Kris Boesen’s life changed in an instant. In March 2016, he was driving down a winding road in his Nissan 350Z in Maricopa, a tiny hamlet in California’s San Joaquin Valley. Suddenly, the car fishtailed on the wet street, hit a tree and ricocheted into a telephone pole, crushing the vehicle and knocking Boesen unconscious.
When he woke up in the hospital two days later, Boesen was paralyzed from the neck down, his neck broken and his spinal cord crushed. He was now dependent on others for the simplest of tasks, such as eating and drinking, and he needed two attendants 24/7 to help him go to the bathroom and change his position in bed to prevent pressure ulcers.
Boesen was a few weeks shy of his 21st birthday, a young man making his first tentative steps into adulthood. He worked at an insurance brokerage firm, and he spent his free time lifting weights at a gym, tinkering with cars and hanging out with his girlfriend and pals.
The accident brought it all to a screeching halt. “I was basically just existing,” he later admitted.
But the neurosurgeon who fused Boesen’s neck bones to stabilize his spine offered a ray of hope: Boesen might qualify for an experimental treatment that uses stem cells to repair damaged tissue.
