The words on his T-shirt are upside down and backward. "Pu evig reven," they seem to say. It's only when you're wearing the shirt yourself, looking down from your chin to your waist, that you can most easily read its upbeat message.

Jarom Hlebasko got the shirt last year when "Never give up" was the motto of his soccer team at Cedar High in Cedar City. This year, though, the T-shirt has turned out to be the motto for Hlebasko's life, as he undergoes the laborious physical therapy he hopes will one day help him walk again.

Hlebasko, 18, was injured four weeks ago when he dived head-first into a field of snow in Cedar City. It was an act of unbridled enthusiasm that has left him a quadriplegic.

But both Hlebasko and his father, Bruce, believe that he'll recover completely from the C-5 injury to his spinal cord. At a press conference Thursday at LDS Hospital, in between physical therapy sessions, both Hlebaskos were cheerful, matter-of-fact and hopeful.

"No, we haven't been told that by the doctors," Bruce Hlebasko admitted, when asked if doctors shared his son's confidence about his recovery. "They aren't as optimistic as we are. We feel he's going to walk again, without a doubt."

His injury was not caused by jumping off a roof into snowbanks, as some rumors have speculated, Jarom said. He had been to visit his girlfriend at her work the evening of Nov. 11, then was driving home with two friends when they decided, "Let's go jump in the snow and be crazy."

Jarom and his friends pulled over near Wal-Mart, next to a field that was covered with 18 inches of day-old snow. The teens threw themselves onto the snow several times and were getting ready to leave when, "for some reason, I turned around and started running. I did the Superman thing," Jarom remembered, lifting his right arm up in a kind of flying motion.

"I jumped a little too high and I bent my head a little too much."

As soon as his head hit the ground, he said, "I lost all my energy." He knew right away, he said, that he had broken his neck. With his head buried deep into the snow, he couldn't breathe and couldn't move, but could hear his friends laughing. When they finally realized he wasn't joking, they tried to lift him out of the snow.

"I told them not to touch my head," Jarom remembered. He continued to direct his care, he said, until an ambulance arrived.

"I'm of the LDS (Latter-day Saint) faith," Jarom said. "I asked my best friend to give me a blessing. He said I'd be able to walk again." So his spirits have never been low since the accident, Jarom said. "I just know I'm going to get better. I have to keep that positive attitude."

"His spirits keep us going," his father said. "But that doesn't mean he doesn't get grouchy sometimes."

His mother and father take turns visiting from Cedar City, sleeping in his hospital room and reading him "scriptures and books about missionary stuff," Jarom said.

After the press conference, while Jarom was ready for more physical therapy, Jeffrey Randle, a doctor of physical medicine and rehabilitation, explained to reporters how fragile the human neck is. Randle is not Jarom's attending physician, so he could not speak about his case, and he was circumspect about Jarom's prognosis. But he did talk about injury and risk.

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"You only have one brain," Randle said. So good rules are, "always wear a helmet" and "never dive into anything." Helmets might not be cool, "but if you look a little bit nerdy, it's worth it."

While a positive attitude might not heal a person, it certainly helps provide the incentive and stamina to get up day after day and endure therapy, Randle said.

Jarom is expected to remain at LDS Hospital for the next five to six weeks, then will continue rehabilitation at home. Asked whether the family will remodel their home to accommodate Jarom's wheelchair, his father, a general contractor, said, "Either that, or we'll sell the house and build another one." A house is just a house, he added.


E-MAIL: jarvik@desnews.com

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