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Just days before Christmas 2012, 15-year-old Aaron Willis was riding bike in Wynwood when a gunman in a car drove by and shot him in the back. The bullet struck Aaron’s spinal cord, leaving him paralyzed. In the eight months since the shooting, Aaron has made incredible strides while continuing outpatient rehabilitation therapy at Jackson Rehabilitation Hospital.
Aaron, who recently returned to school for the first time since the shooting, is actively involved in Jackson’s recreation therapy program. He has mastered handcycling and swims weekly with the aquatic rehab program. On Friday, he will practice his swimming skills during a trip to Theater of the Sea in Islamorada, where he will swim with dolphins.
Aaron will be joined by a group of others with spinal cord injuries – all paraplegics and quadriplegics – who receive outpatient therapy at Jackson Rehabilitation Hospital. All will get a chance to be out of their wheelchairs and swim with the dolphins.
Swimming with the dolphins is a goal each of the patients works towards during their lessons in Jackson’s aquatic rehabilitation program. Once a week, the group meets at a Miami pool, where they work with Jackson therapists on different skills in the water, such as blowing bubbles, floating on their backs, kicking their legs and going underwater.
The trip, which costs $178 per person, is paid with money employees raised during year-round hot dog sales at Jackson Memorial Hospital.
“This is something they look forward to the whole year,” said Cathy Herring, a Jackson recreation therapist, who heads the aquatic rehab program and organizes the annual dolphin swim. “They work so hard and this is their reward.”
The group will leave from Jackson Memorial Hospital Friday morning, September 6, and drive to Islamorada. The dolphin swim will begin around noon. Upon leaving the park, the group will eat dinner at a local seafood restaurant and then head back to Miami. They should arrive back at Jackson at about 9 p.m.
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