Mallory Weggeman Speaks About Her Story of Hope "Against All Odds" | Last Word On Sports:
You know, I think on that day, in all honesty, it was so hard to believe that something like that could happen, and it didn’t seem real. For the first 24 hours or so, we were just waiting; I was told that the medicine would wear off and no one really knew what was going on right away. My family and I knew it was bigger than medicine just waiting to wear off because my mom’s a nurse, and so she understands the medical profession. She knew that it wasn’t right, and that it wasn’t normal. I think it really hit me the morning after, on January 22nd when I woke up, and I still couldn’t move my legs and still had no feeling. I think at that point, it hit me that it was actually happening, that this is real and this isn’t just, you know, it isn’t some crazy nightmare that I just was going to wake up and go home walking. It was real life, and it just started to go from there and it was a big struggle going back and forth for a few months of figuring this out, and why me, and just not understanding how something like that could happen. Also going through the ups and downs of the fears and uncertainties of what this now meant to my life, because I didn’t understand this. Growing up, I didn’t know anybody with a physical disability. So it was a world that not only had I never been exposed to in any degree, but now I was living, and it was a challenge to myself and my family to figure it out, and when it first happened, I didn’t have the core strength to sit up in bed and get in and out of wheelchair on my own. I was being lifted up by machines and devices and nurses, and I was completely dependent on everyone around me, and I didn’t know what that meant for my life moving forward. I think that was the biggest fear for me when this first happened. It was just, “What’s my life going to be like now?”