Dove in a Lake and Broke My Neck
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How did diving off a dock at night lead to Zach's immediate paralysis?
My name is Zach Cheromsky. I'm 36 years old from Chicago. I'm here to tell a story of a neck injury I had about just over 15 years ago. dove into a shallow part of a lake at one o'clock a.m. when I was 20 years old, just after my sophomore year of college. I was with my brother, a lot of our friends. When I dove in, I was immediately paralyzed from the neck down. I remained conscious through the entire experience, well, at least until I got into the ambulance. But as I was underwater, I fully was aware of what was happening. Obviously, I wasn't able to surface. I was completely helpless. It was, like I said, one o'clock in the morning, so pitch dark. Everyone was drinking. I wasn't, thankfully, but I pretty much had given up hope that anyone would be able to locate me.
There wasn't any way for me to signal anyone.
Pitch black, I'm assuming, right?
I'm sorry?
It was pitch black outside, I'm assuming?
Yeah, and actually, there were storms coming in. It was already kind of like there's lightning in the sky, but someone had the idea, hey, let's go night swimming. We were at my brother's girlfriend's house at the time, and her dock was at the bottom of a hill, so the main house was... Not far, but out of shouting distance. There were only a few of us actually down on the dock. I had actually just gotten there. It was late in the night, but at 20 years old, it was still pretty early. Fully intending to start drinking at some point that night. We were up there for a country music festival that was pretty big in the area in southeastern Wisconsin. We would go to every year.
So you were not in your hometown?
Yeah, our family has a house on the same lake or across the street from the lake, but I grew up on that lake. I taught sailing school on the lake, learned how to water ski there, spent all my summers there.
So you were familiar with the lake and the area, and you had obviously been in it plenty of times.
Yeah, and actually our dock was maybe 100 yards from the one I dove off of that night. I didn't do anything differently. It's just that little difference in depth made all the difference in the world. And it was myself, one of my best friends, Jake, my brother's girlfriend, and maybe a couple other people that were down there initially, at least, to just jump in, like cool off. And then we had the whole weekend to look forward to with the concert.
What happened while Zach was trapped underwater and how was he rescued?
And there was probably... 30 of us up there mainly from our high school. And my brother's girlfriend, she went to high school with us. She was a year in between us. So my brother's two years younger. She was in the year between. So our friend groups kind of blended together. And that's what we were doing all summer. It was just during the week, I had a painting job, make some extra cash for the we just do teenager things like all weekend. So my parents weren't up there at the time because this was a Thursday night. So we went up a little bit early for this concert specifically. So it was myself, my brother, and a couple of our friends just crashing at our family's place. No adult supervision there. There were adults at the house we were at though.
And it wasn't like they like facilitated or like, know like i mean i'm sure they were aware but like not really what like was going on it's just a different kind of lifestyle up there it's kind of like you know wisconsin like nothing bad could happen nothing bad ever did happen and that was kind of like the event that broke that illusion in more ways than one so when i dove in like i said given up pretty much all hope it wasn't like how you hear about it in the movies where like your life flashes before your eyes you don't like think about like you're at least myself like i wasn't like thinking about like my loved ones or like regrets or is like very peaceful surprisingly i was it just felt like that was what was supposed to happen do you think you were gonna die
I did, yeah, for sure. And I remember thinking, for some reason, I was aware that, you know, when you drown, it's not because necessarily you can't breathe.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
How did diving off a dock at night lead to Zach's immediate paralysis?
0:00–2:44
2
What happened while Zach was trapped underwater and how was he rescued?
2:44–9:57
3
What emergency care and initial hospital decisions shaped Zach's survival?
9:57–10:36
4
Why did doctors recommend surgery versus a halo and what did the operation involve?
10:36–16:43
5
How did ICU life, tracheotomy and communication boards affect Zach's recovery?
16:43–23:05
6
How did opioid pain management create addiction and complicate rehabilitation?
23:05–31:07
7
When and how did Zach begin walking again and what is Brown-Séquard syndrome?
31:07–56:30
8
How did Zach rebuild purpose, overcome addiction, and find meaning after trauma?
56:30–2:06:44