Schuyler Arakawa is a 26-year-old Yale graduate from Tampa, Florida. Five years ago she suffered a traumatic brain injury and now runs “Schuy’s the Limit” on Facebook. This is her God Shot.

I graduated from Yale in 2015 and began my fellowship in Peru to study handmade commodities through the necessities of life. These necessities were food, water, shelter and clothing. Before I started the second part of my program, my friend and I decided to take a three week vacation down to Colombia.

On February 19, 2016, we were in Bucaramanga, Colombia. It was the second to last day of our trip and we decided to go white water rafting with a group of tourists. At the end of the first leg of the river, our guides took us to a small grotto where we could swim and unwind. It was breathtakingly beautiful and otherworldly. Since we were swimming, we took our helmets off and enjoyed the calm, clear water.

As we were getting ready to leave, the tour guide went up on the ledge to take our picture. It was the dry season and a boulder broke away from the side of the mountain and came crashing down on me. From what I am told, it was a direct hit. It came down right in the middle of my forehead, cracking my skull, crushing my lungs, fracturing both shoulder blades, splitting my right thigh, and pulverizing my left ankle. Nature did what nature does during the Colombian dry season, but sometimes even acts of nature are no match for divine intervention. The unexpected can happen when God steps in. 

It turns out that most hospitals in Colombia don’t have ICUs. However, the one that I was brought to that day not only had one, but their lead neurosurgeon from the University of Bogota had retired there. Bucaramanga, in addition to being known for white water rafting, is also known for having higher numbers of motorcycle accidents than other Colombian cities. This made  their hospital well equipped for traumas. Had I been in another town and at a different hospital, they most likely wouldn’t have been able to save me. 

The doctors in Colombia consulted with the doctors in America and were strongly advised to do a procedure that would involve removing part of my skull in the hopes of alleviating the massive swelling. The drawback was the high likelihood of permanent brain damage. After much thought and consideration, the Colombian team elected against doing it. It was an unusual move not to go along with the advice of the more seasoned American physicians, but they held firm and followed their instincts. The next morning the swelling in my brain had gone down and my chances of survival had gone up.  

My mother, had flown in form Tampa to be by my side. She remembers wishing she could have played music for me, but was without access to the internet. As she was scrubbing in to see me in the ICU, music did indeed start to play. My mother recalls freezing in her tracks. She knew the hospital staff had no idea what my taste in music was, but as if on cue, they were playing my favorite songs.

Back when I was in high school, I became close to a girl named, Alexis. When she found out about my accident, she took it upon herself to introduce us to Amalita, a family friend who’s originally from Colombia. Amalita became our voice and our advocate. She spoke Spanish to the medical staff and others in Colombia when the language barriers got in the way. She facilitated my return to the states and set up aqua therapy for me in her home. But, the greatest gift of her introduction into our lives is the bond that she and my mother developed. A powerful  friendship born from a high school connection and a freak accident. 

After I was stabilized in Colombia, I was flown to Miami to begin my recovery. My accident happened over spring break, so the only place my mom could find to be near me was a hotel that sat neighboring Sabrina’s Beach. What she didn’t know was that Sabrina’s Beach is a fully adaptive beach for people with disabilities. What a gift that was to be able to spend part of my healing there. None of the other beaches in Miami would have been accessible to me then. Four and a half months after the accident, we returned home to Tampa. It was July 4th, Independence Day and also my mom’s birthday.            

The boulder strike affected my cerebellum, which controls my balance. It left me with a traumatic brain injury resulting, at least for now, in me using a wheelchair. But, it turned out that I actually had a fracture in my spine that went undetected in Colombia. With all the jostling and precarious lifting that took place to get me in the raft and back up the mountain, it’s absolutely incredible that my spinal cord wasn’t nicked by the fracture. That would’ve left me permanently paralyzed.

At first, the doctors thought that I wouldn’t survive. Medical precedent dictated that my injuries were too severe to overcome. If I did beat the odds, the consensus of my best case scenario was blindness and a persistent vegetative state. They believed that any other outcome was impossible.

Well, it’s been over four years and I am neither. It hasn’t been easy, that’s for sure, but I can see, I can think and I can write. I am the same hard working, fun loving and yet, totally ordinary person that I was before my accident. Perhaps my insight is just stronger, and I’m better able to recognize that when the seemingly insurmountable happens, a series of God Shots can show up and carry you through. I’m here, aren’t I?

 Schuyler (second from right) at her graduation from Yale.

 Traveling the world.

 

 

 

The ticket for the white water rafting trip.

  

 

 

 

 

Schuyler repelling down a waterfall the day before the accident.

 

 

 Schuyler today with her mother and family.