player in a Burnaby hockey tournament. “I went headfirst in the boards, and I broke my C1 and C2. And so I stopped breathing for about eight minutes, and then I woke up to being intubated,” Jackson said. Doctors told his mother that the 17-year-old from Minnesota was a quadriplegic and would likely never walk again. “He didn’t have any sensation, no movement. They kept testing him, and he would come up with nothing,” said Jackson’s mom Erica Drum. “I asked them what were the chances of him having any recovery, and they’re like, ‘None.’ And I was like, ‘Well, how about like 1 in 100?’ They thought I was crazy. They said no.” But Jackson was determined to defy the doctors’ predictions. “I always had hope in myself. I always believed that I was going to walk again,” Jackson said. “We didn’t really take that hope away from him, because if he said he could do it, we thought maybe he’d be able to do it,” said his mom. After spending three weeks at VGH, Jackson was transferred to a rehabilitation facility in Atlanta, where he slowly started to regain some feeling in his extremities. “At the start, I started moving my toes and then my fingers,” he said. His ventilator was removed on May 30, 2025. “That’s when we started to see the most improvement was right when I got off the ventilator, which was my 18th birthday,” Jackson said. He knew his hard work was paying off when physiotherapists first helped him stand upright. “That felt amazing, to get back up on my feet, because it took forever for me just to stand up again,” he said. From there, he was strapped into a harness to hold him up so his body could re-learn the motion of walking on a treadmill. Jackson pushed on. He was determined to walk independently in time for his high school graduation. “That’s what I wanted. That was always the goal,” he said. “When he talked to a reporter in September and they said, ‘What’s your goal?’ He’s like, ‘I’m going to walk at graduation,’” Erica said. “And I’m sure everyone’s like, ‘Yeah, OK.’ And now, here it is. And he’s walking at graduation.” Now back home in Minnesota, on Friday, Jackson will use hand crutches to walk unassisted across the stage with his classmates to receive his high school diploma. “It’s definitely an accomplishment,” he said. “I’m excited for the ceremony. I’m excited for a lot of people just to see me walk, because a lot of people haven’t seen me in person.” “We’ll probably be crying,” added his mom. “I think the whole arena will probably be crying.” Jackson is eager to get back on the ice. He recently tried out a sledge hockey sled, but he has dreams of lacing on skates again. “I’m not 100 per cent sure if that’s going to happen,” he said. “But I know I’m going to be able to coach, and that’s kind of what I wanted to do.”
