Rehabilitation center for 60 disabled in Poland

"Mila, get yourself together, you'll never walk again." I've never heard that from doctors. I figured it out myself. This is the second vehicle that is important to me. The first one, a car, after a few flips with me inside, "crumpled" like a ball of paper. That's how I started my second life.

That year, I celebrated my 18th birthday and the new century. 

It was June 28. I finished the 2nd grade of technical secondary school and got a seasonal job in nearby Mszczonów. That day, the roads were slippery and I was in a great hurry. At a bend, just 2 km from home, my car skidded and then landed on its roof. A random driver called for help.

They barely saved me.

Here's a summary of my injuries: broken - left scapula and left clavicle, as well as the entire facial part of my skull, as well as fragments of vertebrae sticking in my spinal cord. After the first stabilization surgery, I "slept" for a month. I woke up after two o'clock at night. In solitary confinement, with an endotracheal tube down my throat and several doctors above me. I couldn't move a finger, and no one told me that I would never walk again.

I cried for a long time and hoped that one day I would stand on my feet. 

A colleague from the rehabilitation ward shook me. "Girl, come on, you won't get up from this wheelchair," he said brutally, looking at my murderous exercise regime.

“Mila, you have to go on living as best you can!” 

That's what I was saying to myself every day. I was also running away from people who felt sorry for me. I wrote my final exams with a pen strapped to my wrist and I received my diploma as a freight forwarder technician. And then when I went to the first rugby training of the "Four Kings" team I found out about the PAY IT FORWARD Foundation.

"Mila, it will be difficult, but you can do it!" 

That's what I thought after the first day in the foundation's training apartments designed for people with disabilities. I spent 4 months there. No shortcuts. I can't count all the attempts when I tried to get up from the ground into a wheelchair, put on a blouse and pants, fasten Velcro on shoes, put toothpaste on a toothbrush. But it didn't matter how many tries it took. The important thing was that I did that and many other activities myself.

Do you know what fun and pride it is? 

Take the product from the store shelf by yourself and add it to your cart. Take your credit card out of your pocket and put it in the terminal. Make the pancakes yourself. It's a piece of cake for you. But do it with your hands in boxing gloves… Ha! And I can do it!

I'm planning the future, but not too far away. 

Every day can change everything... For now, I have become a certified sports instructor for disabled people, I have started studies in neuropsychology and I live in Konin. Not alone... Love also came to me. And a new job. I returned to Osada Janaszkowo to teach others what I was taught. And this teaching is much more difficult. Each person is different. One needs 100 tries and the other 1000 to put on a sock by himself. They have one thing in common. The same sparks of joy in their eyes when they succeed. And that same look that silently says, "It's thanks to you."

My name is EMILIA

I am an independent living instructor. I have quadriplegia.

I am an INDEPENDENT PERSON.