A bodybuilder left paralysed after a gym weights machine crushed his spine has told how he has taken his first steps to walking again.
Surgeons had warned taxi driver Regilaneo da Silva Inacio, 42, that he had almost no chance of ever recovering from his horrific injuries.
But now courageous Regilaneo has told how after a second op and gruelling physiotherapy feeling has started to return to his legs.
He told local media in Juazeiro do Norte, Brazil: “I can already feel it when people touch my legs, and it’s increasing every day.”
Regilaneo was left seriously injured when a gym’s 150-kilogramme weight machine collapsed on his neck while he was working out on 4th August.
Horrific CCTV footage shows the upright leg press machine slam down onto his neck like a guillotine.
Regilaneo – left unable to move from the waist down – said: “The blow was so violent, it felt like I had been snapped in half.
“When I came to, it was like my legs were no longer part of me, they were outside my body and not attached any more.
“Despite the injury, I still thank God for the miracle where the machine did not hit my head, because if it had, I would not be here to tell the story.”
But after pioneering surgery, he is determined to walk again.
He said: “Sure I have considered that I might never walk again, I can’t control that, but what I can control is that I will not give up, and I will never stop trying.
“I can already feel it when people touch my legs, and it’s increasing every day.”
After he was injured Regilaneo was rushed to hospital where medics described the spinal injury as “catastrophic”.
A series of pins and rods were built around his spinal column to protect it from further damage.
The surgeon looking after him, Jose Correia Junior, said at the time: “The patient is optimistic. He has already started to sit and feed while sitting.
“He is in intensive physiotherapy, with motor rehabilitation and mobility in bed, actively and passively.
“This mobility is critical for providing the neurological stimulus he now needs to heal.”
A spokesman for the 220 FIT gym where Regilaneo was injured said the machine was in perfect working order.
Cicero Santos, a personal trainer at the studio alleges that Regilaneo did not properly lock the machine’s weight brake after using it.
