Trevor Greene is one step closer to walking again, a prospect the wounded Afghan Veteran thinks is “very exciting.”
A fundraising campaign launched by Nanaimo teenager Rebecca Lumley and championed by the RCL’s BC-Yukon Command racked up $113,000 in donations in only three months, said Inga Kruse, executive director for BC-Yukon Command, and the funds have now been earmarked to purchase a robotic exoskeleton for Greene in the near future.
Provided Greene’s slow and steady recovery enables him to wear the suit — produced by Eckso Bionics, a California-based robotics company — Greene is destined to walk again, something he hasn’t been able to do since he was first injured on March 4, 2006.
While serving with the Canadian Forces in Afghanistan that day, Greene was attacked by an axe-wielding 16-year-old boy.
Greene’s attacker approached him from behind while he was seated with a group of elders in a rural Afghan village. The boy pulled a homemade axe from beneath his robes and plunged it into Greene’s exposed skull.
Greene survived, but the attack left him severely brain damaged.
Defying the odds — doctors assumed he would never wake from his coma — Greene regained consciousness.
“When he first woke up, he couldn’t so much as move a finger,” explained his wife Debbie following an Aug. 29 cheque presentation at the Ladysmith Legion, “and now he’s working on parallel bars at the physiotherapist’s and with a walker at home.”
“Ecstatic” is how Debbie described her reaction to the possibility of Trevor regaining his ability to walk.
“I haven’t seen him walk since he left for Afghanistan in January 2006,” she added.
Speaking to a small crowd of Ladysmith Legion members, Trevor thanked both the Legion and Veterans Affairs for their support before pledging: “Someday, I’m going to walk through those front doors.”