Issue date: 11/11/08 Section: News

Media Credit: Jose Arredondo Betsy Helbing, a freshman business major, juggles her school work with the therapy necessary to recover from an accident in September 2007 that left her wheelchair bound. [Click to enlarge]

Media Credit: Jose Arredondo Betsy Helbing was injured after falling off the "Whiskey Bridge" Sept. 5, 2007. [Click to enlarge]

Inspired by a colorful sign decorated with the words "It's Gonna Happen" on her bedroom wall, Betsy Helbing continues to undergo physical therapy while a student at Texas A&M.

At the beginning of her first semester at A&M, Helbing, a freshman business major, suffered chronic injuries after falling 30 feet from "Whiskey Bridge," a structure located next to Highway 21 and extending across the Brazos River, on Sept. 5, 2007.

She attended the site with her fish camp discussion group as part of a tradition.

When leaving the area, the Austin native fell as an old plank on the bridge faltered.

Helbing was immediately taken to the hospital. She sustained several injuries including four shattered vertebrae, four broken ribs on her right side, a broken right shoulder and left wrist, lacerations and contusions to her liver and kidneys, and a punctured lung.

"I lived in the hospital until Dec. 20 of last year for like three and a half months," Helbing said, "and after that I went to Baltimore for a month to work out at Johns Hopkins Hospital."

The road to recovery is a long and gradual process, and in Helbing's case, balancing school with physical therapy exercises is no simple task.

"I'm a business major and it's actually really really tough to do school while working out because I go to therapy three times a week, and I try to stand for at least an hour a day and do other stuff that I don't do in therapy," Helbing said. "I kind of feel like it working out in the long run is more important that the difference of getting an A or a B in a class."

Although her recovery efforts are sometimes tedious, they are proving to be effective. On Halloween of 2007, almost two months after the accident, she was able to move her legs for the first time. The other internal injuries have since healed and she said that she is in excellent health, and can even drive a car.

"All the bones are pretty much healed," Helbing said. "They constricted vertebrae that were shattered, and the doctor did a great job of straightening my spine. I can move my shoulder all the way and all my insides are moving good.

"It's going slow, but with all the research and stuff, I have 100 percent faith that God will heal me. It will just take a while."

Helbing is in a sorority, Delta Delta Delta, and she works in the Younglife program, a Christian organization aimed at promoting fellowship between college and high school students. Helbing is involved in the business school, and said that she hopes to go into pharmaceutical sales.

"I feel like I've grown a lot," Helbing said. "I've always been really immature, but I feel like, in certain aspects, I've grown. I've been through a lot. At first I thought I was going to be too shy to ever go out, but I go out like every weekend and, I don't know, I'm having fun."

Friends and family say her success is because of her positive attitude and dedication to making progress. Haley Conrad, Helbing's friend for more than 10 years, says that Helbing developed a discipline that drives her - even though it means juggling her schoolwork with hours of working out every night.

"She is the most social person out there," said Conrad, a sophomore general studies major. "She will go to the Corner Bar on the third story piggy back style. She is fearless, and she will go anywhere. Curbs, she'll go right over them and she doesn't take the handicapped route. She is literally the most fearless person in or out of a wheelchair."

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