Are you going to let this define you and never walk again?
Or are you going to fight?
She, like all of us, has had such a weird year.
Hi, Brooke, How are you?
Oh gosh, I am so happy to be alive.
I can't even tell you,
and I mean that as seriously as it sounds.
I'm just happy to be able to walk again.
It wasn't enough. The pandemic wasn't enough, so.
Right. But let's explain for those of you
who might not understand, this wasn't just a pandemic.
This started with a balance board, right?
Yeah, and I lost my balance. I have been doing this
for years now and it's just this little thing
that I could never do, so I sort of mastered it.
And it's a balance, you stand on this piece of board
and you balance on it and it's really good for your core.
And I finally mastered it and this guy said to me,
"Oh, you make it look so easy. I could never do that."
When anybody says, I don't care who you are,
if they say, "I never can do that", or "I can't" so easily,
I go into like mom mode and I said,
"No, no, you can. You really can, and if
this matters to you, then you just have to practice
every day. And I used to not be able to do it and look,
I'll show you."
And I got on it and I did my little thing.
And then I turned around to, you know, quench my ego
to have him go like, "Oh, like, yes, thank you."
'"Oh you're amazing!"
Yeah, and "Wow, aren't you the best in the world."
And so I came back and, you really are not supposed
to change your focus, and I flew up in the air
and landed on the one piece of cement
that was in the gym, and I broke my femur
just clean in half.
And I'm so lucky I didn't hit my head.
I have fourteen screws and two full rods
that go into my hip and all the way down to my knee.
And they sent me home one night after a few weeks,
and I woke up the next morning and my arm
looked like Popeye's, and they rushed me back
in the hospital and I had a Staph Infection.
And then I had a blood clot and you know, it was,
the doctors were just so dismayed and they didn't know.
I was in the hospital for a month.
And I was just so happy that I was alive,
after my third blood transfusion.
I just, I was all by myself so I couldn't
have my family come, and my husband couldn't-
I know and yeah, I was just going to point out
to everybody, the last place you want to be
during a pandemic is in the hospital.
You can't have your family.
No, you can't have your family.
You can't have anything and then your schedule is all,
every few hours, sometimes every 15 minutes,
there's a new crew of people checking on you.
So it's sort of like sleep deprivation as well.
The fear that I saw in the doctors' eyes behind the masks,
I think that's when I thought, okay,
you, what can you control?
What can you control?
And I thought, okay, the only thing I control
is my physical- PT, my PT.
And so I sort of became very, very focused
on just getting out of the hospital
because the doctor finally said to me, he was like,
"I've got to get you out of here. The longer you're in here,
the worse it is."
The worse off it is, right? I'm so sorry-
You know, in the wake of also, and seeing the tragedy,
and when hearing the stories, and-
And seeing the frontline of it, right.
And well, and not, and it being not associated with that.
You know, there was this guilt too, because I was, you know,
I didn't have COVID, and I felt so terrible for the people
who've lost, loved ones.
And so there was this, I was trying to, you know,
keep everything into perspective.
It was the worst injury I've ever had,
but I still was counting my blessings that I was able to be
taken care of.
And you know, that it was one of those things where,
and then my daughter asked me if I was going to die and,
you know, just to see your children be scared
of losing a parent is just, it just was
such a helpless feeling, but you know what,
here's the thing that I, I really, you know,
I didn't need to slow down.
I didn't need to have a praying come to Jesus moment.
You know, I wasn't moving too fast in my life by,
I was honestly, but I was asked to,
to really look deep inside of myself and say,
"What are you really made of?", like,
"Are you going to let this define you and never walk again?
Or are you going to fight tooth and nail?"
And you'd be so surprised how powerful your body is and how
much it wants to heal.
(chimes ringing)