Andrea Pérez, a long-distance race to walk again

«It really seemed like it was going to be the year: incredible moments with my friends and family, a thousand unforgettable trips, the best work opportunity with paddle tennis, some chaotic love also in between… Then we said it would be the summer of our lives , and honestly it was. Until August 27. Life can change you at any moment. I would never have thought that they would take away my ability to walk, run, jump… it is something that I have had to experience and I could say unfortunately, because it is one of the hardest things that can happen to you in this life. But honestly I can only see it as an opportunity, an opportunity to be invincible, because I am going to get out of this and there will be no God to stop me. So thank you destiny for giving me this opportunity, I am not going to waste it, and thank you to all the people who have simply been here with the sea so rough. Goodbye to the most difficult year of my life. I’m going to say that I don’t expect much from 2024, let’s see if the opposite holds true as well.”

One year after her life changed in the early hours of Saturday, August 26 to Sunday, August 27, ABC speaks with Andrea. Shortly before, in fact, he had been with his family in Santorini and “the trip was a dream, we had been planning it for a long time.” In addition, he was competing on the professional circuit of the World Padel Tour, playing tournaments in Europe, and he had one year left to finish his degree. “Everything was going well for me,” he summarizes.

That last weekend of August 2023 “I went with my friends to Jávea, a town that is close to mine but I had never been to, and at night we went out to party. Next to the club there is a river, which is dry, and there is an area that does not have fences. I tripped, it was a silly trip really, there’s no other way to describe it, and I fell down a four-metre ravine. “There was concrete down there.” He fell on his back and hit his head, which caused a hemorrhage in his brain that luckily stayed there. Although he did not lose consciousness, he does not remember anything. «When you suffer a lot of pain, the brain erases it. “I already woke up in the ICU of the Denia hospital,” he explains.

He had fractured the 12th Dorsal vertebra, which is just before the lumbar vertebra. The diagnosis? “They told me that I would never walk again and that the operation was to fix my spine so I could sit in a wheelchair,” he says. «I do not recommend anyone break a vertebra. I had unbearable pain in my back. They gave me morphine, fentanyl, nolotil… all the possible medications,” he adds.

Five weeks later, on October 4, he walked through the doors of the National Hospital for Paraplegics, in Toledo. «I had no idea what a spinal cord injury was and the world came crashing down on me. I didn’t want to accept it and I had two-three weeks of maximum depression. Then I got to know the other patients who were on my ward (mostly young people their age, between 18 and 23 years old); They told me their stories, I made a small group of friends that over time became bigger and bigger and let’s say that that saves you a little,” he says. And he especially mentions Marta Marugán, his roommate, who had suffered a traffic accident and “we made a very cool team.”

Attitude, the most important thing

Pablo García, the physiotherapist who treated Andrea, explains that “he is a person who came with a great desire to take on the world in a very short time. And this hospital is the opposite. The first thing you have to work on is the coconut because it is a long-distance race, not a sprint. “You have to go day by day.” The average stay in Paraplegics is usually “between six and nine months, but there have been patients who have stayed up to two years.”

His mission goes beyond what he does with his hands: «Not every day we wake up with the same spirit or have the same strength, and they transmit that to you on the stretcher or in the gym during the hour and a half or two that we are there. In the end, whether you like it or not, you act as a psychologist in your daily life.

The physio is convinced that attitude is the most important thing when facing a spinal cord injury. In Andrea’s case, “she started working with above-average strength and became independent in a short period of time. “She was privileged, she had a very high muscular quality and, above all, a training habit, but a person who was 50 or 60 years old and had the same attitude could be perfectly the same as her.” Of course, «attitude does a lot, but it is not everything. “We are going to rehabilitate what the injury allows us.”

Andrea was discharged in Toledo on June 14, eight months or so after admission. Now he continues with his recovery at the Fivan Foundation clinic in Valencia, from Monday to Wednesday. At the moment, he moves around in a wheelchair, although this summer has been “a turning point; “I’m already standing up and holding on, which was something unthinkable.” He has also returned to the University, in Alicante, to complete the fourth year and graduate in Marketing. “I was a little afraid, because I didn’t know if it was accessible, and it surprised me in a good way: there are elevators, ramps… everything has been thought of,” he says.

On social networks, where he previously uploaded content related to paddle tennis, he has multiplied his followers (exceeds 75,000 on Instagram), naturally recounting his rehabilitation process. Perhaps due to that honesty, when he started a crowdfunding campaign to be able to pay for it starting the day after Parapléjicos, he raised 13,000 euros. «It was incredible. “I didn’t expect people to go out of their way and help me so much,” she acknowledges gratefully.

-And what do you expect from the future?

«I have come to the conclusion that life cannot be planned. I can’t say where I’ll be tomorrow, I don’t want to imagine it and I think it’s nice. “I’m going to let it surprise me.”