Motorcycle Accident Leaves 21-Year-Old with Spinal Cord Injury and Paralysis, but Lynn Rehabilitation Center Offers Hope and Recovery Through Recreational Therapy
By: Krysten Brenlla
Last year, John Marquez’s biggest priority was maintaining an active and healthy lifestyle.
However, that all changed for the 21-year-old on February 15, 2023 – the day he got into a motorcycle accident that almost took his life.
“I was on my way to work when somebody ran a stop sign and hit me,” Marquez said. “I don’t remember anything from that day other than leaving to work. The next thing I remember was waking up in an ambulance.”
Marquez was immediately transported to Ryder Trauma Center at Jackson Memorial with a thoracic spinal cord injury, which affects the central part of the spine.
The injury caused Marquez to lose partial feeling below his neck, which meant he was paralyzed from the waist down.
“When I woke up in the ambulance, I was in a neck brace and I couldn’t see anything, so the first thing I asked was if I had lost my legs because I couldn’t feel them,” he said.
Upon arrival, the Ryder Trauma team stabilized Marquez and evaluated his injuries. The next day, he underwent a spinal cord fusion surgery at Jackson Memorial.
After surgery, Marquez spent a week recovering before being transferred to Christine E. Lynn Rehabilitation Center for The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis at UHealth/Jackson Memorial, where he worked with occupational therapists to learn how to perform daily activities with his injury, like showering, dressing himself, and brushing his teeth. He also worked with physical therapists to learn how to move safely with his spinal cord injury.
After six weeks at Lynn Rehabilitation Center, Marquez was ready to go home. He returned several times a week to continue outpatient rehabilitation.
“At the time of my accident, I lived on the second floor and had to climb up the stairs every day, so my therapists at Lynn Rehabilitation Center helped me adapt to getting in and out of my house with my injury,” he said. “I would go from the wheelchair, to the ground, and while on the ground, I would scoot up each step to get in and out of the house.”
Additionally, Marquez worked with his recreational therapist, Ashley Herrera, on swimming and aquatic therapy, which was his motivation to get back into fitness and sports.
“When I started working with John, he was a big fitness enthusiast, and one of his goals was to learn how to swim so he could compete in a triathlon,” Herrera said. “We had to build up his endurance through hand cycling, and soon enough, he was doing laps around campus on the hand cycle, and I’d be running next to him.”
For months, Marquez worked on building his upper body strength. Additionally, Herrera worked with community partners around Miami, like Marquez’s old UFC boxing gym, to help him get back to doing the things he loved.
Eight months into his outpatient rehabilitation journey, Marquez competed in his first triathlon.
“After that first triathlon, John got a taste for it and really enjoyed it,” Herrera said. “He started diving into the competition world and looking at different qualifications to see how he could continue competing.”
Today, Marquez continues to train for competitions around South Florida and the country, while working with Herrera and his team at Lynn Rehabilitation Center. He’s competed in nine different competitions, including the Miami Half Marathon in 2023, where he won second place.
His ultimate goal is to compete in the Half Iron Man – which is 70.3 miles of swimming, hand cycling, and wheelchair racing – in Daytona Beach.
“Recreational therapy at Lynn Rehabilitation Center had the biggest impact on my life,” Marquez said. “Before my accident, the most important things to me were always sports and fitness, and just knowing that I can continue doing sports, and especially elite sports, was something that really motivated me throughout this entire journey. I’m so grateful to Lynn Rehabilitation Center for helping me live my life the way that I always intended to live it.”