When A.J. Cada thinks back to that hot afternoon last July at Tubbs Hill, his usual retreat after a long workday to dip his limbs in the cool water, he knows there was nothing he could have done to be prepared.

"It was just an accident," Cada said. "I wish I could say I could've done something different, but I see it like it was just a fluke."

Like usual, he and his roommate and girlfriend were lavishing in the baking sun near the docks chained to the shore. He remembers the sun on his skin, the lake water rushing around him on his first dive from the shore.

And then one fall, one abrupt, mundane slip on the slick rocks, gravity pulling him down to a hard and unsympathetic surface, and his life was changed forever.

"It doesn't take anything to stop your life in its tracks. A drunk driver, a slip and fall, just being stupid," Cada said on Wednesday, sitting by the window of his sister's Hayden home in his electric wheelchair. "But when it changes, it changes. You're still alive, though, and you need to know that there are reasons to go on."

He's doing better than doctors had predicted, after the slip on a Tubbs Hill rock that shattered his C-6 vertebrae into 300 pieces, broke his C-5 and C-7 vertebrae and cracked his C-4 vertebrae.

The 21-year-old has become an expert on what muscle movement corresponds to which vertebrae, and how much he can control. Fingers, functional because of the C-6, aren't giving him anything. Nor his triceps.

His forearms he can maneuver, and he feels his neck, face, chest. He has retained his confident and thoughtful speech, after doctors predicted he would never speak again.

But everything below C-6, there's nothing.

Reading and video games are about all he can handle now, his ability to access physical therapy fully hinged on his family raising funds for a manual wheelchair.

But Cada is still self assured, quietly confident. While his mobility and self care may be largely dependent on the girlfriend and family he lives with, he has retained the focus and discipline of his army medic training.

And Cada still has ambition, though the plans have changed somewhat.

"I'm alive," he said. "I can't really complain."

Keeping it Together

The Priest River native knew as soon as he hit the ground that day that his neck was broken, he said.

When Cada had prepped to dive into the waves from the shore, he slipped and flung his arm out in front of him, dislocating his shoulder. He landed on a rock face down, his neck snapping to one side.

His body then toppled head first into the water, a fall that doctors said would have killed him if the first fall hadn't broken his vertebrae in a way that allowed for more compression.

As he lay in the water without rising, his roommate asked if he was playing.

"No," Cada answered. "I'm not playing with you."

After Cada's three years with the National Guard, facing an emergency came naturally. He had his roommate pull him out of the water, and directed his girlfriend Amanda Hotine to call "all the important people," like an ambulance, family, the Army.

Cada kept them busy, even as he felt a burning sensation sweep through his body. Even as he realized he had no sensation in his legs when the waves lapped against them.

He knew what needed to be done, he said.

"I knew I had to keep it together or no one else would," Cada said simply. "I can sense panic, when people are freaking out. My roommate was panicky, Amanda was about to panic."

Once in the ambulance, he said, he knew his job was done and he was free to pass out.

At Kootenai Medical Center, Cada's older sisters and parents arrived in time to see him before he was wheeled into an 8-hour surgery, where doctors were unsure what his status would be following the attachment of steel plates to his vertebrae and steel rods in his neck.

His sister Crystal Handlen, a Coeur d'Alene resident, said she remembers her brother saying he couldn't feel anything below his neck.

She assured him he would get through it.

He replied, "I'm going to walk out of here, Crystal,'" she remembered. "That's been his attitude from the get-go."

A Slow Turnaround

Cada's activities are limited these days.

After being discharged from months of occupational and physical therapy at St. Luke's Rehabilitation Institute in Spokane, he and Hotine moved in with his sister Josie Scott in Hayden.

Hotine, 19, helps him with daily tasks like shaving, eating, "anything that would require your hands," Cada said. "She's pretty amazing."

There's a lot of TV watching. Cada has devised a system of manipulating his hands to flip pages so he can read. He can handle a video game controller enough to play slow-paced games, he said.

In his electric wheelchair, paid for by his insurance, he joins Hotine on walks to Walmart, he said, but he can't regulate most of his body temperature now and the degrees can drop swiftly.

"I miss running. I miss playing basketball. I miss going bowling, I can't go out and have a drink with my friends," Cada conceded, his eyes dry and voice steady. "They say (movement) will come back, but I haven't seen much progress. I'm hoping it gets better."

He is no longer able to work at Burger King, and Cada is going to be honorably discharged from the National Guard.

He had joined up when jobs were scarce and he was eager to apply himself somewhere, he said. After honing his physical and mental abilities for the work, he said, it's hard to let go.

"It's a connection you don't want to get rid of," he said. "You have a lot of friends, and when you get out, it changes everything."

Outpatient physical therapy would likely help him get more movement, Cada knows. But his electric wheelchair is too heavy for the lift on his van, and too large to fit inside, so he can't go to appointments, or anywhere else, for that matter.

He needs a manual wheelchair, which would cost about $3,000 and which his insurance won't cover at all.

"I can't drive there in this thing. The battery won't last that long," he joked of the electric wheelchair.

There are frustrations, Hotine said.

"I'll want to do something and have him tag along, and I'll think, 'Oh, he can't go do that with me,'" she said. "I don't like being without him."

Caring for Cada is no burden, she emphasized. They're searching for their own place, and they hope that at that point she can be paid as his caregiver.

Through it all, Cada has held it together, Hotine said.

"I think A.J. is one of the best people this could happen to. He's so mentally strong," she said, adding that they are both focused on their goals. "It's not like this is going to be my whole life and his whole life."

The Plan

The main goal now is to raise funds to get Cada a manual wheelchair, Handlen said.

Cada's family has arranged a spaghetti feed and pie auction fundraiser from 4-7 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 4, at the Trinity Baptist Church in Priest River.

Folks can call about food or pie donations at 610-4371.

"The outpouring from the community has been great. Any help we can get him, his manual chair at this point would relieve a lot of stress," Handlen said. "He could come to family events. Without that manual chair, he can't go to Christmas with us, he can't do Thanksgiving, he can't go out to dinner or go to physical therapy."

Cada's family has rallied around him in other ways. His sister Jamie Powers moved from Oregon to Kootenai County to be close by. His other older sisters who live in the county have also pitched in, visiting and providing emotional support.

Powers is confident that Cada, who had taken medical and business classes at North Idaho College and online classes from Stanford, will still make a life for himself, she said.

"I'd think there are still some opportunities there for maybe sharing his information or teaching," she said. "He's a really positive, upbeat person with a great sense of humor. It may slow him down a little, but it's certainly not going to prevent him from having a good life."

Cada has hopes himself.

He is counting on getting back into physical therapy, and finding a home for him and Hotine. He has also applied to receive an electrical stimulator implant available in Louisville, Ky., that has had success in helping paralyzed individuals move again.

"There are thousands and thousands of people paralyzed," he noted of his slim chances of getting the implant soon. "If I have to wait awhile, I'll wait awhile. I just want something. I want some improvement, because I haven't seen any yet."

He hates asking folks to give money, he said, but noted the manual wheelchair will help with his mobility.

Folks can also help just by telling their kids to go swimming with an adult, he said, and to take care themselves.

"It's definitely made me see everything different," Cada said of his accident. "Certain things are more precious in life. I don't want anything to happen to anyone when they could just stop."

To help

• A spaghetti feed/pie auction fundraiser to help A.J. Cada purchase a manual wheelchair is scheduled from 4-7 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 4 at Trinity Baptist Church at 135 Osprey Lane, Priest River. For food or pie donations, call 610-4371.