The Brazilian acrobat who almost died in an American circus
One, two, just three seconds. And the show… became a tragedy. everything has changed. The fall was from a height of 12 meters. There were eight artists. Three of them, Brazilian.
The image of the accident spread around the world. Nine people were injured, one of them seriously. It was Stefany Neves, who was 19 years old at the time.
“I had so many dreams. So many dreams that for me were crushed.”
“I was the one in the middle, the one who was shortest, precisely because I was tiny, skinny. So everyone was on top of me.”
If everything had gone well on that May 4, 2014, the choreography would have continued with lots of dancing and acrobatics suspended in the air. But it did not.
“I thought ‘why me?’.”
It was a circus show. Eight acrobats, in a formation called the “human chandelier”. Suddenly, a shock — the artists fell to the ground.
It happened in the United States, but only now, after 10 years, Stefany decided to tell, for the first time, details about the accident and her physical and emotional recovery.
“The night before I didn’t sleep. I think it was a great intuition. At seven I got up, got ready, caught the bus. We lived on the train.”
“And then when this show starts, the curtain falls and then, seconds later, the structure falls. I wake up on the floor. I couldn’t breathe.”
“I passed out. My consciousness came and went. One of those times I tried to wake up, the first thing I wanted to do was get up. My body didn’t obey me.”
Stefany had her liver punctured, two ribs, her femur and other bones broken. The second cardiac arrest came when doctors were trying to stop internal bleeding. She resisted. And just when she thought everything was finally starting to go well…
“Just when I thought I was already progressing so I could go to a rehabilitation hospital, I started to feel really sick. An exam was done and I discovered a serious infection.”
“I weighed 26 kilos, today I’m 46, so I was 20 kilos below what I am. And full of fractures, at the same time I had plaster, plates.”
“I thought: ‘Why at 19? Why didn’t this accident happen later?’ I wish I had lived longer, dreamed more.”
The refuge was the affection of his mother, who was by his side the entire time.
“It’s an inexplicable pain. Your daughter leaves your house, perfect, with dreams to fulfill, carrying a ballet slipper on her back.”
And he never cried in front of his daughter. “[Chorava] in the hallway, in the bathroom. Only. But in front of her he couldn’t. I had to give her strength.”
Doctors didn’t believe Stefany would survive. She was weak, malnourished, with a bruised body.
Stefany translated what the doctors said for her parents
“I couldn’t imagine my mother’s heart when she heard that from her own daughter. And she told me to turn to the doctor and tell him to his face: ‘my daughter will survive!’.”
“And I survived. I’ve survived the fall, the cardiac arrest, two. And once more.”
She returned home after three months in the hospital.
The young woman stayed in the 35 kilo range for nine years. And only in the last year and a half has she started to recover physically.
Stefany is writing a book about everything she went through. To date, there have been ten surgeries.
“I discovered two years ago that I have arterial disease, some arteries are clogged, obstructed, due to various surgical interventions.”
The American court ordered the payment of compensation.
“Nothing pays for my consequences, but it was, yes, something that, in the justice of men, was reasonable.”
“There was negligence. The carabiner that held the entire device was poorly placed, poorly maintained.”
The other two Brazilians who had an accident that night along with Stefany also did not resume their careers in the circus.
Daiana is the mother of two children. and Widnyneves works at a hospital in Orlando, communicating between doctors and patients.
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Tags: decade accident circus USA Brazilian woman speaks time wanted body didnt obey Fantastic
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