Kirjoita ruutuun ISOLLA KIRJOITETUN ILMAISUN oikean suomennoksen numero (ilman pistettä).



This chapter tells the story of freestyle skier Pekka Hyysalo, who fought his way back to life after a DEVASTATING accident on the slopes that could have been FATAL .

In 2010 Pekka Hyysalo was a professional freestyle skier, a big, 6'4'' young man admired for being able to PULL OFF the kinds of tricks guys half his size were doing. Then one FATEFUL jump changed the course of his life forever.

A few months SHY OF his 20th birthday, Pekka was being shot for a short ski trick film in Lapland. The weather did not favor them and Pekka had PERSISTENTLY tried to NAIL a particularly challenging aerial trick four times IN A ROW . He INSISTED ON giving it one more go. When he took off into the air, a gust of wind hit him OUT OF THE BLUE . Horror-stricken friends watched Pekka land right on his head.

The paramedics rushed the injured young man to the Intensive Care Unit in Oulu. After spending hours in SURGERY , he lay for several weeks in a medically induced coma. The CT scan REVEALED traumatic brain injury and the doctors' PROGNOSIS was BLEAK — quadriplegia.

While friends graduated from college, Pekka spent summer 2010 RECUPERATING in hospitals. CLINGING onto SELF-PITY was not an option for Pekka who, as a former competitive athlete, did not like losing. In August he began REHABILITATION at a centre in Helsinki and decided to fight back with every fiber of his being. He was told it would take at least two years before he would be able to walk again, but he was back on his feet in six months.

Pekka puts his ACCOMPLISHMENT down to his sense of humor. In addition to learning to walk again, he learned to laugh at himself. Pekka did everything wrong 1,000 times before learning to do things right. Repetition makes the brain develop new "routes" to signal commands that used to be taken care of by the neural pathways damaged as a result of the accident. In the beginning, the rehabilitation CONSISTED almost entirely of physiotherapy, but in three years Pekka was already learning to run.

The fact that Pekka had no INSURANCE at the time of the accident made his road to RECOVERY rough. He had no one but his family TO COUNT ON to finance his rehabilitation and he felt he wanted to help others who faced a similar fate. In 2013 Pekka FOUNDED FightBack, whose MISSION was to support the rehabilitation of athletes with head trauma and increase AWARENESS about the importance of protecting oneself in sport activities.

In 2017, DESPITE his incredibly fast recovery, Pekka is still somewhat CLUMSY in his movements and speaks more slowly and monotonously than others. His goal is to run the famous New York Marathon in seven years, and in order to do that, he first has to learn how to run properly. He still dreams of tearing down the slopes in a cloud of powder, but has SETTLED FOR other plans. In 2015 he was invited by the President of Finland to the Independence Day Reception. His plus one was none other than his own mother, who stood by him through thick and thin.