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A sledding accident left this N.H. dentist paralyzed. Here’s how she’s recovering.
Caroline Adams lost the ability to walk. Now, she's building a new life for herself.
When 31-year-old Caroline Adams hit the ground after flying eight feet in the air off of her snow tube, she immediately knew something was wrong.
“I wouldn’t say I’m a person that scares but…I knew what was coming was not good,” she said. “…As soon as I landed, I knew. I knew we were in for a long journey.”
Jan. 30, 2022, was her first time sledding behind Mack’s Apple Farm in Londonderry, New Hampshire. She and her husband, Christopher Estrella, had just started their married life together four months earlier, and they were there doing one of the many outdoor activities they like to do together.
Estrella went down first, and everything was fine. Then, Adams took her turn on the snow tube.
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As she went down, some kids walked into the path of the sled, so she steered her sled away from the children in a different direction. This redirected her into the path of a jump, which she flew off of.
“Next thing I know, I am looking at blue sky and I’m no longer attached to my sled,” she said.
Adams said it was painful the moment she hit the ground, but the thing that stood out to her was that she couldn’t feel or move her legs or toes.
The immediate concern for her and her husband was to get her out of the way of other people sledding. So while her husband got her out of harm’s way, a woman called 911.
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Soon, Adams was flying to Lahey Hospital in Burlington, Massachusetts.
The news at the hospital was about as bad as it could get. Adams had broken her spine entirely in two at the T9 vertebra, which is at about the same height as her belly button.
The doctor told her she would never feel her legs or walk again.
But the emergency wasn’t over yet. Adams soon underwent a nine-hour surgery to stabilize her condition. The doctors put a handful of screws in her back, as well as a metal plate, and took out a few of her ribs.
The surgery went well, and she didn’t have spinal fluid leaking out causing an infection, so the healing process could finally begin.
After recovering at the hospital, Adams went into a rehabilitation center where she is learning how to navigate all the everyday tasks that are no longer easy.
Between having no voluntary muscle function in her lower half and her upper body not yet having the strength to compensate, rehabilitation is a long learning process.
Adams said they are teaching her the new way she will have to shower, dress, and use the bathroom. With all that she has to learn, she said the soonest she’d be able to leave would be the end of March.
Adams is looking forward to going back home to her new house, her large, newly remodeled yard, and her three-year-old golden retriever named Sophie. She said her husband is working hard to make the home handicap accessible before she is released from the center.
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But there are so many changes to be made, and they’re cost-intensive. For example, she said, she needs two chairlifts, one to get her upstairs and one to get her to the basement. They each cost $6,000.
On top of that, her wheelchair won’t come with her on the lift, so she also needs three wheelchairs.
Then there’s all the equipment she’ll need if she decides to go back to work as a dentist, which she hopes to someday do. She said there is equipment she can buy to allow her to do her job independently, but she’ll have to pay for it herself.
Additionally, she’ll have to pay for a car she can drive with only her hands just to be able to get to work, and she’ll have to learn to operate all this new machinery.
Even so, Adams thinks about all the things she can do or can learn to do again, such as walking her dog, kayaking, or riding a hand-peddled bicycle.
Perhaps most importantly, Adams was thrilled to find out that she can still get pregnant and give birth, something she and her husband plan on doing.
She won’t be able to push, so her goal of having a natural pregnancy is no longer possible, but otherwise, her pregnancy will be much the same as others.
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After everything she’s gone through, Adams said she has both good and bad days.
“There’s days that I think ‘Man, I just want to get up and walk.’ You have that dream that you can wiggle your toes. It’s not like you think ‘Okay, I don’t miss it,'” she said.
“Obviously, I do, and I miss being able to just go stand up and grab my lotion off the table and not have to ask somebody to help with every little thing.”
But Adams says she’s been thinking a lot about a quote from Professor Albus Dumbledore: “To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.”
While Adams isn’t dying, she said she is trying to see her new life as a new world to discover.
“Perhaps I will explore things that I never would have. Maybe there’ll be something amazing that I would never have discovered had I not had an accident,” she said.
“Better to look at the positive because I can’t change it. What’s the point of wasting the energy?”
As hard as the transition to her new life is, Adams says she’s grateful for her husband, mother, father, friends, and community who have been helping her through it.
“I’m lucky. If it wasn’t for my family and husband, it would have been a lot harder.”
Those who wish to help Caroline Adams and her family can donate to her GoFundMe page.
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