SEBASTOPOL - He can't get out of bed on his own, but when Carson Pforsich awakes each day, he visualizes sitting up, swinging his legs to the side and standing.
He's training his nervous system to transmit the signal “get up” from brain to body for the day he hopes to recover enough mobility to rise on his own.
Pforsich, 18, lost that ability in September, when he dove into a wave and hit the ocean floor in Bodega Bay, severely injuring his spinal cord and paralyzing him from the chest down.
In his mind, the Analy High School senior and former wide receiver still runs, still catches passes, still climbs out of bed in the morning.
His daily routine and rigorous physical therapy are his way to confront an uncertain future - one he knows will be shaped in part by the work he does now to build muscle tone, maintain flexibility and restore the strength he once possessed.
“I'm just kind of hoping one day I wake up and something big has changed,” Pforsich said during a break between classes at Analy, where he returned Jan. 9 for the spring semester and is on track to graduate with his class in June.
Four and a half months into the kind of experience that takes “life-changing” to a level even his most supportive classmates could not imagine, Pforsich already has made important strides, gradually increasing the use of his arms, neck, shoulders, wrists and hands. He has sensation now throughout his body - even the soles of his feet, though it's spotty - and has regained neck and trunk strength critical to sitting up for long periods.
His legs and his fingers don't yet cooperate. He's working every day in hopes they eventually will.
But with his improved endurance and a power wheelchair, Pforsich can now get out in the world, hang with friends and cruise campus, manipulating the controls on his own with a flat hand.
A key goal is to develop enough strength and control in his triceps and hands to transition to a more compact, manual wheelchair, which would enhance his freedom to travel.
Since mid-November, when he completed an intensive, five-week program at a spinal cord rehabilitation center in San Jose, Pforsich has been home at his mother's house in rural Sebastopol and is thrilled to be back among family and friends, day-in and day-out.
Rehabilitation, he's learned, is a full-time job, and Pforsich has just enough time to squeeze in the two classes he needs to graduate, attending high school three days a week, mostly so he can see his friends.
Every week also includes two to three sessions each of physical therapy in Santa Rosa, integrated muscle training at a local gym, anti-inflammatory laser light therapy in Sonoma and adapted physical education at Santa Rosa Junior College, a grueling, full-body workout.
“It gets tiring at times,” Pforsich said of his regimen, requiring both an athlete's discipline and patience. “You just have to remind yourself that you have to keep working to make it happen at all.”
His potential for full recovery - for walking again, even - is unclear.
“There is,” he acknowledged, “no way to know.”
Emotional odyssey
A newly minted adult - his 18th birthday was Jan. 13 - Pforsich comes across not so much stoic as steady, focused, pragmatic. At an age when most young people are striving toward independence, he is now even more reliant on his mother and father - for everything from bathing and dressing to transportation in a special van with a ramp and the space to accommodate the cumbersome, 400-pound power chair.
He's lost a good deal of weight but not his ready smile. With the increased freedom in his upper body and arms, he's regained an expressive quality that the injury robbed him of at first, making for more natural interaction with others. He can scratch his ear, gestures frequently as he talks, and works his fingers constantly to encourage movement and strength.
There are moments he has been down emotionally, but he rises each time, drawing on the support of family, friends and the community in which his parents, Andrea and Andy Pforsich, grew up and raised their two children, including Carson's sister, Kelsey, 16.
Sometimes just a visit from a friend or a drive through the countryside buoys him. His parents, he said, “have been really great” about helping him through darker times.
UPDATED: Please read and follow our commenting policy: