Paralyzed Dad May Walk Daughter Down the Aisle

A Colorado father left paralyzed after a series of devastating accidents may finally be able to walk his daughter down the aisle — thanks to a rare surgery.

“I often joke about you couldn’t write a soap opera as bad as what I’ve lived through,” Russel McKeehan, a former paramedic, told CBS News. The 54-year-old’s setbacks began 30 years ago, when he was working with a patient in the back of an ambulance and the driver fell asleep, rolling the vehicle. 

The accident left him with debilitating headaches. In 2007, McKeehan went into the hospital for an outpatient surgical procedure to help with the pain, but ended up on life support, paralyzed from the neck down.

“I truly hate even saying this, but I told them, ‘Kill me now,’ ” McKeehan told the outlet. “I don’t want to live. I can’t live if I can’t, at least, be a productive part of society. I don’t want to live. Thank God they didn’t let me do that.”

A decade later, he was able to walk — thanks to Colorado’s HCA HealthONE Swedish neurosurgeon Dr. Scott Falci, who operated on McKeehan. But two years after that, he was involved in yet another accident.

“The lug nuts came loose on my son’s pickup,” McKeehan explained, sharing that the truck “ended up rolling four times.” McKeehan says he broke “so many bones in my neck again and my sternum, ribs, humerus, just so many bones and so much pain.” 

Once again, surgeries helped McKeehan regain function. But when he began to rapidly lose mobility due to residual spinal cord damage from the accident, he returned to Dr. Falci at the HCA HealthONE Falci Institute for Spinal Cord Injuries for more surgery. His goal: to walk his daughter down the aisle in September. As he explains, ”I want her day to be about her and not be about me.”

Within 12 hours of the complicated surgery — for which only 10% of patients are eligible, according to his surgeon — McKeehan regained function in his left side. It’s possible that he will recover enough to walk his daughter down the aisle in two months.

Dr. Falci told the outlet that “he’s a highly motivated guy and he’s been through a lot,” explaining that McKeehan has already been able to stand.

According to a GoFundMe to support his medical journey, “He is able to move his left arm and leg NOW as well as the right side … he had not been able to move his left side in 10 years.”

As Dr. Falci and McKeehan explained, they’re working towards him being able to use a walker at the wedding. “What he’s achieved just with self-determination and desire is amazing,” Dr. Falci told CBS.

McKeehan told the outlet. “I decided to show my kids just when you’re given a bad hand, you can’t just give up.”

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