MyRecordJournal.com
September 20, 2020 07:00PM By Jessica Simms, Special to the Record-Journal MERIDEN — Even after a life-changing diving accident that caused him to become quadriplegic, Ryan Rosario continues to follow his passion of painting through a different strategy — using his mouth. “Painting is kind of like everything right now,” Rosario said. “It’s the way that I can pretty much express any type of feeling that I am going through or any type of emotion. By painting, so far I have inspired a lot of other people and that’s one of my main goals … as far as painting, putting the brush in my mouth, nobody taught me how to do that.” In 2007, when Rosario was 21, he got into a diving accident in New Haven when he dove head first off a 20-foot boardwalk into five feet of water. The accident left him paralyzed, with no movement in his hands or legs. “It was very hard for everything,” Rosario said. “I was suffering from depression I want to say for a good five years where I did not accept who I was. Now, I’ve completely embraced being paralyzed.” Rosario, 32, went to Gaylord Speciality Healthcare, a rehabilitation-focused health system, for about six months as an in-person patient. Gaylord specializes in traumatic brain injuries, spinal cord injuries, strokes, amputations, pulmonary rehabilitation and more.