Raina Heverin is believed to have been sleepwalking when she fell from the second floor of her Paris Airbnb
Raina Heverin with her husband Michael and children Kim and Aaliyah (Image: Raina Heverin)
A mum-of-two is facing a long and difficult road to recovery after plunging from the second floor of a Paris Airbnb. Raina Heverin, 42, fell from the balcony of the room where she was staying during a weekend away on April 26 this year.
She was found badly injured in the courtyard of the building by her horrified brother the next morning, and was rushed to hospital in a serious condition. Her husband Michael, 45, said: “We think she had some kind of nightmare or sleep-walked, but she fell from the second floor balcony.
“She’d spent the day shopping and bought a new pair of running trainers. The following morning when her brother woke up. He went into her room because they had a day of sightseeing planned. She wasn’t in, and he thought she must have got up early and gone for a run, which wouldn’t have been unusual at all for her. But then he saw her trainers by the door.”
Raina, from Mossley Hill, suffered multiple injuries including a broken arm, a broken hip, and lesions on her brain stem affecting her movement and speech. She remained in a coma in a French hospital for almost a month, finally waking on May 17.
Raina was in a coma for almost a month following her fall (Image: family handout)
Michael, who flew to Paris to see his wife upon hearing the terrible news, said: “All told, she was in hospital for over two months. We managed to get her back home on June 11, and she was in Whiston Hospital for a week, and then they transferred her to Broadgreen, and she’s still there now.
“She’s awake and has been out of her coma since May 17. Now she’s undergoing intense rehab. A lot of the neurological pathways have been severed. She had three lesions on her brain stem, one causing loss of sensation on the right side of her body, one affecting her left side, and one affecting her speech. She’s learning how to walk again, learning how to talk again. All those basic skills we use on a daily basis, she has to relearn all of that.
“She can talk and she can string a sentence together, but she doesn’t sound like herself. She gets tired quickly. Talking can be exhausting for her. It will take years for her to get close to who she was physically.
“It’s been really hard for her because she’s such an active, outgoing, bubbly, extroverted person who is constantly on the go. She was in the gym every single day. She’s gone from being a force of nature in Liverpool, an incredibly successful mum-of-two, and all of a sudden it’s ground to a halt and she’s struggling to come to terms with that.
“She’s still cognitively herself, but her ability to function at the level she did previously is gone, which is very hard for her to take. It’s very emotional and very frustrating and it’s going to be a very long journey ahead.”
Raina, a recruiter who co-founded the SupplyWell teaching agency with her husband, hopes to secure a place at Oak Vale Gardens, a specialist brain injury rehabilitation centre in Broadgreen.
Her friend Rachel Bryan, who set up an online fundraiser to help Raina, said: “The road ahead is long, and Raina cannot do it alone. She will need ongoing continuous therapy and specialist equipment to rebuild her independence. Every rehabilitation session she needs cost over £100 an hour, and mobility aids and equipment run into the thousands.
“Raina is strong, brave and full of love. We, her family and friends, could not be prouder of all she has already overcome. With your help, she can keep moving forward, towards recovery, towards independence, and towards the life she deserves to live.
“After four and a half months in hospital, her goal is simple: to be home with her family, to walk hand in hand and play with her children.”
Raina with her children Kim, 9, and Aaliyah, 7 (Image: family handout)
Michael said: “Our children are too young to understand the severity of what has happened, but they have adapted incredibly well. They’ve been really brave. They adapt to change more easily than grown-ups do and have taken it in their stride.
“We go to see her every day. We try to look at the positive side. She defied the odds in many ways just to be here now. It’s upsetting to see her this way, but that’s the hand we have been dealt and that’s something we have to come to terms with now.
“The first couple of days, we were told we just had to ‘wait and see’. Her brain signals said she would wake up, but we didn’t know what state she was going to wake up in. Was she going to remember who I was, who she was? There were lots of unknowns, and with the language barrier in France it made things even more difficult.
“We are hoping that she makes a full recovery. It’s clear she’s going to need care over the next few years, to what cost we don’t know. We’re just hoping to raise the money that will lead to Raina’s physical rehabilitation once she’s discharged. Once she’s finally back home, we need to make sure she has as much freedom and independence as she can.
“Our lives are going to be slightly different now, but we’re still here, we have two young children, and we’ve got to make the best of things for them and for ourselves.”
Raina’s recovery fundraiser, set up by her friend Rachel Bryan, can be found here: https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/raina-recovery