From paralyzed to walking: a devastating motorcycle accident and miraculous recovery

Guillermo Aguilar has been riding motorcycles his entire life. As a collector of bikes and a rider since his teen years, Aguilar couldn’t imagine a life where he wasn’t riding.

But on July 14, 2025, a routine ride home from work changed everything when he was involved in a freeway crash that nearly took his life. 

“I was dead. I was actually dead,” Aguilar says of the accident. 

“Then I saw a bright light, felt a sense of peace, and heard a voice say, ‘that man is going to fix you.”

When he woke up, Aguilar met Michael Wright, MD, an orthopaedic surgeon at Loma Linda University Health, who performed emergency surgery to treat an epidural hematoma in his thoracic spine and repair his elbow dislocation.

After initially believing he may be paralyzed, Aguilar says Wright’s surgical intervention allowed him to begin walking just days after the accident.

Miraculous recovery

As a Southern California Edison lineman, Aguilar is used to traveling through the Cajon Pass on his motorcycle to and from work. As a frequent lane-splitter, Aguilar’s accident unfolded when a driver failed to see him during an attempted merge into an opening. The impact from the car sent him into the concrete K-rail and then into the back of a truck. 

When first responders revived him at the scene, Aguilar could not move his legs. The surgery he underwent –– a thoracic laminectomy –– cauterized the bleeders that were causing Aguilar’s spinal cord bleeding. Once the swelling and injury to his spinal cord were resolved, he started to regain motion.

“After a day, they asked me to wiggle my toes, and I could,” Aguilar recalls. 

“The next day I could move a little more, and by the fourth day, I could walk a little.”

A long hospital stay

Although doctors said that Aguilars' recovery was a miracle, his hospital stay lasted several weeks due to the intense rehabilitation he needed to undergo. While he was no longer paralyzed, Aguilar needed to start physical therapy in the hospital to relearn the basics.

“It’s the little things you don’t think about that were so hard, like showering, going to the bathroom, and walking in a straight line,” he says. “But the PT team was amazing. I’m very thankful for them.”

After he’d progressed enough to go home, he was able to continue rehab first through in-home therapy and then through outpatient therapy at a clinic. 

Today, his mobility is improving, and he can walk using a cane or a walker for shorter distances and a wheelchair for longer distances. Fortunately, Wright predicts that Aguilar will make a full recovery and be able to walk entirely on his own in the near future. 

Family support

As he continues healing, Aguilar leans on his wife and three adult children for support. 

“They baby me,” he jokes. “But they’ve been incredible.”

Now, Aguilar spends his days swimming, doing light woodworking, and staying as active as possible in preparation to return to work. He’s eager to regain strength and independence, and credits the orthopaedic team at Loma Linda University Health and his family for his ongoing recovery.

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