EAST MEADOW, N.Y. -- A Long Island teen is walking again months after he was paralyzed in a devastating swimming accident. On Wednesday, 17-year-old Nico Fiorello took a few steps unassisted and talked about his remarkable recovery.

"Standing up here being able to walk is just amazing," Fiorello said, standing alongside his doctors and parents at a press conference at Nassau University Medical Center.

CBS New York reports Fiorello was afraid he'd end up in a wheelchair for the rest of his life after breaking his neck when he dove into a sandbar at Jones Beach on May 17.

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"I dove in and then I hit the ground on my head and then after that I couldn't move anything," he said.

Friends and lifeguards rescued him from the water and the critically injured teen was whisked to Nassau University Medical Center for emergency neck surgery.

"There was a fracture in the bone here and the piece of bone had pierced into the spinal cord," said Dr. Elizabeth Fontana, the hospital's director of neurosurgery.

The first question he asked his doctor was, "Will I ever walk again?"

"She said, 'I don't know,'" Fiorello recalled.

Doctors said at first the teen could only wiggle his toes, and estimated that only 10 percent of people suffering such severe neck injuries ever regain the ability to walk.

For Fiorello and his family, the prospect was terrifying. "Oh my God, I was like, 'Was he ever going to walk again? He's 17, this can't be happening.' He's my baby, and he hates when I say that," his mother, Lorraine Fiorello, said.

Surgeons performed several operations to insert rods while fusing two neck vertebrate together. Then they watched in amazement as he quickly progressed through physical therapy and was finally able to stand on his own.

"I really think he's going to be normal. The odds of that are really non-existent," Dr. Fontana said Wednesday.

Now, walking mostly with the aid of a walker, Fiorello is excited to start his senior year of high school.

"I'm really happy to go back to school and see my friends. They're all proud of me and happy to see me," he said.

He even hopes to be able to play lacrosse by the spring. "That's my goal, to return for lacrosse season," he said. "I also plan to go to college."

"He's a superstar," Fontana said. But sadly, "For every Nico there's 100 patients that don't make this kind of recovery."

Fiorello said he hopes to become a physical therapist to help others.

"There's always hope, always a way to get better, you just have to believe," he said.