Ten Years After a Fall, She Practiced Standing Again

The story

At 16 in Bogotá, Yadira Perdomo fell. The impact fractured vertebrae. Sensation left her legs. A wheelchair and a catheter became part of daily life. School taunts that had once hurt her accent suddenly belonged to a smaller universe.

She kept a private goal that sounded unrealistic to other people: walk again. She researched, wrote, and traveled for a procedure with Dr. Shlomo Raz at UCLA that re-installed an implant and a pacemaker.

What happened next

Function returned in her legs and bladder. With braces she stood. She began to walk for minutes at a time. She did five hours of physical therapy a day. Happiness, she said, came from a body that was getting stronger, not from a finished fairytale.

A lesson you can use this week

If a goal will take years, give it a daily container: a time block, a repetition count, a person who knows you showed up.

Sources

UCLA Health, “Surgery allows young woman paralyzed in fall 10 years ago to walk again.”