A WOMAN’S life changed forever on a ski trip when she woke up paralysed after a catastrophic fall.
Rebecca Koltun, 26, was celebrating finishing her final year of university when she visited the same snowy mountain in Vermont she’d grown up skiing on.
Horrifyingly, Rebecca lost control on the slope and fell down the mountain. When she next woke up, doctors informed her she was a quadriplegic after breaking her neck.
Now, Rebecca wants to raise awareness of spinal cord injuries.
Rebecca says: “One moment I was skiing and having a great trip with my friends. The next thing I know I was in hospital, paralysed. In the blink of an eye, my life had changed forever.”
Growing up, Rebecca had gone on ski trips from her hometown of New York to Vermont with her family. She’d learned how to ski from the age of four. Rebecca says: “I’d always loved visiting that mountain with my family. We had many fun memories there on the slopes.”
Read more real life stories
In 2021, Rebecca, then 21 and a student, arranged a ski trip to celebrate her final term at university.
Rebecca says: “One day my friends and I did a road trip and went skiing. But the last thing I remember was being in the car with everyone. I was told I lost control on the slope, and suffered a catastrophic fall.
“Someone had seen me fall and they called the ski patrol. This person who saw me fall happened to be a medic.
“Luckily, they got to me in time. But when they tried to check my pulse, I didn’t have one. I was nearly dead when they found me.
“By the time I got a pulse back, it had been 10 minutes. Ski patrol was able to revive me and stabilise me enough to airlift me to hospital.”
When Rebecca next opened her eyes, she was in intensive care at Dartmouth Hitchcock Hospital in New Hampshire.
Rebecca says: “When I woke up, doctors informed me that I’d suffered a spinal cord injury.
“I’d broken my pelvis, and my C1 and C2 vertebrae in my neck. They said I was paralysed from the neck down and would be a quadriplegic for life.
“I didn’t understand what had happened. I couldn’t think clearly or process what they were telling me. It wouldn’t sink in.
“I couldn’t breathe or talk on my own either and had a ventilator.
“It took a few days for me to truly grasp the gravity of the situation. I was extremely sad.
“I felt like the saddest person in the world. I thought my life was over.”
As Rebecca’s family rushed to her side, they were all devastated by the news. Rebecca spent over two weeks in intensive care.
Afterwards she transferred to Spaulding Rehabilitation Centre in Boston. She lived in the hospital for nine months, re-training her brain and body.
Rebecca says: “In rehab there was one person who was in a mountain climbing accident. Another person was a cancer survivor.
“They all made a huge difference to my stay and helped me feel less alone in everything.
“I had an amazing occupational therapist, personal trainer, and speech therapist. Eventually I got a surgery that implanted electrodes into my diaphragm. This was called diaphragmatic pacer. The diaphragmatic pacer allowed me to be off the ventilator and able to at least breathe on my own. Eventually I was able to talk again.
“I also learned to drive a wheelchair with a sip-and-puff specialised straw.”
By December 2021, when Rebecca was finally discharged, she was taught to use voice control on her phone through Siri.
She was also able to use her computer with a pair of technological glasses where she moved her head to move the mouse and bite down on a switch in her mouth to click.
She says: “To no longer use my legs, arms and hands. I could only use my mouth. My life had changed forever. I was very unhappy. It was a tough transition.
“My family also had their lives torn apart too. They had to insert a ramp and elevator and hired full-time nurses to help me.
“The house wasn’t the same, but I was grateful for my parents and brother. They were so supportive and I couldn’t have done it all without them.”
But as time went on, Rebecca found strength and slowly learned to accept her new life.
She began painting with her mouth, and sold her artwork on Etsy. She also began making videos using dark humour to document her paralysis.
Rebecca says: “I go to physical therapy twice a week. Emotionally, I keep going every day. I don’t have a choice.”
Now she’s gotten used to her new life. “I’m trying to take my life as it is versus what I want it to be or what I think it should’ve been,” she says. “It has been quite a journey. It’s difficult but I make the most of it. I adapt and do the best I can.
My friends are so supportive, they’ve done fundraisers to help for my medical bills. People can learn a lot by what happened to me. There’s so much life to live still even when something bad happens.”
