A 19-year-old is walking again five months after becoming paralyzed when a golf club impaled her in the neck, Fox News reported on Wednesday.
Natalie Jo Eaton had begun her freshman year at Arkansas State University just two days before the accident. She posed for a photo at a back-to-school fraternity cookout, and was on the ground unable to move moments later.
"It's just crazy. The craziest story. I tell people and they're like, 'I don't even know if I should believe you,'" Eaton said. "I wish I could make this up. It's very, very odd."
A man had swung a golf club at a football that his friend tossed to him. The metal shaft of the club broke in half and flew into Eaton's neck, paralyzing her.
"I thought someone had hit me in the head with a baseball bat," Eaton told the news channel. "I turned my neck just to see what was, what was getting my shirt wet. And as I looked, the metal in the back scraped the concrete, and that's when I knew there was something in my neck."
Part of the woman's spine was hit and an artery was damaged by a sharp piece of her shaft. The ability for her to recover might have been preserved by the student with the club, who held her head steady, Fox Carolina reported.
"She just went to fall and he held her head," friend Makaleigh Riddle said. "If that [the club] had moved at all, there was not really anything anyone could have done. His quick reaction probably saved her life. He had to be really strong for that. I couldn't imagine."
Since her spinal cord is damaged and not severed, doctors say Eaton has a high chance of regaining the ability to walk on her own without assistance. Her strength is improving and she plans to begin her freshman year at the same school in August.
"Although it is very, very, very hard to not be angry," she said. "It's a daily battle. But I think once you decide to see the glass half full, not half empty, you just go from there."
