The wedding was planned. Rachelle had just celebrated a night on the town with her closest friends, and they had gone back home for an early morning swim. Rachelle was standing by the pool when a friend playfully pushed her in.
“I went in head first and I heard a crack," Rachelle says. "I instantly felt all movement and feeling leave my body.”
When she got to the ER, Rachelle recalls that one of the doctors looked down and said, “I’m sorry, you’ll never walk again.”
Rachelle had broken six vertebrae. She is a quadriplegic with some limited movement in her arms.
Rachelle and Chris had to reconsider their future. They got married about a year after their original wedding date. They had always talked about having a family, and that was one of Rachelle’s biggest concerns immediately after the accident.
“It was never on our list of things to do right away, but the injury really brought that into focus,” Chris says. "For us, we immediately starting looking at options and what were [the] possibilities."
Rachelle explains that the medication she has to take to keep her blood pressure up would make it more difficult for her to get pregnant. Then, a friend from college who heard their story said she’d be willing to be a surrogate. Rachelle and Chris are expecting their first child in April, and they recently heard its heart beat for the first time.
“In the end, it’s not being pregnant that’s my dream,” Rachelle says. “Having a child is my dream.”
“This has to be the most inspirational story that we’ve done on this show,” plastic surgeon Dr. Andrew Ordon says.
Visit Rachelle's Go Fund Me page.
