(FORTUNE Small Business) – Handsome, smart, and gregarious, Joel Heifitz was a gifted salesman who peddled everything from callus removers and cucumber face cream to a cleaner for barbecue grills. He built his Chicago-based company, Concept Laboratories, to $12 million to $15 million a year in sales. And then disaster struck. On vacation at the beach, he was smacked by a big wave that drove him headfirst into the hard sea bottom and broke his neck, leaving him without the use of his arms and legs. That was two years ago, and today Heifitz is back at work and determined to walk again. He met with FSB's Ellyn Spragins at his 45,000-square-foot factory and talked about his three-hour daily workouts and the trials of running a growing business from a wheelchair.

"I was on vacation in Puerto Vallarta with three other families in December 2002. Six boys from our group went body surfing, and the waves started getting really big. So I went into the water and told them to come out because it was too dangerous. As I was swimming in, close to shore, a wave slammed me into the sea floor and broke my neck. And then the nightmare began. I was lying in the water and couldn't move my arms or my legs. I kept trying to get some air, but every time I stuck my head up a wave crashed down on me. I knew I was dead. I said my goodbyes. And then my body turned over in the water and I was looking up at a friend, who dragged me out of the water onto the beach. There were some doctors in the hotel whom I'd made friends with. They wouldn't let anyone move me. My buddies were around me. I didn't want my kids and my wife to see me there. I told my brother-in-law, 'Do what you gotta do. Get everybody out of here.'

An ambulance took me to a hospital, where the X-ray machine was broken. They shot me full of steroids, and that night I was put on a private plane to Parkland Hospital in Dallas, where President Kennedy was taken after he was shot. The doctors put a metal plate in my neck, and I was there for 12 days. My two brothers-in-law and my wife came and stayed the whole time. My fracture was a C7, meaning that the seventh vertebra down from the skull broke. It was an incomplete break, which meant I was left with feeling in my limbs. Christopher Reeve's was a C2, and it was a complete break.

After Dallas, I went to the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, where I stayed for seven months. When I got there I couldn't move my legs. I was hunched over. I couldn't sit up straight. I didn't have control of my bowels. I was in pain all the time. You could blow your brains out. At first I didn't want to see anybody. I wouldn't let anybody from work come to the hospital. But six weeks after the accident I insisted on going to my son's bar mitzvah, so they put me in a neck brace and let me go. I pushed myself because a lot of people had depended on me. I was the provider. There were so many people I was letting down, because I'd always been the strong one. I couldn't believe that I would have to rely on them.

The worst part of the accident was how it affected my kids. I couldn't hold them the way I used to. The youngest one, who is now 5 years old, avoided me for a long time. I just looked so foreign to her in a wheelchair. It was hardest on my oldest son, who's now 15. The accident happened on his birthday, so that was rough. He only came to the rehab center twice. That was a real killer.

After about six months at the institute, I realized that the doctors were only trying to get me to a level of functioning that they expected based on my injury. They get you to a certain point, and they say, 'We're done with you. You're on your own.' I was C7. Probably they've never seen a C7 walk or do a lot of things. I realized I was going to have to find my own solutions so I could progress.

When I got out in July, my partners--Adam Lustbader, president of the company, and Stephen Sands, our CFO--wanted me to come back to work right away. I didn't want to rush back. I didn't want people in the business I had built up to see me looking weak. I was focused on getting stronger, so I acquired a lot of great equipment in a gym at home. I row. I have a machine that helps me stand up and mats where I work out. I swim for two hours a day.

I've made progress. I can do this. [He raises his leg eight inches off the wheelchair seat.] Soon I'll be able to stand up with braces on my legs. I devised my routine gradually, through trial and tribulation--and looking for the right machinery. If I see or feel something new--a new sensation or tiny movement that I can do--I work on it. Now that I can touch my thumb and index finger, I work it all the time, so that next I'll be able to touch the middle finger with my thumb. You work on what gives you hope.

I finally came back to work in December 2003. I installed an elevator in my office building and one at home. It was still hard to need help, to get picked up for work and get dropped off. Now I can drive using a car with hand controls, but I had to change my role at the company. I used to travel a lot, see a lot of our customers. I built this business on travel. Now I'm not dealing with the customers as much because it's too hard to travel, and I don't want to explain the accident over and over again. I've become the management and product-development guy. But I'm restructuring my job so that other people can execute my vision. We're looking for a couple of good people to develop new marketing ideas and strategies.

I was lucky that I had set up the business so it could survive a situation like mine. You have to set up a good management structure. You've got to build a team, because you can't do it all yourself. My partners did fine when I wasn't here. I was also smart enough to have retained earnings. I didn't just take all the money out of the company, so the business had some flexibility with regard to cash flow when I got hurt.

The other thing I was very fortunate about: I had disability insurance. Every year we'd spend $20,000 on disability insurance for me and my partners, because about five years ago the wife of a good friend of mine insisted I get it. I used to think, Why the hell am I writing these checks? Now I realize how valuable it is. It will replace about 50% of my income for life, as long as two limbs are not working. The problem now is the cost of insurance. We can't change insurers--because what company would be willing to pick me up?--and the insurance company can raise our rates as much as it wants. The higher expense has lowered our profit margin. But in most small businesses, if the owner gets hurt he goes out of business. A lot of the guys I was in the hospital with had no disability insurance, so they're working with Social Security. They're broke.

I love my business. But for me, work just isn't the priority that it used to be. At this time two years ago, I knew everything I was going to do: build my business, make money, get bigger--the whole gig. Now it's all kind of slowed down. I'm trying to find myself again. I don't want to be someone new. I liked the old me. But I can't be that person, so now I've got to reinvent myself.

I was lucky to have a lot of good people around me, at work and at home. My wife is strong. My father and my in-laws are very strong. Something great will happen. That's why I'd like to position myself with some new blood at the company. So I can do something new. What that is I have no idea, but I think I could help people who have gotten hurt like me. I think I can get people through bad periods with humor. You know, I'm pretty good at it, and it's fulfilling. I could do a lot of good."