Bedridden to body builder
After a serious car crash, Jose Marshall had to relearn how to walk and talk.
She didn’t stop there and this weekend she takes the stage in her first national bodybuilding competition.
Marshall, now 27, doesn’t remember the crash that caused her serious brain injury, on Labour Day in 2014. But she has the police reports and information from her doctors to put together what happened.
Police believe she fell asleep driving home alone and failed to take a corner on an open road in farmland north of Palmerston North.
‘‘I hit a fence and rolled for 53 metres. I was wearing my seatbelt. It saved my life I think. But I was left hanging on my side in the car, and it blocked off the oxygen to my brain.
‘‘Three hours after the crash, a man was going to work and noticed a sign was missing and he looked and found me.’’
She was flown to Wellington Hospital and put into an induced coma. Her parents were told she had a slim chance of survival, but two weeks later, when she was woken from the coma, she began responding.
The first weeks are blurry because of the drugs and the brain injury, but she remembers being spoon-fed, showered and her words coming out strangely.
Her family took on care of her daughters, who were 2 and 5.
Marshall’s return to exercise was slight – lifting her legs just centimetres over the mattress.
It didn’t come straight away, but the first time she managed it, she was ecstatic.
‘‘I was bedridden. It was horrible, my brain just wasn’t linking things. But the first time I did it I was so excited.’’
By December 2014 she could walk in a stumble, with the help of nurses at her arms. But on Christmas Day, despite doctor’s orders, she walked unaided into her grandmother’s house.
‘‘I said: ‘I’m going and I’m walking,’ so we put the wheelchair in the car, but it didn’t come out all day.’’
Her mum returned from living in Australia and cared for her in Te Horo for two months.
Then in April 2015, with homecare help, Marshall was able to move back to her own place in Palmerston North, with her daughters.
‘‘I think my kids were the motivation.
‘‘Looking at them and seeing how they saw me and thinking: ‘I’m going to show you guys that if you follow your dreams you can do it’.’’
Rehabilitation became her fulltime occupation. ‘‘I had to do speech therapy and had lots of physio. At the gym they started me doing all the leg lifts on light and I couldn’t bring them full extension, but now I can. If I stop training my leg feels like it seizes up and I won’t be able to use my leg. That’s why I train so hard.
‘‘So I thought: ‘Well, if I’m training this hard, I might as well compete’.’’
Now, Marshall trains six days a week, has worked through tough testing to get her driver’s licence back and is caring for her girls. She has been fascinated by the nutrition side of her bodybuilding training and is considering tertiary study in nutrition.
In April, she competed in her first regional bodybuilding competition, and in August, in Hawke’s Bay, she took second place in the women’s novice figure tall class, earning her a place to compete alongside 102 other bodybuilders at the NABBA New Zealand Nationals in Palmerston North this Sunday.
‘‘I’m looking forward to it, being on stage is like, ‘yeah – I mastered death and learned how to walk again and I’m on this stage’.’’