Dylan Rose requires a walker to get around these days.

“It’s certainly not easy” says Rose.

But considering what he’s been through in the last six weeks, it’s amazing that he can walk at all.

Rose was working the cash at the Circle K convenience store in Lower Sackville on January 31st, when a bizarre and horrific accident changed his life.

It was thirty minutes before the end of his shift, when a truck barreled through the wall behind him.

“I just remember I was, you know, just pushing the buttons on my register, and working a regular shift, then it was so fast, just quick,” Rose says of the moment the truck crashed into the store.

“I had blacked out and I didn’t really know what had happened initially until I had come to and looked around the store.”

Rose’s girlfriend Rebecca Rehberg was living out of town at the time, and heard about the accident on the news. She didn’t get to see him in hospital until the next day.

“I was emotionally upset,” says Rehberg. “When I went to go see him, they had just moved him to another bed, so he was in an immense amount of pain. But I did get to hold his hand and tell him that I was going to be there for him.”

Rose was in hospital for 12 days, and underwent two complicated surgeries for a broken femur and broken ankle. He also suffered a lacerated liver and spine.

He was released just in time for his 23rd birthday, and is now on the long road to rehabilitation.

“It’s been hard to get around, but I make do with what I have, and the best that I can do,” says Rose.

A customer, Michael Bowser, was also badly injured in the crash. He too is slowly healing, and while he and Dylan Rose haven’t had the chance to meet up since the incident, they both say they hope to do that soon.

The man in connection with the crash, 38-year-old David Raymond Farrell, faces 18 charges including Drug Impaired Driving, Robbery, and Assault.

Police say it began with a car driving down the wrong side of a major Nova Scotia highway, before crashing. RCMP say Farrell then carjacked a truck while wielding a machete, and drove that truck into the store.

Farrell is due in court on March 29 to enter a plea.

As Rose continues to concentrate on his recovery he says he’s been touched by the support from his community. Two separate fundraisers have raised more than $11,000 to help in his recovery.

Rose says he would like to go back to work eventually, but first, his goal is to stand on his own to feet again.

With files from CTV Atlantic's Heidi Petracek.