{"id":365060,"date":"2024-02-03T19:49:43","date_gmt":"2024-02-03T20:49:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=365060"},"modified":"2024-02-03T22:04:28","modified_gmt":"2024-02-03T22:04:28","slug":"aussies-beautiful-discovery-in-comeback-from-horror","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=365060","title":{"rendered":"Aussie's beautiful discovery in comeback from horror"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dealing with permanent brain damage and weakness down the right side of her body, Alexa Leary made a heart-shattering remark to her behaviour coach early last year.<\/p>\n

"One thing she asked me was, 'What's something you love about yourself?', and I said, 'Nothing. I don't love myself'," Alexa recalls to Wide World of Sports.<\/p>\n

Some 12 months later, six months out from the Paris Paralympics<\/a>, the Queensland swimmer has a far different relationship with herself.<\/p>\n

READ MORE\ufeff:<\/strong> Aussies announce squad shake-up as Head released<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

READ MORE:<\/strong> Ange pulls epic prank after shock Hamilton move\ufeff<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

READ MORE:<\/strong> 'Frightening' sight in battle to fend off rival sports\ufeff<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

"\ufeffI'm excited for Paris. I'm actually looking forward to it and I'm like, 'Come on Lex, let's do something good here. I'm going to do so well. I know I will'," the 22-year-old says.<\/p>\n

"Every day I write an affirmation on the mirror and I look at it and I believe it and I think it through the day … It's like, 'You love yourself, Lex. Look who you are. You've got to learn to love yourself'. So that's a big thing for me."<\/p>\n

\"Alexa<\/p>\n

Alexa's life took a horrific turn in July 2021.\ufeff<\/p>\n

On a bike ride just outside Noosa one Saturday morning, her front wheel clipped a bike in front of her. Tearing along at about 70 kilometres per hour, the then-triathlete fell off her bike and landed on her head.<\/p>\n

Her dad Russ, who had been close behind on his own bike, arrived at a hellish scene.<\/p>\n

Alexa was unconscious. Blood was everywhere. Her ribs, skull, scapula and leg were broken. And she had a punctured lung.\ufeff<\/p>\n

As \ufeffshe lay in a Brisbane hospital bed later that day, her parents, Russ and Belinda, were told to say goodbye to her. It was the first of eight times they would say goodbye throughout a gruelling stay in intensive care.<\/p>\n

\"Alexa<\/p>\n

That night,\ufeff not able to breathe on her own, she underwent lifesaving surgery. She was going to die, unless she had part of her scalp removed.<\/p>\n

The surgery was a success, but the following night she suffered a major blood clot\ufeff. Medication could have saved her, but it also could have killed her. The following night, she had a fever. The complications went on.<\/p>\n

But after 111 days in hospital, the Sunshine Coast athlete, 19 at the time, returned home.<\/p>\n

"Some days are very hard for me because my brain's just not normal," Alexa says two-and-a-half years after the crash.<\/p>\n

"It's just not working as well as it used to work.<\/p>\n

"I do struggle some times, but it's OK; I get through it."<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Alexa had to learn to walk and talk\ufeff again. There's a remarkable video on Instagram<\/a> of two physiotherapists guiding her across a hospital room. There's another person pushing a wheelchair behind her, in case she needs to take a break. She's wearing a rugby league headgear and has a cord hanging from her nose.<\/p>\n

Alexa still has memory problems and struggles with her\ufeff emotions. That will be the case for the rest of her life.<\/p>\n

Inside her head are a titanium plate and a shunt. The shunt is a tube that runs from her brain to her stomach, draining fluid \ufeffas it builds up. She also has special clips holding various parts of her detached scalp in place.<\/p>\n

Once at an airport in Los Angeles,\ufeff she walked through customs and beeped.<\/p>\n

"It went off and I was like\ufeff, 'I don't have drugs and I don't have an animal. I just have a cool head!'," she recalls with a laugh.<\/p>\n

At the World Para Swimming Championships in Manchester last year, just over two years after the accident, Alexa became a world champion. She won gold in the women's freestyle S9, an event for swimmers with weakness, limb loss or movement difficulty in one arm or leg.<\/p>\n

\"Alexa<\/p>\n

Alexa, who grew up in Noosa but now lives on the Gold Coast, is also thriving out of the pool. She launched a campaign called "Move with Lex", which raises funds for the intensive-care unit at Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital (RBWH), where she lived for three months. In January, she was announced as a brand ambassador for juggernaut gym chain F45 Training. She's also a social butterfly, and a delightful, bubbly and funny young woman.<\/p>\n

"I think I was so fine," she says when asked about her pre-accident relationship with herself.<\/p>\n

"I think I was probably cocky before the accident! I probably loved myself more than anything\ufeff.<\/p>\n

\"Alexa<\/p>\n

"But now it's like, I've had to restart a new life … I had to get my driving license again, I had no hair, I have a fake head go off at the airport. I don't have the normal life I had before the accident, so I've found it very hard to love and accept the person I am now.<\/p>\n

"\ufeffYou know what? We're all in this world. We all struggle. We don't always love ourselves. So we've got to learn to."<\/p>\n

One affirmation Alexa wrote on her mirror recently was this:\ufeff "I am growing in a direction that makes me thrive".<\/p>\n

Another was this: "I choose to be kind to myself\ufeff".<\/p>\n

\"Alexa<\/p>\n

When asked about her hopes of winning Paralympic gold in Paris, her vivacious personality is palpable.<\/p>\n

\ufeff"I think it would be the best thing ever," Alexa beams.<\/p>\n

"It would be a big achievement given how far I've come. I would just absolutely love it.<\/p>\n

"And the best thing is it's in Paris. I love Paris! I love crepes! So I'm like, 'Ah, yes!'. I get to win a crepe, as well. If I win gold, I get a crepe!"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dealing with permanent brain damage and weakness down the right side of her body, Alexa Leary made a heart-shattering remark to her behaviour coach early […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":365063,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365060"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=365060"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365060\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":365076,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365060\/revisions\/365076"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/365063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=365060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=365060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=365060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}