Grandma of 4 Paralyzed After Freak Dunk Tank Accident (Exclusive)

What should have been a fun family outing turned into an EMT grandmother’s worst case scenario.

On July 6, Dena Suihkonen was spending the day with her four grandchildren — who range in age from 2 to 8 — at the annual Breitung Township Picnic in Minnesota.

Public service representatives, including Tower Area Ambulance Services Director Suihkonen, were all taking turns getting dunked in the tank. After the police chief was done, she climbed in.

“I was dunked a couple of times before they were having issues,” Suihkonen, 59, of Tower, tells PEOPLE. “So they asked me to move.”

As she did, she claims, the seat sprung up, tossing her backwards more than six feet in the air before she came plummeting down.

“My rear end hit the ground, and it ended up bursting my T 12, which took out my spinal cord,” the EMT supervisor says.

Although most people in the crowd had no idea right away that she’d been seriously hurt, as an emergency medical service professional, she immediately knew this wasn’t just a blooper tape moment.

As the supervisor for the medical crew at the event, she immediately said she needed a medical flight called. When another EMT asked her why, she replied, “because I can’t feel my legs.”

“Then things got real,” she says.

Her husband of 40 years — who had never wanted her to get into the dunk tank that day — also saw what happened and came running. “He was so scared,” she says.

The first responder team’s quick response got Suihkonen to the nearest, and only, Level 1 trauma center nearby: Essentia Health-St. Mary’s Medical Center in Duluth. 

There she learned she’d suffered multiple spinal fractures, resulting in a T11 complete spinal cord injury. She underwent emergency spinal fusion surgery and spent a week in intensive care until transferring to intense inpatient rehabilitation for a total of more than 40 days.

She is now paralyzed below the level of her spine injury and says she is dealing with long term complications resulting in more than just her loss of mobility.

Scans done in the ER revealed she had multiple brain aneurysms that were unrelated to the accident, but had to be addressed as well. 

Her daughter Ari Picard says her mom has undergone one surgery to stabilize an aneurysm, but will need further procedures.

“I went from extremely active to now I’m a paraplegic and learning new ways to be active,” Suihkonen says.

What’s even harder is not being able to help her community as a first responder. “Living in a small town, too many times I knew my patients, so it was helping people I cared about,” she says. “Now, it’s hard because I know these calls are still going on and I can’t be there to help.”

Another challenge for Suihkonen, who claims she was recently placed on unpaid work furlough by the city of Tower as a result of her injuries, is paying for changes to her home to accommodate her limited mobility.

“My big thing is that we live in a very old house, on a 59 feet hill,” she says. “We were very proud that we paid off our house, but I can’t get upstairs to the bedrooms and my kitchen isn’t set up for me to use…the house doesn’t really work for me now.”

The family is hoping to cover some of the costs through a GoFundMe they’ve set up, which has raised more than $9,000.

“There are so many people that are there for me between my family and friends and this town has rallied around me,” she says.

Suihkonen also tells PEOPLE she has retained an attorney specializing in personal injury and workman’s comp cases. 

Tower Mayor David Setterburg did not respond to PEOPLE’s multiple requests for comment about Suihkonen’s potential future with the city or the allegation that the insurance company’s decision to reject her workman’s comp claim. The non-profit that provided the dunk tank did not return an email request for comment. 

Meanwhile, the Breitung Township board of supervisors said they’re “holding her in our hearts, our thoughts and our prayers everyday.”

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Although Suihkonen says she’s not well-suited for a life dependent on others — “I try to stay positive,” she says, “but it stinks” — for now, she’s just looking forward to having everybody at home for Thanksgiving, including her four grandchildren, who are coping well with what happened.

“They actually saw me get taken in that helicopter,” she says. “They pretty much saw everything.”

No matter what the future holds, daughter Gabby Gross, 27, tells PEOPLE her mom is the most resilient person and knows she’ll get through this.

“We all thought we were going to be the ones to help her cope, but she’s been our strength through it,” Gross says. “Some days are really hard but making so much progress has been fun to see. She makes us all super proud of her.”