While on vacation in Australia last summer, Chris Fisher and his father visited the Three Sisters, a jutting rock formation in the Blue Mountains in New South Wales. Not content with the primary lookout, they sought an alternative view. Getting there required descending about 150 uneven steps.

Fisher’s attitude was basically, and typically, “Yeah, why not?” This is the way the radio play-by-play voice of USC men’s basketball approaches most aspects of his life; why should a jagged set of stairs on the side of a mountain be any different?

Fisher’s father, Jim, had another question in mind: “Because we have to come back up?”

“Sure enough, down he goes,” Jim Fisher recalled. “At the bottom we sat down for a while. Then it was time to go back up. It was pretty steep stuff. His attitude was, ‘I will not be denied.’ I was huffing and puffing.”

At this point you might be wondering what the big deal is; after all, tourists visit the Three Sisters and climb those steps every day.

Most of them, however, weren’t told at 17 that they’d never walk again.

TRAGIC TURN

For proof of Chris Fisher’s positivity and patience, look no further than his primary occupation. The Trojans are 4-27 in Pac-12 play over the past two seasons entering Thursday night’s game at heavily favored Arizona. Fisher has the call on KSPN/710. He’ll approach it with energy and enthusiasm. Such is the job. There’s no other option.

Maybe it was Fisher’s pragmatism that enabled him to beat a dire prognosis. Maybe it was the power of positive thinking. Maybe it was the competitive nature of a skilled soccer player and gifted skier. Maybe he just got lucky.

“He’s a miracle, frankly,” said Casey Georgeson, Fisher’s oldest sister. “It’s a miracle what he was able to do.”

On the night of Oct. 26, 2001, Fisher was riding home from a friend’s dad’s house near Rohnert Park, north of San Francisco. Fisher was in the passenger seat. Another friend was in the back.

The driver couldn’t handle a turn on a winding road and lost control of his white, early-1990s Acura Legend, which rolled and flipped into a ditch. The passenger side was pancaked. The roof collapsed on Fisher’s neck, breaking it. He had severe damage to his spinal cord at the C5 and C6 vertebrae.

“My first reaction was, ‘We’ve got to tell our parents we got into a car accident.’ My second reaction was, ‘How the heck am I going to get out of this car?’” Fisher, 30, recalled. “It took me a couple minutes to realize I was paralyzed. I couldn’t move my legs. I couldn’t feel my legs. That’s when it set in.

“The pain was excruciating in so many different ways. I was upside down. I had my knees up to my chest. All I could think about was surviving, hoping to get out.”

The friend sitting in the back was able to crawl out and flag down help. Rescue workers needed the Jaws of Life to pry Fisher out of the crushed car. A helicopter took him to a hospital. He kept asking if he’d be able to walk again. The responses ranged from “probably not” to “no.”

After Casey arrived at the hospital and composed herself – her father insisted that she pull it together – she walked into the emergency room. Chris was lying on a stretcher with his head in a stabilizer.

“Case, Case, they say I’m never going to walk again,” Chris told his sister.

“You know what, Chris? I don’t want to hear that out of you,” Casey responded. “You don’t know that yet.”

Casey, who’s 7 years older than Chris, always had a big influence on him. When he heard those words, something clicked in his mind. His stubborn streak surfaced.

“At that moment, my entire mentality changed,” Chris Fisher said. “I never truly thought that I would spend the rest of my life in a wheelchair. I sort of had this belief that I was going to get back on my feet. The doctors didn’t know. I was going to do whatever it took.”

Fisher’s mother, Leslie, said Casey’s words gave Chris “hope and courage.” But Leslie, a recently retired nurse, understood the reality of the situation. Her son needed seven hours of surgery, and he was paralyzed from the chest down.

“From all the physical examinations performed that night, it looked like he was never going to walk again,” Leslie Fisher said. “That’s what we were going on.

“The thing with a spinal-cord injury is, you can’t talk yourself out of the consequences of it. You can face it bravely, but the consequences are pretty dire.”

NO STOPPING HIM

The weeks following the accident and surgery were trying for Chris Fisher and his family. He was either bed-ridden or wheelchair-bound. He couldn’t brush his teeth, get dressed or feed himself.

“Imagine being 17 and having to have your parents help you go to the bathroom,” Fisher said.

But around Thanksgiving, about a month after the accident, Fisher was able to move his right thumb.

“Less than an eighth of an inch of movement,” Jim Fisher said, “but there’s movement. There’s connectivity.”

This was a crucial development. Initially, doctors weren’t sure if Chris’ injury was “complete” (no motor function below the injury) or “incomplete” (some feeling or movement evident). Being able to move his thumb, however minimally, meant it was incomplete.

About a month later, around Christmas, Fisher was lying on a mat doing physical therapy. He believed he could push the therapist’s hand with his right foot. “And it worked,” Fisher said.

When he returned to his wheelchair, Fisher was able to bring his knees closer to each other. By May of the following year – after countless hours of rehab, including physical therapy six days a week, with no assurance that any of it would help – Fisher was able to walk with the aid of a walker. The first time he went out in public with it, he felt like a grandpa. An elated grandpa.

“I couldn’t have been happier,” Fisher said. “It was kind of like, here-I-am, no-stopping-me-now type stuff.”

About a month later, Fisher was able to walk with a cane. He still uses it about 70 percent of the time. His gait causes double-takes – think Phil Jackson in his last days coaching the Lakers – but who cares? The doctors were wrong. He’s walking.

“He never wanted this injury to define who he was,” Jim Fisher said, “and he has never let that happen.”

Chris Fisher has as close to a normal life as he ever could have expected. He lives on his own in Manhattan Beach. He drives to work at his alma mater. He goes to the gym. He skis.

Fisher still faces daily challenges. He can’t move his left hand. His left leg is weaker than his right. His right side can’t tell the difference between hot and cold.

Certain activities we take for granted – tying shoes, cutting fingernails, getting up and down stairs – remain difficult. But not impossible.

“I got a get-out-of-jail-free card,” Fisher said. “People that suffer my injury are not supposed to be as mobile as I am now.”

Contact the writer: mlev@ocregister.com