It began with a twitch in her knee.

Sitting in her hospital bed, Kelly Thomas-Saykaly was recovering from a car accident days before Christmas 1999 that severed her lower spine.

She had cried when doctors told her that her back was broken, but she was speechless when they told her she was paralyzed.

Doctors at the Concord rehab center told the 15-year-old high school freshman that she would never be able to walk again. Thomas-Saykaly could not even bring herself to begin her therapy.

“I was depressed and I just didn’t want to do anything,” she said.

One day, she remembers looking outside the window from her bed, wishing she could be outside. Then something happened to her.

“All of the sudden I could move my knee. I could feel my kneecap.”

Thomas-Saykaly called her mother to her bedside, asking her to put her hand on her kneecap. Her mother ran and got the nurse, who dropped her tools on the floor when she saw what Thomas- Saykaly could do.

If she could move her knee, Thomas-Saykaly knew that she could move more. She told anyone who would listen that she was going to be walking again by the end of January, despite what doctors doctors had told her.

“I was kind of like, I’m going to do it anyway,” Thomas- Saykaly said. “I’m going to show them.”

In the beginning, however, she could not move around in her wheelchair, continually crashing into walls whenever she tried to control it. Her arms were so weak that she could not even put on a shirt.

She finally did walk. But it took leg braces up to her waist, a back brace and a firm grip on two hand rails to her left and right for her to take her first steps.

“I always told them that I would because I was very active growing up,” Thomas-Saykaly said. “I played a lot of sports and I was always on the go and I always wanted to do that again, to be able to play soccer, basketball and be a normal kid. I just turned 15 when it happened.”

Undaunted, she accepted an invitation to a prom in Maine that April, where was able to stand on the dance floor, hiding her leg braces under her dress.

Four years later, in 2004, she made good on her vow to walk down the aisle at her wedding, with the aid of braces, crutches and two people on either side. “It took awhile, but everybody was crying,” said her mother, Janice Aubin.

Since her accident she has gone kayaking, skiing, swimming with dolphins and even parasailing on a cruise in the Caribbean.

But walking remains an uphill battle for Thomas-Saykaly. Someday she hopes she will only need crutches, or just a cane.

That goal is not out of reach, according to Dan Cummings, the business manager for Project Walk, a California-based recovery program for people with spinal cord injuries that opened a regional center in Boston in January.

Project Walk is more of a gym than a rehab center or hospital. Clients spend several hours a week working out on treadmills, weights and other machines, as well as one-on-one with trainers known as exercise physiologists.

The process starts out simply enough: a trainer will move a leg or arm muscle, asking the client to imagine they are doing it. After numerous repetitions, perhaps millions, the signals the brain has been sending through the injured spinal cord connect. Even a severed spine, which Thomas-Saykaly has, is no obstacle.

“The nerve signals will jump and they will recover and they will re-grow,” Cummings said.

The approach is different than that backed by many doctors and therapists. Cummings, who was paralyzed from the neck down in a swimming accident in 2000, said that like many patients, he was prescribed medication to eliminate the spastic movements he felt in his legs after those injuries.

But it is precisely those spasms that offer hope to people with spinal cord injuries that their brain is somehow still communicating with the rest of their body.

“You’re trying to get signals down to your legs,” Cummings said. “Why would you take something that kills these signals? It just doesn’t make sense.”

Thomas-Saykaly and Cummings both have been through therapy which taught them how to live within the confines of a wheelchair. At her first rehab center, nurses focused on teaching Thomas-Saykaly how to dress herself, brush her teeth and operate her wheelchair.

At Project Walk, Cummings and his colleagues encourage people like Thomas-Saykaly to get out of their wheelchairs.

“What we’re saying is, it is a possibility. You do have an opportunity to walk after a spinal cord injury,” he said.

But that opportunity comes at a high price. Thomas-Saykaly began going down to Project Walk in January. It costs her $100 for each one-hour session. The bill for a typical week is $400 and insurance will not pick up any of the costs, since Project Walk does not have doctors on staff.

Thomas-Saykaly is getting help from some special friends. One weekend in February, the Two Friends Bagel and Deli Cafe in Pinardville held a fundraiser for her. The business donated the proceeds from all its sales of hot or iced coffee over two days to pay for her time at Project Walk.

In a few weeks in the program, Thomas-Saykaly can already measure her progress.

In the beginning, she could press 50 pounds with her legs. Her trainer challenged her to 75 at her last session in February.

Thomas-Saykaly thought she could do better, telling her trainer she was aiming for 100 pounds. She ended up finishing at 110 pounds.

For more information, including how to make donations toward scholarships for the program, visit www.projectwalk.org.

Ultimately, Thomas-Saykaly is hoping to raise $20,000. Contributions toward her expenses can be sent directly to Educare, 381 Goffstown Back Road, Goffstown, NH 03045.