"I Fell 11 Stories and Should be Dead” | Walking Paraplegic
Sickboy
CBC
4.8 • 524 Ratings
🗓️ 25 February 2026
⏱️ 56 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What happens when your paragliding wing folds in half 165 feet in the air, sending you on an 11-story plunge directly onto your ass? (Spoiler: You wake up and start a career in musical theater.) Most people’s worst nightmare involves falling out of the sky. For CJ, that nightmare became a violent reality. On a "big air" day in Pemberton, BC, CJ’s paragliding shute collapsed, and he fell 165 feet shattering nearly his entire lower spine, blowing out his sternum, and becoming a walking paraplegic. In this raw and hilarious conversation, CJ breaks down the "snowflake" of unique injuries that come with spinal cord damage. From the itchy feet you can’t reach to the Costco-sized quantities of lube and the absolute horror of a Senna overdose. But CJ didn’t grieve the "old CJ." Instead, he leaned into the discomfort, started saying "yes" to everything, and pivoted from managing risk to playing Rumpelstiltskin. This is a masterclass in radical gratitude, and the absurdity of the human body!
Check out CJ's TV project here: https://socializedmedicine.tv
You can watch this entire episode over on YouTube. And don't forget to follow Sickboy on Instagram, TikTok and Discord!
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It's becoming pretty clear that U.S. President Donald Trump is ripping up the political |
| 0:05.3 | playbook. |
| 0:05.8 | And when it comes to what it all means for Canada, well, as they say, it's complicated. |
| 0:09.8 | But our podcast, two blocks from the White House, is a way to make sense of it all. |
| 0:13.8 | Join me, Willie Lowry, and senior Washington correspondents, Paul Hunter and Katie Simpson |
| 0:18.6 | every week as we break down the headlines from Capitol Hill |
| 0:22.1 | with a Canadian spin. |
| 0:24.2 | Find and follow two blocks from the White House on your favorite podcast app, including YouTube. |
| 0:30.3 | This is a CBC podcast. |
| 0:33.1 | Yeah, so we carry devices that actually log our flights. |
| 0:36.3 | So we know. |
| 0:37.1 | Oh, okay. |
| 0:55.4 | So I fell from 165 feet. Oh, my. What's that like for like a, you know, story building for someone to try that... Eleven stories. Yeah. Holy fucking hell. And just went to Betty by. Sleeping like a baby. Yeah. I mean... Same country, Canada. Wide by a paraglider, anywhere else. |
| 0:58.2 | Hello, everyone. |
| 0:59.1 | We are back. |
| 1:00.7 | Another week, another episode of Sick Boy. |
| 1:08.3 | And this week, we are sitting down with a fascinating gentleman named CJ. |
| 1:15.2 | And CJ literally fell out of the sky from a very, very high, high height, |
| 1:23.3 | and managed to survive to tell the story about it. He's what one calls a walking paraplegic, which sounds like an oxymoron, but we get into it right off the bat, and it's pretty |
| 1:29.2 | fascinating. Essentially what happened to CJ was he was paragliding. He had a whoopsie, we'll call it, |
| 1:39.2 | and fell 160 feet out of the air, plunged down into the earth where he literally landed on his |
| 1:47.7 | ass. And we're not talking about just a sore butt. We're talking shattered vertebra, a blown |
... |
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