A Virginia victim of a skydiving accident has miraculously recovered from her injuries after her parachute got tangled on her leg and she fell to the ground at 125 mph.
The 35-year-old woman, Jordan Hatmaker, reportedly broke her back, leg and ankle as a result of the 13,509-foot, 20 seconds plunge over Suffolk, Virginia, in November last year, SWNS reported.
“Everything happened really quickly,” Hatmaker, of Virginia Beach, told the news outlet about the botched “downplane” jump, where both the main and reserve chutes deploy, shift outward and fly toward the ground at an accelerated rate.
“I didn’t have any thoughts because I was spiraling so I didn’t know what was going on, I was just in strategy mode,” said Hatmaker.
Hatmaker first hit the ground with her left leg before bouncing up and landing on her back, according to the report.
“I hit with my left leg first and then I bounced off of my butt and faceplanted, and that’s how I broke my back. There was just extreme burning through my lower back and down my legs,” Hatmaker told SWNS.
“First I tried to push myself off the ground, and when I couldn’t move anything, my first thought was I was paralyzed and I was yelling that out,” she said.
“I’ve never heard sounds like those come out of my body. I screamed bloodcurdling screams,” Hatmaker added.
Hatmaker practiced her first skydiving in 2015 and fell in love with the sport since then. Within five years, Hatmaker was able to complete five tandem jumps, skydives wherein a learner is attached to an instructor via a harness.
On November 14, Hatmaker obtained a license and decided to jump solo. She reportedly embarked on her fateful 16th jump and terribly fell after a parachute mishap.
Rescuers rushed her to the hospital where she found out she had suffered severe injuries.
“When my back broke, some of the pieces of my vertebrae went into my spinal canal,” said Hatmaker, who underwent spinal fusion surgery and operations on her broken leg.
“They said, ‘We don’t know what kind of mobility she’s going to have,’ but they didn’t think I was going to be paralyzed because I could wiggle my toes,” she told the outlet.
“I was very thankful to be alive, that was my thought I had most often,” Hatmaker said.
“I had a lot of hope in that I would walk again, even though I couldn’t lift my legs or move them back and forth. I had a lot of hope that I would do everything I wanted to do again,” she added.
Hatmaker had planned to visit the Everest Base Camp prior to the fall. Nevertheless, she still intends to make it to the Camp in Nepal in November this year after her full recovery.
“That moment I could only lift it maybe half an inch off the bed but it was just so great to conquer a milestone. It was a sign of progress and I was really thrilled and excited, it just gave me more motivation to keep going,” she said.
Three months after the horrific accident, Hatmaker started walking again.
“It doesn’t feel real, it feels like so surreal that that even happened but I’m thankful that the accident happened. I feel like there’s like a lot of growth that came out of it, and I really think there’s opportunity in tragedy,” she continued.
“You can always find something positive even if you can’t see it now, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel and you’re going to be better for whatever you’re going through,” she added.
In addition, Hatmaker also said she will soon resume her skydiving after performing a few practice jumps in a wind tunnel.
Don’t tell my family!” she joked. “We’ll see what happened when I get to the plane door.”
