HAVANA (AP) — Damian Lopez was 13 when he tried to untangle his kite from electrical wires dangling over a street corner and accidentally touched a high-voltage cable.

The 13,000 volts that coursed through his body cost him both his forearms, melted much of the skin from his face and left him in a coma from which doctors predicted he would never emerge.

“I could hear people saying, ‘This one won’t make it.’ But I fought and I came out of it,” Lopez said.

After four months in the hospital, Lopez came home with injuries so severe he had trouble walking, eating, speaking and even closing his eyes.

Twenty-two years later, Lopez is close to realizing an unlikely dream by representing Cuba at the 2012 London Paralympics in cycling, the sport that he says kept him from drowning in self-pity and despair.

“After the accident I didn’t want to leave the house, but some friends came looking for me to play. That was key,” Lopez said of his return to a go-go life of soccer, pigeon-raising, chess, pool, motorcycles and, most importantly, bicycles.

“It’s the same today. I don’t stop moving. I think I still have electricity in my arms,” he joked.

It’s been a long, tough road to pedal, and Lopez said he owes a debt to many people, including an American woman named Tracy Lea, who raised money for equipment and airfare and arranged to bring him to New York for free facial reconstruction surgery.

“I don’t have the words to thank Tracy. I owe her so much,” Lopez said.