• yesterday
Credit: SWNS / Maija Vance

A young woman has miraculously learned how to walk again - after a horror showjumping accident left her paralysed from the waist down.

Maija Vance, 33, had been a jockey for seven years when the horse she was riding suddenly slipped and fell on top of her.

She spent 10 days in the intensive care unit (ICU) at Auckland City Hospital, Auckland, after suffering a T8 spinal cord injury which left her unable to move her body below the waist.

Doctors told her she’d likely need a wheelchair for the rest of her life but within her first month of rehabilitation, Maija began to wiggle her left big toe.

And with every passing week, she could move another centimetre of her feet and legs and, after six years of physiotherapy, Maija can now walk unaided - despite still being numb from the waist down.
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