Surrender is a word that does not enter their vocabulary, but words like recovery, progress and self-demand are and each person chooses how to look at life and the padel player. Andrea Perez23 years old, has decided to bring a smile to adversity, thus giving a lesson in self-improvement and fortitude very unusual for his age.
© andrea.perez13It was on August 27, 2023 when her life changed forever, at least the life she knew until then. Andrea was enjoying a day with her friends when “a silly trip” as she herself called it caused her to fall down a four-meter ravine with such bad luck that she fractured a vertebra, which caused a spinal cord injury I took her directly to the ICU.
© andrea.perez13
© andrea.perez13It was during his stay in the hospital and after a first diagnosis when They told him he would never walk again.However, Andrea, who, as she has confessed, would prefer to have broken all the bones in her body instead of that damned vertebra, decided to do what seemed impossible and based on a lot of work, or in other words, a lot of willpower. and rehabilitation, every day she has been recovering a little bit of mobility in her legs and although she still doesn’t know where her limit will be, she is clear that she wants to go to the end.
© andrea.perez13
© andrea.perez13
© andrea.perez13But as she herself has recounted on her social networks, where she has become for many an example of improvement and a role model to follow, this process has not been easy and many tears have been shed along the way, some in silence. like when she began her rehabilitation at the Toledo hospital, where she met what is today one of her best friends, and others accompanied by her loved ones, who have always been there to support her or when her strength has failed. But as she herself says: “The impossible is only a little more difficult”.
Brilliant on the paddle tennis courts and an exemplary student, now Andrea who considers herself ‘the exception that proves the rule’it only has one objective to continue improving. “I really didn’t know what it was to be brave until now. Fighting day after day, enduring the suffering and pain and moving forward. Remembering the past hurts more and thinking about the future fills you with an uncertainty that kills you. Only the present and daily effort” says the athlete.
© andrea.perez13“One thing is clear to me, I will never see a person in a wheelchair in the same way again, I will see a fighter, a truly brave and incredible person, like many of the people I am meeting in This path. Everything begins in your mind and in mine there is nothing else other than my recovery. I dream of feeling my legs burn running again. to overcome oneself is to win and this is my opportunity to improve myself in the face of the greatest challenge of my life” he adds. “I don’t know how my story will end but I believe and trust in myself, which right now is the most important thing. “As I said, I’ve always liked to play.”
