"It happened in slow motion and instantly everything was gone," Corner says. "Like a snap of the fingers. Bam. Gone. I went into panic mode. Everything ran through my mind. I can't say I was in a calm state. I went to sit up and I couldn't feel from my hips down and my legs wouldn't move."

"I guess it all happened so fast," Corner says. "Into the helicopter. Into the hospital. Cat scan. X-ray." Less than two hours after he went down on the field, the doctor came in to his room at the Hamilton General Hospital. "I told [the doctor] not to sugarcoat it," Corner remembers. The doctor simply said: "You need a miracle to walk again." That was the moment, Corner says, that he realized he "had to suck it up and get through it."

Corner says he makes a point to drop in to visit and attend staff appreciation luncheons. "My desk hasn't been touched," he observes. "They've left everything exactly the way it was before my accident. It's just waiting for me to come back - except for my stapler. Someone lifted my stapler and it was a good one, too," Corner laughs, making reference to a line from the film Office Space.'

Everything can change in an instant. Sean Corner, a 21-year-old native of Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, was on the fast track to a successful career as an underwriter last spring. He graduated in May 2006 from Mohawk College and accepted a job with The Economical. In September 2006, his whole world turned upside down when he was left paralyzed from the waist down during a rugby match. Corner is not quite home yet. Still, he credits the support of the insurance industry with getting him that much doser. Corner plans to return to The Economical as soon as he feels he has a firm enough grasp on his new situation. Corner refuses to let his injury keep him from the rugby field. The key to finding a new sense of normalcy in life is to keep taking each day at a time, challenge by challenge.

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