Walking through the valley of death…

I can finally talk about it. So here we’ll go!

When life was going so well and I was so amazed about all the great things accomplished, I decided to take a long vacation to Brazil before getting ready for Fashion Week. But that turned unto a life threatening episode that lead unto 3 years of fight to survive… That indeed was a life-changing experience. I have recently started life over again and I want to share it with the World!

So, I went ti Brazil and spend 3 weeks in a beautiful paradise island. On my way to the next city I spend a night over a place and fall from 14ft high, breaking my skull, injuring my spine, having a serious concussion and a brain injury. Twenty days after that accident, I flew to Rio, where my parents live. I walked unto the wheelchair to travel, since I could not walk up any stairs. But arrived in Rio unable to move out of the wheelchair. The pressure on the brain worse my injury… On the next day I had a seizure and with that came change on my personality, irritability, memory loss, confusion, lack of control over my speech, my actions, my emotions, and everything that could possibly express who I am and what I want. I was unable to process information, I often could not understand what people where saying despite all of my efforts, and my brain was unable to retain any information that would be processed. I am assuming you only read until here if you really really like me or if you also have experienced a brain injury… lol. I had to cancel my flight and stayed in Rio for 6 months doing intensive treatment to go back to my life. What I did not know was that that life has stopped there, with the accident… I came back to New York to get worse. The 12 hours flight didn’t do any good to my brain either. So I arrived here very confused and thou I look OK, I was far from being well. I was very debilitated to walk and it was nearly impossible to walk up the stairs, but I kept on pushing thinking I was going to bit the sickness with perseverance, but it only made me worse and worse… kept on going back and forth to the ER until the day that I had another seizure and became like a vegetable, stuck on bed, unable to step on the floor, and unable to walk at all.  I was under an on-going unbearable pain, with dizziness and blurry vision at all times.So I depended on others to feed me, to take me to the hospital and even to push the wheelchair, since I could not even do that on my own… I was finally ready to die, and I have never felt so close to God in my entire life, and on that evening that I asked Him to heal me. On the next day, I woke up well and started to walk. And from there took another 10 months until I was able to walk up the stairs again. And another year until was finally able to function…

I was told by some of my doctors that I was never going to heal and that I was never going to design again, and that I was to live with that. But I refused to believe on them, because I know that God makes miracles. So I changed Doctors and kept on fighting day and night, despite all the odds, and they were many…

The good thing is that I had 3 entire years with myself and with God. And that changed my life for ever…

I learned that no matter what, God is always there for me, and this is amazing to me. I learned that there is always hope, while we are still alive. Even if everything and everyone tells you otherwise.  I discover that the brain is elastic, and that it keeps on creating new neural pathways. I learned that the neurons destroyed have neighboring neurons that are able learn how to do the same function even better than the the old neurons. And that gave me a lot of hope, not only heal 100%, but that I was going to be even better on everything I used to be good at. Another great discover is that due to the trauma, and the intensive focus and stimulation that follows after the long period of rest, other parts of the brain that were sleeping woke-up and things that I wasn’t as good at, became amazingly easy to me.

Now I don’t regret for going through all of that. I am not only better on everything I do now, but I am also a better designer, a better friend, a better boss, and a better human and I learned that the beauty of life are on the simplest things. Talking about beauty, I am indeed very excited to share with you all about my new collection on the next post… So Viva la Vitta!

-Isabelle Donola