A mother of two has been forced to rebuild her life after she apparently sleepwalked out of an open third-floor window during a vacation in Paris and plunged 40 feet into the courtyard below.
Raina Heverin, 44, suffered a serious brain injury, broken bones and life-changing neurological damage in the horrifying fall on April 26 last year.
The Liverpool-born mother was discovered lying in the courtyard the following morning by her brother, who initially believed she was asleep.
“I was very disoriented, I hadn’t slept the night before,” Heverin told the BBC while recalling the terrifying incident.
“There was a Juliet balcony in the room. I think I was sleepwalking; maybe I was disoriented. I fell out of the window… three storeys into the courtyard.”
Heverin said she has no memory of returning to the rental property before the fall.
“I remember walking down the street, but I must have blanked out, so I don’t remember anything up to that point,” she told the Liverpool Echo.
The accident happened after Heverin swapped bedrooms with relatives during the trip.
The brutal fall left her with a broken arm, a broken hip and bleeding on her brain stem, which severely affected her speech and movement.
She remained in a coma for nearly three weeks and was unable to breathe without machines keeping her alive, according to a fundraiser created to support her recovery.
“The next thing I remember is waking up in the hospital and Michael, my husband, reading a terrible book,” Heverin recalled.
“I remember him reading that and thinking, ‘What is he doing reading me this nonsense?’”
While Heverin fought for her life in the hospital, her brother and sister-in-law were questioned by French police about the mysterious plunge.
She eventually returned to the United Kingdom in June last year and has been receiving treatment at a brain injury rehabilitation hospital since November.
“Raina returned incredibly weak, unable to stand, and needing to learn how to talk and walk again,” her friend Rachel Bryan wrote in the fundraiser.
“She needed help with even the most basic of tasks.”
Heverin has since been diagnosed with ataxia, a relatively rare neurological condition that can affect balance, hand coordination, speech and eye movement.
Approximately 150,000 people in the United States are affected by ataxia, according to the University of Florida Health.
For Heverin, tasks she once completed without thinking have become daily battles.
“Everything is difficult because I have tremors in my hands,” she told the BBC.
“Even putting on makeup or having a cup of coffee. Just everyday things you take for granted are so difficult.”
Before the accident, Heverin was an active mother and entrepreneur who ran two businesses while raising her children.
“I was a mom, I was an entrepreneur, I had two businesses. I was juggling a lot of things,” she said.
She said one of the hardest parts of her recovery has been losing the simple family moments that once filled her days.
“I love being a mom, I loved taking them to school and just everyday things like asking them how their day was, putting them to bed, giving them cuddles, all the normal stuff,” she said.
“I’m grieving still my old life. There’s loads of changes to adapting to a brain injury.
“But I’m definitely still grieving at the moment.”
Despite the enormous physical and emotional challenges, Heverin has refused to give up.
She recently walked three miles over five days to raise money for charity and is now working toward completing the same distance in a single day.
“If you work hard and you try, you’ll get somewhere closer to who you used to be,” she said.