“It's just devastating.” 5-year-old girl paralysed after doing backbends with her sister on their living room floor

Two days before Christmas this little girl, Eden Hoelscher and her sister were waiting for their mum to get ready to take them Christmas shopping.

They were clowning around together, as sisters tend to do, practicing their gymnastics moves.

A handstand, a cartwheel, a backbend.

At one stage the girls’ mum, Kylee walked past and, as mums tend to do, told them to be careful.

Kylee says she was just about to get in the shower when her older daughter, Isabella, 9, came in.

“Eden’s on the floor, crying'” she told her.

In a second the lives of the Hoelscher family had changed forever.

Kylee rushed to the aid of her five-year-old and found Eden crying. After a few moments she calmed her down enough so that Eden could walk to her room and put on her shoes ands they left to go shopping but Kylee says Eden was still upset and complaining about her legs, so she turned the car around and went back home.

“I said, ‘Just lay down and take a nap, maybe you’ll feel better,'” Kylee told GMA.

“She kind of looked at me and said, ‘Mummy, it feels like my legs are asleep,’ but her legs were in this strange position, so I said, ‘Eden, move your legs. She said, ‘I can’t.’ Then, I stood her up and her legs buckled under her and we went to the emergency room.”

The little girl from California in the US has been paralysed ever since, an MRI found a contusion on her spine meaning she can not walk, her bowels and bladder do not function and her body cannot regulate its own temperature anymore.

“In one instant, that backbend altered our lives forever,” Kylee wrote on a GoFundMe page set up for Eden.

She writes:

Eden started walking at 9 months. Her first birthday pictures are filled with fat-lip smiles from a tumble the day before. She potty trained herself at 18 months. She had a hematoma in her ear from a fall when she was around 2. An adrenaline junkie at the park, around 3 years old, she begged for me to push her super high on the swings. She lost her grip and did a complete flip off the swing, landing in my arms as I stood (thankfully) underneath her. She learned how to ride a bike with no training wheels on the first ride. She did a flip on the bars a couple weeks into kindergarten and fell flat on her back, got up and went into class when the bell rang.

That’s why, on December 23, 2015, when she did a bridge (a backbend where you push yourself up from the floor) on our living room floor and then collapsed crying, I shook it off. When she cried that her legs, back and hips hurt, I gathered her in my arms and rocked her, shushing her, telling her to calm down.

But this time, Eden didn’t pick herself up off the ground, dust herself off and go on her next crazy adventure. Thirty minutes after she started crying, she stopped. Her face changed—it kind of filled with wonder—and she told me, “Mom, I feel like my feet are sleeping.” I looked at her body, which seemed to be posed awkwardly on the bed, and told her to move her leg. She stared at it, saying, “I can’t, Mom.”

I put her and her sister in the car and rushed to the hospital, a day that started her 52-day stay in the hospital where we learned that that backbend turned our independent daredevil into a paraplegic”

Kylee says the diagnosis has been devastating. She told ABC News:

“The damage, it’s her entire spine and it doesn’t make any sense at all. It’s just a backbend and it’s just devastating. You go from watching your 100 percent independent kid who dressed herself, put her hair in a pony tail … to not being able to get out of bed and it’s almost impossible to bear.”

Eden’s doctors say they can not fully explain how the simple backbend paralysed the five-year-old, but say parents should know it is a rare occurrence.

Julie Hershberg, Eden’s neurological physical therapist, told ABC News “It’s just one of those enigmas.”

As Eden beings the long road towards attempting to regain some mobility her family watch, amazed,  at her resilience.

“But what that backbend hasn’t done is take away Eden’s spirit. Her physical therapist, two days after meeting her at acute rehab, nicknamed her, “Daredevil Eden.” Her therapy team said she accomplished more in two weeks of rehab than most kids accomplish in six” her mother says.

“Even if she doesn’t walk again, [I] just want her to know she’s the most amazing person out there.”

She writes that while walking is the ultimate goal for Eden, and that they find it difficult to consider that she may not regain her mobility, there are more pressing realities.

“90% of children with spinal cord injuries before age ten develop scoliosis later on in life. If she does not start standing, her bones will become weak and brittle and she will develop osteoporosis and could break a bone with the lightest tap. Her kidneys are at risk, and she could develop arthritis.”

She is hoping that therapy may also help regenerate Eden’s bowel and bladder functions and bring back sensation to her lower body.

“Because of Eden’s spirit and resiliency, we have never lost hope in her full recovery. Anyone who encounters Eden, including doctors, nurses and therapists always have the same response: ‘If anyone can recover from this, it’s Eden’ ”

Best of luck Eden. We are cheering you on.

You can find Eden’s Go Fund Me page here.