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I won't let being paralyzed stop me
我不會讓癱瘓阻攔我
2 years after a fall from a third-floor balcony put her in a wheelchair, the 25-year-old doesn't let anything hold her back
兩年前，她從三樓的陽臺上摔下來，坐上了輪椅，如今25歲的她一往無前
It was the spring of 2016, and 23-year-old Jillian Harpin was having the time of her life.
那是2016年的春天，23歲的吉莉安·哈賓度過了她一生中最美好的時光。
With a college degree from Bentley University in Waltham, Mass., already under her belt, she was happily juggling work as a financial analyst and a packed social calendar—filled with weekend ski trips and nights out with her girlfriends.
她在馬薩諸塞州沃爾瑟姆的賓利大學(Bentley University)獲得大學學位，她一邊做著金融分析師的工作，一邊把社交活動安排得滿滿當當：周末的滑雪計劃，還有晚上和閨蜜們出去玩的安排。
Planning to pay of her student loans, she'd just moved back home with her parents in Wolcott, Conn., and had set her sights on finishing a series of 50 area hikes by the end of the summer.
為了償還學生貸款，她搬回康涅狄格州沃爾科特的家和父母一起住，并打算在夏末之前完成一系列50個地區的徒步旅行。
"I was so excited for my future," says Harpin. "I felt like I had it all." But all of that was about to change.
“我對自己的未來感到非常興奮，”哈賓說。“我覺得我擁有了一切。”但這一切即將改變。
On April 18 she and three of her closest friends left for a week-long vacation in Riviera Maya, Mexico.
4月18日，她和三個最親密的朋友去墨西哥的瑪雅里維埃拉度假一周。
Five days into the trip—"We were having the best time," she says—Harpin walked out onto the balcony to make a quick call home before dinner.
五天之后——“我們玩得很開心，”她說——哈賓走到陽臺上，在晚飯前打了個電話回家。
Sitting on the balcony's railing. "I lifted my foot up and lost my balance," recalls Harpin.
她坐在陽臺的欄桿上。“我抬起腳，失去了平衡，”哈賓回憶道。
She plummeted three stories to the grass below, fracturing three vertebrae in her back, her sternum and several ribs.
她從三層樓的高處摔到下面的草地上，背部三塊脊椎骨、胸骨和幾根肋骨折斷。
Harpin was unconscious as she was airlifted to a hospital in Miami the next day and woke up in a daze of pain medication to discover she was paralyzed from the waist down.
第二天，哈賓被空運到邁阿密的一家醫院時還沒有意識。止痛藥作用逐漸消退，她迷迷糊糊醒來，發現自己腰部以下都癱瘓了。
"When I was getting prepped to go into surgery, my dad was standing right in front of me, crying and crying," Harpin recalls.
“當我準備做手術的時候，我爸爸就站在我面前，哭了又哭，”哈賓又說。
"So I looked at him and I said, 'Dad, it's going to be okay. I'm still Jillian. I'm still here. I've got my head, I've got my hands. It'll be okay.'"
“所以我看著他說，‘爸爸，一切都會好的。我還是吉利安。我還在這里。我還有頭，我還有手。會沒事的。’”
Two years later Harpin, now 25, is more than okay.
兩年后，現年25歲的哈賓好得很。
Although doctors have told her that her chances of walking again are slim, she cycles in half-marathons, plays adaptive basketball, goes rock climbing on a wall at a local gym—and even rode a mechanical bull on a trip to Nashville.
盡管醫生告訴她，她再次走路的可能很小，但她騎自行車參加半馬拉松，打適應性籃球，在當地一家健身房攀巖，甚至還騎著一頭機械牛去納什維爾旅行。
In April she participated in a 5K race—and in June, with the help of a specially designed off-road wheelchair, she took second place in the Gaylord Gauntlet, a strenuous trail-and-obstacle event in Wallingford, Conn., that saw her crawling through mud, scaling walls and clambering over rock piles.
今年4月，她參加了一項5公里賽跑。今年6月，利用專門設計的越野輪椅，她在康涅狄格州沃林福德的蓋洛德挑戰賽(Gaylord Gauntlet)中獲得第二名。蓋洛德挑戰賽是一場艱苦的障礙跑步比賽，她爬過泥地，翻過墻壁，爬過石堆。
"Everything seemed impossible after the accident," she says.
“事故發生后，一切似乎都不可能，”她說。
"I thought I had this broken body and that I would never be okay, but I really just had to reinvent how my life was going to look. It wasn't over."
“我以為我的身體已經碎了，我永遠都不會好起來，但我真的必須重新塑造我的生活，生活還在繼續。”
That revelation, however, didn't come easily. "It took a long time to get here," says Harpin.
然而，這個啟示來之不易。“花了很長時間才明白，”哈賓說。
