Boy Injured in Snowboarding Accident Making Recovery

DULUTH - An Edina teenager seriously hurt in a snowboarding accident up north is making a remarkable recovery. Doctors say a helmet saved Henry Rohlf's life.

Now, after waking up from a coma, 13-year-old Rohlf has to re-learn how to do everything he used to take for granted.

"Its harder to do a lot of things. Like I can't open a carton of milk or get toothpaste out of the tube," says Rohlf. He can't even stand on his own two feet without the help of a physical therapist.

In the middle of February, Rohlf went on a ski trip with his confirmation class, and followed a friend off a giant jump called a "superkicker." The last thing Rohlf remembers is waking up in the hospital five days later, unable to move his left side.

A golf ball-sized black spot on Rohlf's brain left him partially paralyzed. But doctors say, if he wasn't wearing a helmet, his injuries would've been much worse.

"Probably the parts of the brain that do the thinking would have been more damaged. He may not have lived if he wasn't wearing the helmet," says Dr. Mark Gormley at the Gillette Children's Hospital.

Rohlf's dad Bill is optimistic. "The first thing he learned how to do was text. He flipped his phone 90 degrees and learned to work the keyboard across rather than up and down. That was amazingly quick, so if the other things go as quickly as that, we're in good shape."

Rohlf is expected to get out of the hospital in the next month,but it may be years of rehab before his ability level is the same.

Mt. Olive Lutheran Church says it will require all students to wear helmets on church-sponsored ski trips from now on.

CaringBridge website