Lying paralyzed and bleeding on a hillside, David Westergaard remembers hearing his UTV cartwheeling toward him and realizing he was going to die when the off-road utility vehicle hit him.

He uttered one simple prayer: "God, please take care of my family."

Just as he finished, the half-ton machine bounced over the top of him and continued its path down the hill.

Westergaard says that moment of what he sees as spiritual intervention continues throughout his recovery from a potentially devastating spinal injury. Doctors told Westergaard he was unlikely to ever walk again, yet only seven weeks after his accident, he walked out the doors of Rapid City Regional Hospital.

"It felt good to be able to walk out of there," he said.

Westergaard's journey into the world of spinal cord injuries began on a sunny Mother's Day on May 11. After a brunch and a trip to Bear Country, Westergaard and his family returned home to do a little gardening.

Westergaard loaded his four-wheel utility terrain vehicle with dirt and backed it down a steep incline behind his home near Johnson Siding.

After unloading the dirt, Westergaard noticed how steep the incline was and made a mental note to punch the gas to get up the hill.

Westergaard had forgotten that the UTV remained in reverse. As soon as he hit the gas, the vehicle flew down the hill, twisting sideways. It began to roll. On the second roll, Westergaard was thrown from the vehicle, landing on the rocks below. The fall broke his lower back.

The instant he landed, Westergaard knew what had happened. "I anticipated I was paralyzed," he said.

Aside from the pain in his broken back, Westergaard felt nothing in his legs. Thoughts of how he would play soccer with his 8-year-old son flooded his mind - until he heard the UTV bearing down on him.

Westergaard said there is no reason the UTV should have bounced when it did. There are no rocks, no changes in landscape. He credits it to a higher power, sure that God heard his prayer that day.

After spending nearly two hours on the hillside as paramedics worked to safely remove him, Westergaard was rushed to the hospital. The doctor there gave him grim news.

Westergaard had fractured his L1, a vertebra in his lower back. The break bruised his spinal cord. An injury to the spinal cord at L1 often leads to paralysis, the doctor told him.

"He said, 'There's only a 40 percent chance you'll ever walk again,'" Westergaard said.

After a two-hour surgery to fuse the vertebrae above and below the fracture, Westergaard began to feel some tingling in his legs, but he remained paralyzed. The doctor reiterated his earlier prognosis.

"He was not real encouraging," Westergaard said. "I just thought: I don't believe that. I thought God would give me the strength to get through it. I believe he's an amazing healer."

After Westergaard's condition stabilized, he began with the simplest of physical therapy. Just learning how to sit up in bed proved exhausting.

Then one morning - May 16, to be exact - he moved his foot.

That small wiggle propelled Westergaard forward.

"I would ask everyone who I saw, 'Do you think I'll walk?'" he said. "In my mind, my heart, I truly believed I would someday."

When physical therapist Ronda Jordahl first met Westergaard, she regarded him like she does all spinal injury patients: with cautious optimism.

"We always tell our patients to hope for the best but plan for the worst," she said.

Jordahl said an injury like Westergaard's usually results in complete paralysis. "The nature of lower spinal cord injuries tends to be an all-or-nothing injury," she said.

Within two weeks of beginning his work with Jordahl, however, Westergaard began moving his legs while lying on a mat. "His recovery is very unusual," she said.

Jordahl said Westergaard had several things going for him. He was in good condition and had a lot of upper body strength. "His pain tolerance was high, … and he has a lot of determination," she said.

Yet Jordahl says that many spinal cord patients have those attributes but never walk again. So what was different about Westergaard's recovery?

One thing that may have helped is the unusual order in which his muscles regained their movement. Jordahl said that typically, leg movements return to spinal injury patients in a very specific order. Westergaard's returned in a different order.

Jordahl can't say for certain why that happened or if it played a major role in his recovery, but she knows his determination definitely did.

"He got up walking quicker than you would usually trust someone to be walking," she said. "He was just going to do it, and it's kind of hard to say no when you have a patient who wants it that bad.

"A lot of it early on was just willpower and determination."

Westergaard took his first step June 6. That was just one success in a grueling schedule of physical therapy. Westergaard got up at 5:30 a.m. each day and worked at his physical therapy for four hours a day. He lifted weights and stretched. Slowly, he began to put weight on his legs and, using walkers and braces, began walking again.

Although Westergaard acknowledges he is a determined person, he isn't convinced he did it alone. "It wasn't me doing it," he says. "I give the credit to the one who created me."

Like a lot of people who go through a health crisis, Westergaard now realizes that plenty of good came from his experience.

For instance, he saw how many people care about him and his family. Friends and family renovated his home to accommodate his continuing rehab, footing the bill and getting donations from local businesses including Floor to Ceiling and Knecht Home Center.

His boss, Jess Riddle of Riddle's Group, assured Westergaard immediately after the surgery that his paycheck as chief financial officer would continue. His wife and children offered a calm and optimistic presence, he said.

"The accident showed me the goodness of people," he said. "It taught me to notice things more."

On July 1, seven weeks after staring up at the clouds and wondering if he was going to die on that hillside, Westergaard walked out of the hospital. While he has more recovery ahead of him, he has only optimism about his future.

"You just want to get normal back. As time goes on, I'm getting more and more normal," he said. "I've come along way since May 11."

Contact Lynn Taylor Rick at 394-8414 or lynn.taylorrick@rapidcityjournal.com