Manny Gomez spent his life as a Miami cop. Two years ago, a fall off his horse changed his life.

"I lost balance and I came head first, slowly came down and I hit my head," he said.

Then he lost sensation.

Doctors feared Manny Gomez would never walk again, after he fell from his horse.

"My whole body was frozen. I couldn't move at all," he said.

Doctors said he'd never walk again.

"In seconds, your life changes, takes a complete change," said Manny.

Then, his life changed again thanks to a new, experimental treatment. Within hours of his fall, doctors ran icy cold saline through Manny's body, dropping his temperature to 92 degrees for two days.

"It protects those axons running up and down the spinal cord, which is extremely important in having the brain talk to your muscles and vice versa," said Dalton Dietrich III, PhD, Scientific Director, Miami Project to Cure Paralysis.

Researcher Dalton Dietrich says cooling the body protects against further damage.

"If you can limit those secondary injuries, you can turn a complete injury possibly into an incomplete injury," he said.

That could mean the difference between walking and not walking.

"You need therapies that target multiple injury mechanisms and cooling a patient a couple degrees seems to work very, very well," said Dietrich.

It took Manny a few months to walk again and he still goes to physical rehab, but he knows how lucky he is.

"People don't know what they have until they lose it. Life taught me how to walk again," he said.

For hypothermia to be effective, it needs to be started as soon after the injury as possible.

The treatment was first used to treat brain injury patients.