When Oklahoma teen Deborah Ede woke up on March 8, she was just three months shy of her 16th birthday and a week away from the 2012 Trampoline and Tumbling Winter Classic in St. Petersburg, Florida. Little did she know that life as she knew it was about to tumble down around her. With one wrong move, the gymnast suffered a devastating spinal cord injury and became a quadriplegic. …
Emergency surgery fused the damaged vertebrae, and her medical file labeled her as a “complete quadriplegic.” …
Just 162 days after “The Crash,” Ede could already walk to the door when a guest arrived, go upstairs to let her parents know, and come back down the stairs again with just one hand on the rail to guide her. She could curl up on the sofa, cross her legs, and look like just about any teenager in her own environment.
The miracle didn’t happen overnight, but day-by-day Ede showed improvement. Her doctors say that she has outpaced almost every other spinal cord injury of her kind that they have witnessed. …