Paralyzed Cyclists Regains Ability to Walk

Posted on by Forest in Exercise, General, Health

Paralyzed Cyclists Regains Ability to Walk

Paralyzed Cyclists Regains Ability to Walk

27 year-old Monique Van der Vorst, had the moment of her life winning two silver medals in hand cycling events at the 2008 Beijing Paralympics. Despite likely still being good enough though she will not be taking part in 2012, well at least not in the Paralympics, because a freak incident has led to her now being able to walk, this is according to a report aired on Sky News!

She initially lost the use of her legs as a teenager due to a botched ankle injury and then things worsened when she injured her spinal cord in a 2008 car accident.

During a 2010 training session Monique had another accident crashing into one of her team mates. In an incredibly odd event in the aftermath of the injury she started to regain feeling in her legs and little by little has regained her ability to actually walk!

Incredibly just a year on she is walking around and has even been signed up by professional road racing cycle team Rabobank. She even has hopes to compete at the 2016 Rio Olympics.

Paralyzed Cyclists Regains Ability to Walk

This story stuck out at me this morning because it’s one of those tales of “you never know” that makes life worth living and fighting for. The docs obviously didn’t know how to fix up her spinal cord and at present I could not find out how the accident actually fixed her, maybe no one knows!

I don’t know if Monique had resigned herself to never being able to walk again but it is obvious she had not given up on life. She had set her sights on other things and instead of recessing into life she had gone at it and trained to olympic standards, no small feat! No one person deserves to regain their health than another but Monique did work hard for her life and she is worthy of the recovery.

The body is so strange and so amazingly adaptive that we shouldn’t be shocked something like this can happen but of course every time it does we are! I’m not sure how her ankles are but it sounds to me like the crash gave her body the jolt to start reconnecting all the nerves and for the brain to start working out the new signal routes. Maybe it was as simple as there being a blockage down there that just had to have a good bash to unblock!

I found this very inspiring, anything can happen, and I hope you did too!

Tags: Health, motivational, sports