Jackson Drum learned to skate on the lake behind his house in Parkers Prairie, Minnesota when he was about 8 years old. Once he got started, nothing could stop him. No matter the cold, no matter the snow, he laced up and zipped across the ice every chance he got. He’d found the thing he loved most of all.
In the years to come, Jackson joined a youth hockey league and logged thousands of hours practicing at his local rink. He skated on the frozen lake with his little sisters and spent summers teaching pint-sized skaters at church hockey camps. When he was 17, he enrolled at Idaho’s Coeur d’Alene Hockey Academy where he rose twice a week before sunrise to savor a solo skate in the school’s empty rink.
“The feeling of being in a rink by yourself was so peaceful,” he says. “You could just do what you wanted to do.”
In late January 2025, as Jackson raced past opponents during a Vancouver game, he felt a check against his shoulder; his skate caught an edge, and he flew headfirst into the boards, sustaining a C1-C2 spinal cord injury. When Erica and Jason Drum arrived at his hospital bedside from Minnesota, they found their son covered in tubes, using a feeding tube to eat and a ventilator to breathe. A doctor explained that significant recovery was unlikely.
“He said the swelling in Jackson’s spinal cord was so severe that there's no way a signal would ever get through there,” Erica says. “And I said, ‘Well, if it's not severed, isn't there a chance?’”
As Jackson’s initial prognosis consumed the Drums, a sense of shock reverberated among his current and former teammates. Alisa Albers, who had first met the Drums through their shared membership in the Fellowship of Christian Athletes Hockey organization, and whose son had become friends with Jackson that fall in Coeur d’Alene, searched for an immediate way to be useful.
“I couldn’t stop crying – my heart was just aching – but then it was like, ‘What can I do for the family? How can I help Jackson?’” she says.
Albers worried about the logistics of bringing Jackson home from Canada; there was not only a border to cross, but a ventilator to consider. The Drums needed information fast, and that was something she could gather for them.
Tapping into the tightly knit hockey community, Albers quickly connected with Leslie Jablonski, whose son Jack had sustained a spinal cord injury in 2011. Jablonski pointed her toward the National Paralysis Resource Center (NPRC) at the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation, and it was here that Albers found the crisis support the Drums needed.
“I had no idea what to expect, but I was blown away,” Albers says. “The Reeve Foundation gave us hope and walked us through the darkest hours.”
For the next week, Albers acted as a bridge between the Drums and NPRC Director, Information and Resource Services, Bernadette Mauro. As Mauro provided detailed explanations about medical flights and ventilators and rehabilitative hospitals that matched Jackson’s needs, Albers relayed the information to Erica and Jason, who used it to plan Jackson’s return to the U.S.
“It was such a blessing,” Albers says, adding, “I could send Bernadette a question and she’d be right on it. Instead of having to do weeks and weeks of research on our own, she just catapulted us ahead.”
The support was just beginning. On February 11, Jackson and Erica left Vancouver for the Shepherd Center in Atlanta. When their flight finally arrived near midnight – after an unexpected detour to avoid a tornado – and the ambulance brought them to the wrong hospital, it was Bernadette who helped Erica sort the mistake.
Connecting with the NPRC had not only given the family a roadmap for getting Jackson back to the U.S., but an initial understanding of the injury they needed to make decisions.
When he was told that the paralysis and ventilator use were likely permanent, Jackson had insisted that he would be “the miracle boy.” But until Albers found the NPRC, the Drums had been given little information about what might be done for their son beyond arranging around-the-clock-care.
“Bernadette helped by giving us the options there were out there to get off the ventilator or, at least, try the hardest we can,” Erica says. “And I think just having the options was important. It was like ‘Ok, it’s not over.’”
At Shepherd, Jackson faced daunting challenges, but his belief that he would somehow beat the steep odds of his injury was borne out. At Shepherd, he was re-diagnosed as an incomplete injury, not the complete SCI with little to zero hope relayed by the medical team in Vancouver. The feeding tube was removed soon after he arrived, though its initial placement in his colon, not stomach, had caused extensive damage that required surgery. His recovery was complicated and delayed his efforts to wean off the ventilator. But he eventually did.
After that, he steadily rebuilt his strength during intensive physical therapy sessions. The injury had caused Central Cord Syndrome, so Jackson’s hands and arms were weaker than his legs, but he eventually regained feeling in parts of every limb. By the time he returned to Minnesota in September for his senior year in high school, he was able to stand up with help.
It was extraordinary progress considering his level of injury and the Drums were as amazed as they were grateful.
“He was always like ‘I’m going to get better, I’m going to get better,’” Erica says. “I don’t think it ever sunk in that he was not supposed to have anything.”
These days, Jackson’s life revolves around school and twice-weekly therapy sessions at a Minneapolis clinic two and a half hours away from home. He recently tried sled hockey, and this spring will begin epidural stimulation using ONWARD Medical’s ARC-EX System to improve his hand strength. The treatment, which the Drums first learned about through Bernadette, is the first FDA-approved treatment for spinal cord injury; its pioneering technology was developed with early investments by the Reeve Foundation.
Erica continues to text Bernadette each week with new questions. The answers she receives – about walkers and complex insurance claims and the NPRC College Transition Program – have helped Jackson reclaim his life and the family tackle challenges as they arise.
“The Reeve Foundation is so good with giving information and relaying the technology that we would not hear about otherwise,” Erica says, adding, “It’s resources and hope.”
As the year came to an end, Jackson walked 1,508 feet at the local YMCA – a record for him, and another moment that felt like a miracle.
“I have to look at him and pinch myself because I know it wasn’t supposed to look like this,” Erica says.
To learn more and to support the Reeve Foundation’s vision of a world where spinal cord injury (SCI) does not result in paralysis, and paralysis does not result in diminished quality of life, please visit ChristopherReeve.org.