California girl paralyzed after backbend

Los Angeles, Cali. (KTLA) — A 5-year-old ballerina recovering from a spinal injury is giving everyone who comes in contact with her a lesson in hope.

Eden Hoelscher lost her ability to walk while doing a backbend in her family home just ahead of Christmas, but the little dancer is determined to twirl again.

Kylee Hoelscher, Eden’s mother said, “She loves to dance and that’s the thing her dad misses most.”

It was two days before Christmas when Eden, started crying of back-pain. “So I picked her up and I’m like, ‘Oh, you’re fine, you’re fine,’ and she said, ‘No, mom. My back, my legs and my hips hurt.’ So I was like, ‘okay,’ so I picked her up and I brought her in this room, actually, and I was rocking her in the rocking chair, trying to calm her down,” Kylee said.

Kylee, Eden, and her older sister attempted to go Christmas shopping. “She’s just crying, so, you know, we couldn’t even go anywhere.  We just turned right back around and came back in the house,” Kylee said

Kylee tried to comfort her daughter, as she continued to cry in pain. She said, “All of a sudden, she just looked and her face just kind of changed.  Because she’d been crying pretty hard and her face just kind of changed, and she was like, ‘Mom, my feet feel like they’re asleep.'”

Kylee says she tried to get her daughter to stand, but her legs buckled.  Kylee rushed her to Torrance Memorial hospital. But after an MRI, she was airlifted to UCLA, where doctors sedated her, put her in a controlled state of hypothermia, gave her steroids and medicine to raise her blood pressure.

Eden’s mother said, “We were, basically, told, like the first or second day of her injury, that, you know, to prepare for the worst. She’ll be a paraplegic for the rest of her life.”

The next five days were, basically, hell for the frightened and freezing child. Kylee said, “We couldn’t pick her up and we couldn’t move her. We couldn’t even comfort her by picking her up.”

Eden was transferred to LA Children’s Hospital, where she underwent intensive physical and occupational therapy for a month and a half.  Her mother says the ‘tough tot’ did everything the doctor asked and even learned how to do wheelies in her wheelchair.

Eden’s mother said, “She just, she does what she has to do and she’s just so strong.” She’s now back home on the Palos Verdes Peninsula, where she continues therapy and is happy to be home with her big sister.

Every day is a real challenge though. “Her body, like her bowels and her bladder don’t work. She can’t regulate her own temperature.  You know, we have to get up and move her in the middle of the night, so she doesn’t get pressure sores from laying.”

Because there’s no real treatment for Eden in LA, her parents are bringing her to specialists around the country, so their little girl can walk again and achieve her dreams.

When Eden was asked what she wanted to be when she grows up, she responded, “Be a ballerina.”

The family has set-up a GoFundMe page to help pay for specialized treatment for Eden in Baltimore and Louisville.

So far, the page has raised over $23,000. The goal is $60,000. You can donate HERE.

 

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