Chris Channon smiled as he shuffled out of the hospital doors, his arms hanging limply by his sides, his fingers slightly curled.

He took 12 small steps, slowly turned around, lifted his head and laughed as he yelled “Freedom!” into the wintry air.

Just four months ago, the 50-year-old father was flown home to Toronto paralyzed from the neck down after being attacked and left for dead on a Thai beach.

From his hospital bed back then, Channon vowed to the Star he would walk out the hospital’s front doors. On Thursday afternoon he did just that.

Channon, formerly a humanitarian aid worker in Africa, was injured when he was hit in the back of the neck with a steel pipe as he wandered along a beachfront trail in Koh Lipe.

He spent an entire night sprawled on the sand, paralyzed, as mosquitoes and fire ants gnawed his flesh and stray dogs licked his face. Lying just metres from the water’s edge, Channon could hear the waves coming closer, but his feeble cries for help went unanswered.

Around dawn the next day, Channon was transported to a health centre on a piece of plywood on the sidecar of a police motorcycle. He was then taken via speedboat to a hospital in Hat Yai, where he underwent emergency surgery.

When Channon arrived back in Toronto in September, he was diagnosed as an incomplete quadriplegic, meaning he might one day regain movement through intensive rehabilitation.

On Thursday, as Channon paced around outside the Toronto Rehab Foundation’s Lyndhurst Centre, he celebrated his achievement with his medical team.

Good on yer Chris

Edited January 18, 201511 yr by soihok

Best wishes, hope you make a full recovery. and hope the dimwits that did this get cancer.