Nobody believed that Sofie Ebben (29) would ever walk again. It happened anyway. In recent years she has resumed her work and is now even working on opening a restaurant. The documentary From Wheels to Heels, which can be seen on Brabant+ on Sunday, shows how she got up from her wheelchair five years ago.
First back to September 2018. It was a warm day and Sofie, who still lived in Sint Agatha at the time, had plans to go sailing in the afternoon. But first the horses had to be taken outside to the pasture. A perfectly normal job for her. “We didn’t get to sail anymore that afternoon,” she looks back seven years later.
She walked with a mare and a foal, both on their own rope, towards the meadow. Something happened and the horse stopped and ended up behind her. “But then the foal reared up. I stood in front of him, so he landed on top of me. And then you don’t stay on your feet.”
Wrong stuff
When she wanted to get up, she quickly realized that something was wrong. “My legs didn’t work. Then I thought ‘take it easy and try again’. And they still didn’t work.”
In the weeks that followed, it remained unclear what Sofie had, because X-rays showed no physical spinal cord injury, but there were many tears in the back muscles.
Until a diagnosis was made, doctors called it a ‘pseudo-paraplegic’: “It’s not a physical spinal cord injury, but it looks like one,” she explains. “We later found out it was a functional neurological symptom disorder. There was no signal coming from my head to my legs.”
Always a glimmer of hope
She had been rehabilitating in Klimmendaal in Arnhem for a year and a half, but nothing changed. Sofie always had a glimmer of hope, but that did not apply to the people around her. “There have been real conversations about ‘Sofie, we think you should give it up’.”
In the meantime, she had been approached by documentary makers to record her story. At first she didn’t want it, but in the end it seemed like a good way to give people an insight into life with a disability.
She says that at least she was able to tell her story, unlike some of the other people she met at the rehabilitation clinic. “I had noticed what kind of different society you actually live in. For example, streets are not equipped at all for people with wheelchairs.”
Followed in documentary
In the documentary ‘From Wheels to Heels’she is followed for six months during her life and during treatments. “We didn’t know yet whether it would be a sad story or a success story.”
It was the latter. And she can still remember that one moment when she got her first glimmer of hope. There was ‘cataleptic tension’ in her legs, which causes muscle stiffening.
That happened during a new therapy, which she had a hard time beforehand. “But I also had nothing to lose. I didn’t work because of my situation and I would do anything for it. Even if I had to fly to Tokyo, if someone could get me to walk, I would,” she says.
Getting out of bed independently
She believes that her time in the rehabilitation clinic together with these new treatments have caused a turnaround. “In the end, it literally put me back on my feet.”
Cycling, horse riding and dancing: she has been able to pick up the thread again in recent years. Although part of her legs are still numb. “If I have to get out of bed, I can do that independently. Previously, I had to call my parents,” says Sofie. “Whatever I think of now, I can do in just a second.”
Sometimes she even says she forgets that she was in a wheelchair for two years, because life just moves on so quickly. She is working again as an event manager and is now even busy opening restaurant Kiem in Cuijk. “It’s going well, but I notice that it has hit me hard. I am proof of how you live in a split second can change.”