Surgeon Scott Spann faced a long road to recovery following cycling accident

One moment Scott Spann was flying down Loop 360 on his road bike, head tucked, wheels spinning.

The next, the Austin orthopedic surgeon was sprawled on the pavement, unable to move, struggling for breath.

"At the moment of impact, I knew I was a quad," he says five-and-a-half years after slamming his bike into a car parked on the side of Loop 360.

He'd crashed into the rear window of the vehicle, which had no one inside, then rolled to the ground. His face burned where he'd hit the car and road, but below that he felt nothing.

His thoughts swirled.

Would he ever walk again? Perform surgery? How could he support his wife and three children?

He was embarrassed, too, about his role in the wreck. He'd seen the car in the distance, but miscalculated how far he was from it.

Like that, Spann had gone from spinal specialist to patient.

Today Spann, 52, admits he's an adrenaline junkie. Obsessive? Definitely.

A former rugby player who once entered a bull-riding competition as a joke during college, he likes pushing his body to the fraying edge.

He was born into a family of athletes. He played football and tennis in high school, then focused on competitive swimming. He swam for the University of Texas, where he became a four-time All American and seven-time NCAA champion. (Two of Spann's children, Alexi and Scott Jr., are elite swimmers today.)

He likes snow skiing, Harley-Davidson motorcycles and hunting big game, especially animals that "at least theoretically have the opportunity to hunt me back," he says. The stuffed heads of an elephant, giraffe and cape buffalo he shot on safari in Africa decorate his Westlake medical office. He loved the intensity of cycling and quickly grew almost obsessive about it, riding at least five days a week.

"I don't remember not having those sort of desires to do the most, be the best," Spann says.

The lifestyle, though, has taken its toll.

Spann broke his back in a car accident in 1999. He broke his hip during a high-speed downhill skiing accident in Vail, Colo., in 2003. In all, he's had 14 orthopedic surgeries, including three knee repairs.

So when he found himself lying numb on the side of Loop 360 that September day in 2005, he knew what he was in for.

Memories of caring for two teenagers who had been paralyzed, work he did as part of a high school internship at a spinal cord injury rehabilitation center in Florida, flashed through his mind.

"I literally started talking to God, saying ‘If this is it, it's been an unbelievable ride and I've probably lived six times the life of normal folks, but if you see fit to give me a chance, I will do my very best with what I have hereafter.' "

He believes divine intervention played a role in what happened next.

The first people on the scene were a doctor and his wife. The next was the head of the emergency room at St. David's South Austin Hospital.

Spann knew he was severely injured. He managed to tell those first people on the scene not to move him. He knew if his spinal cord swelled inside the framework of his spine, it could choke itself off, permanently paralyzing him. On his way to the emergency room, he asked to be given methylprednisolone, a sometimes controversial treatment of steroids that must be injected within four hours to minimize inflammation in the spinal cord.

Spann had injured the second through seventh cervical vertebrae, near the top of his neck. Although the spinal cord was bruised and crushed as it absorbed the impact, it wasn't completely severed. Even though Spann couldn't move, he did feel some sensation in his limbs.

At University Medical Center Brackenridge, doctors stabilized him, then watched and waited. Two days after the accident, they operated, fusing the spinal column in five places and relieving pressure caused by swelling. He spent several days in intensive care and about 10 days in the hospital.

His body was battered, scraped and bruised. He tore ligaments in his knee and later required knee reconstruction surgery.

He remembers a member of the clergy visiting him. "He would come in and say prayers, and remarkably there would be some alteration nearly immediately," Spann says. "I know it sounds hokey, but that's the way it was."