I'm a huge fan of Dancing with the Stars, and one of my favorite contestants on season 25 is Victoria Arlen.
She's been stunning the judges with dance partner Val Chmerkovskiy, and she looks like a natural dancer on stage. But during a recent episode, the ESPN correspondent and former Paralympian opened up about being paralyzed.
When she was just 11 years old, Victoria's health deteriorated so quickly that doctors couldn't figure out what was going on. By July 2006, she had lost the ability to walk, eat, talk, and move.
On the episode of DWTS, Victoria talked about her time spent in a wheelchair and how doctors had told her she'd never walk again. "My body started attacking itself," she explained. "I was having seizures every two to five minutes."
Doctors had broken the news to her parents that they should prepare for the worst. While Victoria could not talk, she could hear the conversation and then was determined to live. Victoria stuck to her promise and started to slowly get better. After 10 years in a wheelchair, she could walk on her own again.
Keep scrolling to read more about her miraculous recovery.
ESPN personality Victoria Arlen may be stunning the judges on Dancing with the Stars for season 25 but it wasn't too long ago that the TV host was in a wheelchair and told she'd never walk again.
At the age of 11, Victoria developed two rare conditions: transverse myelitis and acute disseminated encephalomyelitis.
She lost the ability to walk, eat, and speak. "I went from being a normal, happy kid to a complete vegetable," she explained on a recent DWTS episode. "This doctor basically said, 'She's not going to make it. You need to accept the fact that your child is going to die.'"
While Victoria couldn't speak, she heard the doctor, and from that moment, she decided it wouldn't be the end.
In 2010, she started to get movement in her hands back, and she began talking.
"I was told by every expert that I would never walk again," she said.
But she persevered.
Victoria is now competing on Dancing with the Stars with partner Val Chmerkovskiy — something she never thought she'd be able to do.
"I refused to give up," she said.
She set her sights on being the first person to perform on DWTS in a wheelchair. With the help of a trainer, she achieved the goal without a wheelchair.
She went through months of physical therapy to relearn how to walk. By April of 2016, Victoria could walk again after 10 years of being paralyzed.
Victoria and Val did a dance from her "most memorable year" — she chose her recovery.
"For a decade my chair was a symbol of pain, loss and suffering that at times was beyond anything I could ever imagine," Victoria wrote on her Instagram. "I stood up a year and a half ago and never in a million years planned on sitting back down, because it honestly hurt too much."
Before her time on DWTS, the 23-year-old won four medals at the 2012 Summer Paralympics, which included one gold!
"Two years prior to this moment I was waking up from a four-year vegetative state and feeling 'alive' was the last thing I felt," Victoria wrote next to this photo. "And this 'dream' I had seemed unattainable; impossible actually. But who says you can't do the impossible?"
Victoria continued to shock herself and doctors by doing the impossible.
In 2015, Victoria made even more positive strides in her recovery and got a hearing aid for her left ear after not being able to hear for the past nine years.
In early October 2017, Victoria and her dance partner paid tribute to her past and performed an emotional dance.
Now, Victoria is not only walking again but dancing and proving that you should never give up — even if the odds are stacked against you.
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