A Kentucky teenager has defied the odds by completing the Chicago Marathon less than a year after a devastating spinal injury briefly left him paralyzed from the neck down.
Wyatt Anderson, 17, finished Sunday’s Bank of America Chicago Marathon in 3:56:28. Just months earlier, the high school senior feared he might never walk again, ABC News reported.
The injury happened last November while Anderson was playing basketball with friends. As he reached for a rebound, he tripped over his own feet and hit his head against a wall, he said.
The force of the impact fractured his spine and left him unable to move.
“I blacked out right after for a little bit, and I couldn’t move any limb on my body,” Anderson told the outlet.
He underwent spinal fusion surgery and spent months in rehabilitation, gradually relearning how to walk.
“Every single day, it was in the back of my head, I was like, ‘Am I gonna walk again? Am I gonna be able to do the same thing that I was doing two weeks ago, a day ago?’” he said.
During rehab, one of Anderson’s therapists told him about a man who completed 50 marathons in 50 states in one year while using a wheelchair.
“That just, like, blew my mind and motivated me,” he said.
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As weeks of physical therapy slowly restored his movement, the story gave Anderson a new goal: not only to recover, but “to walk or run a marathon within a year.”
Anderson acknowledged that there were moments when it seemed things “would get better,” but he kept reminding himself that “every day is a step forward” and to “just say yes to every opportunity.”
In April, he completed the Kentucky Derby Festival miniMarathon, a 13.1-mile race, Spectrum News reported in July.
That half marathon, however, was only a steppingstone toward his bigger ambition: finishing the Chicago Marathon.
When Anderson and his brother, Jack Anderson, lined up at the starting line Sunday, the teenager had two goals — complete the race and encourage others through his story.
“I hope my story will help other people want to set a lofty goal for themselves and to believe that nothing’s impossible,” he told ABC News.
“[You] can do anything if you set your mind to it — truly, I mean, coming from someone who couldn’t walk at a time and now is running.”
The brothers also used the marathon to raise money for the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation, which provides research, advocacy and resources for people living with spinal cord injuries, according to ABC News.
Their fundraising effort brought in more than $24,000, according to the foundation’s website.
