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Victoria Arlen is a fighter.
The on-air personality for ESPN, gold-medal Paralympian swimmer, and author of the new book Locked In, has overcome seemingly impossible odds after a health scare that could have ended her life.
At 11 years old, Arlen, an active kid full of personality, was suddenly struck by two rare neurological conditions, transverse myelitis and acute disseminated encephalomyelitis,
which caused inflammation in her brain and spinal cord and left her
unable to speak or walk. “I was in a vegetative state for four years,”
she tells Yahoo Lifestyle.
“I
was locked in,” she says. “So I could hear and see. I just had no way
of moving or communicating or letting anyone know that I was in there.”
From
her hospital bed, Arlen could hear her own doctors speaking with her
family and being written off as a “lost cause,” she says. “I had to
become pretty stubborn to prove them wrong.”
But
her situation was grave enough that she also realized she might not
make it. “I wrestled with the thought of dying every day, and so I had
to make a conscious decision to be grateful for the day I’ve been given,
for the moment I’ve been given,” she says. “I just need to be grateful
for the fact that I’m alive right now.”
She
says her faith in there being a bigger plan for her and having hope
kept her going. “I realized very early on that I hadn’t really fully
lived yet,” she says. “So I was not going to let my story end like this
when I really never even got a chance for it to get started.”
Having
her family’s unwavering support was also critical to Arlen’s recovery.
“They were being told to kind of give up and move on with their lives,
and they refused to do so,” she says. “And so their fight and their
willingness to keep believing and supporting me and loving me was the
wind beneath my wings.”
Although
Arlen couldn’t move on her own, she desperately wanted to give her
family a sign that she was aware of her surroundings. When she was 15 —
after 4 years of living in a vegetative state — she somehow managed to
get control of her eye movements.
When
Arlen’s mom walked into her hospital room one day, Arlen tracked her
mom with her eyes as she moved, which surprised her mom and made her
realize that her daughter may have been alert the entire time.
Like
a scene out of a movie, Arlen’s mom asked her daughter to blink if she
could hear, and Arlen was able to. “It’s single-handedly the most
powerful moment I have ever shared with anyone,” Arlen says.
The simple act of blinking let Arlen’s family know she was there, and she was fighting.
From
there, Arlen progressed, going from blinking as a way of communicating
to eventually signing when she developed hand control and then using
communication boards.
While
in her vegetative state, Arlen didn’t have a clear concept that four
years had actually passed. When she was told, she says she felt a sense
of “panic [from] missing all these years of my life.” She adds, “I
really tried to not focus on how much time had passed because I could
drive myself crazy with that.”
Arlen,
who sustained severe permanent damage to her spinal cord that left her
paralyzed from the waist down, had to relearn how to speak, eat, and
move again. As her strength increased, her family encouraged her to do
more and push herself. Although Arlen had been an avid swimmer and
“water baby” before getting sick, she was now petrified of the water.
“The thought of going in a pool where my legs didn’t work and I didn’t
have full trunk support terrified me.”
But
her brothers, William and Cameron, decided they would take her
swimming, strapping a life jacket on her and jumping into the water with
her to help Arlen get over that fear. They did this daily, and
eventually, she became strong enough in the pool that she decided to get
into competitive swimming.
It
was humbling at first, as the teenage Arlen was beaten by 8-year-olds.
But she didn’t give up. She says that when she was in the pool, no one
knew the wheelchair off to the side belonged to her. It was a motivating
factor for the athlete.
Full Article & Source:
What it's like be 'locked in' your own body: Victoria Arlen on her miraculous journey from vegetative state to the Paralympics and 'DWTS'
Thank you for this. I find it quite fascinating.
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