Jay Thomas was headed down the line on a wave, just as another surfer was paddling out, past the breaking waves.

“He didn’t know whether to slow down and let the guy under the wave, or to speed up and try to pass him,” his brother James says.

In a split second decision, Jay dived forward – head first – to miss the surfer.

Jay had been surfing for about 10 years. He knows the ocean.

But the sand beneath the ocean’s surface can change so quickly. It can be hard to know how shallow it is, or where a sandbar has formed.

He lay face down in the water, unable to move.

“All he could think was ‘dude, roll me over. I can’t move my arms’,” James says, retelling his brother’s story of that fateful day about two months ago.

The surfer who he nearly collided with came over to him, and rolled his limp body over.

“Hey, are you OK?” Jay asked the surfer, at first not thinking of his own devastating condition.

A freak accident:

Spinal cord injuries happen far too often along the coast each year. You may not hear about them much because medical privacy laws don’t allow us to gather specific numbers on how many people are treated – but they happen.

Days and weeks after Jay was taken to the hospital after sustaining the C-6 injury – leaving him paralyzed with only movement from his chest up, and no use of his hands – the surf community was shocked.

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