Former LBW Community College baseball player Trey Matherson is determined to recover fully from a wreck that he had in late October of this year.

Matherson was on the way home from work when he ran into the back of an 18-wheeler. He fractured his C7 vertebra and lost feeling from his chest all the way down to his feet.

“I don’t remember how any of that occurred, but that’s what happened,” Matherson said. “The fracture on the C7 caused a lot of pressure on my spinal cord and caused it to swell a lot.”

Since the wreck, Matherson has had surgical procedures to correct all of the damage.

“They took that vertebrae out and replaced it with a wire cage and bone graft,” Matherson said. “Then they fused it with a metal plate and four screws.”

Despite the tragic situation, Matherson feels lucky to be alive.

“I didn’t find out that my spine was broken until a little before surgery,” Matherson said. “It took them 45 minutes to get me out of the car and I had several of the paramedics on scene telling me that I was lucky to be alive, so when they told me that my spine was broken all I could think was, ‘That’s minor news compared to if I wasn’t here.’ I just feel extremely lucky that that was the only thing wrong.”

After weeks of therapy, Matherson can now move his arms and legs and can even throw a medicine ball back and forth with his trainer.

“Every day I go into physical therapy thinking, ‘How much more progress can I make today than I did yesterday?’” Matherson said. “It is really all forward from here, I can’t look back.”

Matherson said that it is not one thing that is pushing him to work hard and persevere through the incident, but just who he is as a person.

“It’s just who I am I guess,” Matherson said. “There’s not just one thing pushing me to get better, I’m just dedicated to getting better.”

Matherson is a 2013 graduate from Thompson High School in Alabaster and spent two years at LBW playing baseball. He then transferred to Auburn University in Montgomery and played two years of baseball there. He said that his teammates have been constantly checking up on him.

“They’ve been keeping in touch with me and making sure that I’m O.K.,” Matherson said. “They are doing whatever they can to help me out.”

Matherson was already accepted into nursing school at Jefferson State Community College in Hoover and was planning to begin classes in January.

“At some point I plan to enroll in nursing school again,” Matherson said. “Now I have a connection with nursing even more, so I am looking forward to getting into nursing school.”