PORT ANGELES — Alex Ralston is 17 years old and paralyzed below the neck.
A marina accident last spring crushed part of his upper spinal chord.
It changed his life in less time than it takes to open the back door of Crestwood Convalescent Center, where he now spends his days in an electric wheelchair.
“I am very lucky to be alive right now,” Alex says.
He moved to Crestwood in his hometown last Tuesday after five months at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle.
“When we got there (to Harborview), they told us that Alex wouldn’t make it that night,” recalls his mother, Gail Ralston.
He was airlifted to Seattle on March 28, hours after falling from a boat onto a dock in the Port Angeles Boat Haven.
No one witnessed Alex’s fall and, in fact, Alex himself recalls nothing about that day.
The family thinks he fell about 10 feet onto his head while working on the boat’s mast.
At Harborview, he remained heavily sedated for a month before doctors felt he was stable enough to return to consciousness.
Now Alex is dreaming again, hopeful that someday he may once more feel his feet touch the ground.
But first he needs to wiggle a finger, or maybe a toe.
Just one little twitch.
Somewhere to start.
