While doing an inverted sit up at the gym Marecelle Mancuso went flying headfirst to the floor, where, upon landing, she brokeher fifth vertebra.
“I lost all the movements from the neck down when I hit my head on the floor,” she remembered of the event. “I could move my eyes. I had to keep calm and began to pray.”
Doctors told her that she was likely going to be tetraplegic — meaning she would be paralyzed from the neck down.
“The doctors did not know if I would walk again or if I would stay on a bed forever,” she told the Independent. With a rigorous physical therapy practice and a bit of luck, Mancuso beat the odds, posting an Instagram six months later of her walking.