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Doctors gave Chris Norton just a 3% chance of ever walking again after he was paralysed from the neck down in an American football accident. But on his wedding day last weekend he proved them wrong.
“I wasn’t going to accept that,” Chris (26) told US People magazine. “I wasn’t going to be part of that 3%.”
A new documentary chronicles Chris’ story of courage and love that conquers all – even physical disability.
It’s titled 7 Yards (6,4m), which was the distance he walked down the aisle aided by his bride. He and Emily Summers (25) said their vows just before sunset on 21 April at Abacoa Golf Club in Florida, USA. It had been a hard, long road for the couple to get there.
Chris injured his spine on 16 October 2010 when he cracked his C3-C4 vertebrae in a tackle during an American football match for Luther College Norse in Decorah, Iowa.
After a year of intensive rehabilitation and constant prayers from his devout family he gradually regained his strength until he was able to resume his studies in August 2011 – but this time in a wheelchair.
Chris says the biggest challenge wasn’t being a so-called disabled student. He was more worried that he’d never be able to meet the woman of his dreams. “I wanted to be a dad and have a wife,” he says. “But I didn’t want to burden somebody with everything I needed.”
He decided to join an online dating site in 2013 and in
August that year he was put in touch with Emily, who was studying at the same
college.
“The accident brought me to her and that’s the biggest blessing,” Chris says. “I was waiting for that girl who made me feel alive and someone I wanted to spend the rest of my life with and then here comes Emily. I knew she was the one.”
Just as Emily had, literally, got him back on his feet, she also encouraged him on their big day to take on the 6,4 metres he had to walk to the altar.
The couple now look after five foster children under the age of eight.
Sources: people.com, sunnyskyz.com, desmoinesregister.com, linkedin.com, nbcnews.com
