Trapped inside her own body, this determined girl managed to pull herself out of a state where she couldn’t move a muscle to become an amazing person living a full life.
Doctors gave Victoria Arlenis at age 11 a 0 percent chance of survival. She began to suffer a series of ailments, from flu symptoms to much more severe ones.
In 2013, over a period of two weeks of feeling very unwell with various symptoms, Arlenis became paralyzed from the waist down, quickly losing any ability to communicate, and fell into a coma.
The diagnosis was she was suffering from two autoimmune diseases, causing her brain and spinal cord to be inflamed.
“I was losing her,” said mom Jacqueline.
To make her situation more precarious, Arlenis was suffering constant seizures.
Arlenis remained in that comatose state for several years, but what no one had realized was she had actually woken up but was unable to communicate in any way—she was trapped in her own body. Still, she was conscious and aware of her surroundings.
“I was kind of like a ghost living in this shell of a human being. The lights go out August of 2006 for me, as far as memory goes. And then it was January of 2009, when all of a sudden, I’m aware.
Pure determination and belief were the only things that kept her going. Moreover, four long years of being aware of her surroundings but being utterly unable to communicate to doctors or family members tested her to the ultimate limits.
“I was constantly fighting this pull to just give up. But I had so much I wanted to live for,” she said.
Then a breakthrough came with her mom’s realization that Arlenis was aware.
“She’s like, ‘If you can hear me, can you blink? Can you blink twice? And I was like this crazy blinker. And she was like, ‘Oh my gosh! She’s in there,’” Arlenis recalled.
The ball was rolling, and Arlenis’s determination to live was burning. It was time for her to awaken fully.
After waking, she had to re-learn everything, such as how to make sounds and move each finger.
Doctors even said she wouldn’t be able to walk again in her life.
However, her reaction to that prognosis was “You’re not God, and you can’t tell me what I can and can’t do.”
For 10 years she was confined to a wheelchair, but today she’s able to walk around just like anybody else.
Life today for Arlenis is simply amazing, and she has gone from strength to strength. You could even say she’s gone from miracle to miracle.
There’s one thing that’s for sure since waking from that real-life nightmare where she couldn’t more nor speak a word—Arlenis says she “hasn’t stopped talking since.”
Check out the video to hear this amazing girl’s struggle between life and death and how she managed to get to where she is today.
