Max
07-06-2005, 03:29 PM
A cowboy's spine
Casey Peterson is happy to be science's guinea pig if it means he can drive again
BRIAN BERGMAN
On a cold, wet spring day three years ago, Casey Peterson was doing what he loves best, working the horses. A champion chuckwagon driver, Casey, then 34, was in the middle of a training run on the quarter-section he owns near rural Kelvington, Sask., when the four horses became entangled. Casey hopped off the wagon to sort them out. But before he could get back on, one horse bolted, dragging Casey, who was still holding the two sets of reins. "I would have been okay," he recalls with a shake of his head, "if I'd let go of the damn lines. But I didn't want the horses to run away or get caught in the fence."
Casey was hauled for almost half a kilometre before he fell beneath the wagon, and the wheel axle flipped him. "At first, I thought I'd just broken my legs," he says. "No big deal. I figured I'd drag myself up to the road so someone would see me. But I couldn't move a thing. Not a finger. Not a hand. Not a muscle. I just lay there."
http://www.macleans.ca/topstories/science/article.jsp?content=20050701_108662_108662
Casey Peterson is happy to be science's guinea pig if it means he can drive again
BRIAN BERGMAN
On a cold, wet spring day three years ago, Casey Peterson was doing what he loves best, working the horses. A champion chuckwagon driver, Casey, then 34, was in the middle of a training run on the quarter-section he owns near rural Kelvington, Sask., when the four horses became entangled. Casey hopped off the wagon to sort them out. But before he could get back on, one horse bolted, dragging Casey, who was still holding the two sets of reins. "I would have been okay," he recalls with a shake of his head, "if I'd let go of the damn lines. But I didn't want the horses to run away or get caught in the fence."
Casey was hauled for almost half a kilometre before he fell beneath the wagon, and the wheel axle flipped him. "At first, I thought I'd just broken my legs," he says. "No big deal. I figured I'd drag myself up to the road so someone would see me. But I couldn't move a thing. Not a finger. Not a hand. Not a muscle. I just lay there."
http://www.macleans.ca/topstories/science/article.jsp?content=20050701_108662_108662