No matter how you look at it, Liz Mitchell is an inspiration. She didn’t anticipate becoming a quadriplegic confined to a wheelchair and unable to enjoy her life, but that’s what happened. Now, she is overcoming the odds to walk and have a baby.
Liz Mitchell, of Waco, Texas was injured in an accident when she was sitting on her balcony and petting her dog and leaned over too far and fell off. She landed on the concrete on her head. Paralyzed and in a coma, doctors didn’t expect her to walk and she did. They didn’t expect her to become pregnant and have a baby, but she’s overcoming those odds as well.
“One day you wake up and you have a breathing tube in and you realize the body you thought defined who you were is useless,” Mitchell told ABC affiliate WFAA.
When Mitchell awoke, it was her then-boyfriend, Bryan Mitchell, who broke the news of her condition, but in a unique way.
“He didn’t just say, ‘You’re paralyzed; you can’t walk.’ He specifically said, ‘One day, we’ll move to Waco, we’ll get married, and we will have a beautiful life. And it does not matter if you are in a wheelchair,'” Mitchell recalled to WFAA.
Bryan has been amazingly supportive and has seen Liz through rehab and therapy. Now, Liz has become pregnant with the couple’s first child and has even felt the baby’s kick.
“I cannot believe it. … It is such a miracle,” Mitchell told WFAA. “It seems like a dream, but I’m ready.”
The couple plans to name the daughter Dorothy Marie, which means “gift of God.”
This story is about a journey testing courage, faith, and love.
“I went from a 32-year-old woman that was healthy, having a boyfriend who really never saw me with a hair out of place… to lying in a bed in a diaper,” said Liz Mitchell.
She said she was on her balcony playing with her dog one day, when she leaned back too far, and fell right between the guard rails, landing on her head.
After five days in a medically-induced coma, with shattered C6 and C7 vertebrae and a spinal cord injury, she was declared a quadriplegic.
Her boyfriend Bryan broke the news.
“He didn’t just say, ‘You’re paralyzed; you can’t walk.’ He specifically said, ‘One day, we’ll move to Waco, we’ll get married, and we will have a beautiful life. And it does not matter if you are in a wheelchair,'” Mitchell recalled.
Her pregnancy is under close watch as she has a filter in her abdomen sitting against her uterus. Doctors put it there to catch blood clots when they thought she’d never move under her own power.
“Initially, my doctor said, ‘I’m not sure you’ll feel contractions or fetal movement so we need to monitor you closely.’ But one day I felt her kick, and there was no mistaking that feeling,” Liz said.
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“The transformation Liz made in the rehab center physically paled in comparison to the transformation she made emotionally and spiritually,” Bryan said.
