BRANTFORD—When Scott Wheeler awoke in the hospital after a three week induced coma following an accident where he tumbled 30-feet down a cliff while visiting the Mississagi Lighthouse Park property at Manitoulin’s westernmost tip, about 15 km beyond the village of Meldrum Bay, he could remember every terrifying moment of that experience—but the plucky grandson of Wade and Barbara Kearns, operators of Green Acres Tent and Trailer Park and Restaurant, soon began his climb toward recovery.
“I’m doing great,” said Mr. Wheeler. “I am in physiotherapy twice daily now and four days ago was the first time I climbed stairs. There has been a lot of changes.”
That might not sound like such a fantastic thing, but when you consider that after his tumble Mr. Wheeler was very fortunate to not have died or found himself paralyzed for life following his accident it is a miracle indeed. The weeks of enforced stillness, where he was bedridden in a medically-induced coma, has robbed him of much of his muscle mass and even the simplest of motions had to be relearned.
“I lost 60 to 70 pounds,” he said. “I think most of that was substantially muscle.”
That lost mass has an eerie side effect on his physiology. “I can actually feel my muscles working,” he laughed. “I am walking a lot better on my own now. When I was in Sudbury, they had a wheelchair behind me the whole time in case I collapsed.”
Things have progressed so well now, however, that Mr. Wheeler is confident he will be going home in a couple of weeks.
“It’s a lot better since I was transferred here,” he said. “This is a lot closer to home and I get a lot of visitors stopping in to see me.”
Mr. Wheeler said that he was immensely grateful for the outpouring of support he has received both from friends and family down south and his Island friends and extended family from his grandparents’ Sheguiandah resort and restaurant. “There are a lot of people at my grandparents’ place who have known me pretty much all of my life,” he said. “They are great people.”
