Student recovers from fall

A three-story fall during Adriana Madiol's junior year of high school changed her life forever. Today, Madiol is a sophomore studying education, but she still lives with the effects of the accident.\nMadiol was visiting a friend at Purdue University during her junior year of high school. She was perched on some railing with her feet propped up on an air conditioner when a woman spilled a drink on her. Madiol flinched. \nIn that brief moment, she lost her balance and began tumbling down three flights. \nShe was rushed to a hospital in West Lafayette and eventually transported to Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis. There, surgeons decided to postpone operating for a week because of her severe head trauma. \nThe doctors had to shave off some of her hair before surgery. \n"The first time she looked in the mirror, she said that she couldn't find herself," her mother, Sylvia Madiol, said. \nWhen they did operate, seven surgeons worked for 12 hours. After surgery, Madiol went through intensive therapy for five weeks.\nThe fall almost completely severed her right optic nerve and damaged her left optic nerve. It left her almost blind in her right eye and with limited vision with her left eye. The fall also damaged her brain's frontal lobe, which has caused short-term memory problems. \nAlthough she ate Lucky Charms for breakfast every morning, fifteen minutes after she ate, Madiol wouldn't remember what she'd eaten. \nTo this day, Madiol doesn't remember most of her family and friends' visits to the hospital. Her grandfather flew in from Spain to see her, but Madiol can't remember him visiting. She also doesn't remember her father's and her best friend's frequent visits. \nWhile in the hospital, she went to recreational therapy every day where she played games and did other activities such as coloring and doing puzzles. Madiol also saw speech and occupational therapists, who worked on improving her memory. After leaving the hospital, Madiol went through six more months of therapy. \nMadiol's reading processes are slower now tha before the accident. Because of this disability, she takes some of her exams untimed through the Disabled Student Services. Nicole Welch, who was Madiol's instructor in a class, said working with DSS to arrange Madiol's exams was never a problem. Madiol would take the exam in a sealed and signed envelope to the DSS office in Franklin Hall, where she would be supervised while taking the exam. Then, Welch would pick up the finished exam from Franklin Hall. \nDisabled Student Services works with more than 500 students on the Bloomington campus, said Jody Ferguson, a coordinator at DSS. Students like Madiol must supply DSS with documentation of their disability and their limitations so that their office can better help each individual student, according to the "Handbook for Students with Disabilities" at the DSS Web site. Their program has sign language interpreters, tutors and support service counselors. It also provides class notes, books on tape and transportation to class.\nMadiol learned to compensate for her brain injuries by using different learning techniques. When she first arrived on campus her freshman year, she had trouble finding her way around. Her residence hall and the Indiana Memorial Union were points of reference. She had to start at either location in order to find her way to another point on campus. \nAt first, she had to write down everything, but she slowly improved. The brain is a muscle, her mother said, and the more you use it, the stronger it gets. But Madiol has to make permanent adjustments. The fall damaged her pituitary gland so that she will have to take medication every day for the rest of her life. Because of the damage to her sight and peripheral vision, she can no longer drive a car. \n"Driving is the biggest thing that I miss," she said. \nShe hopes special glasses with prisms that allow her to have more peripheral vision will one day help her go to a driving school for the visually impaired. \nShe continues to do daily eye exercises in her residence hall room to improve her vision. She also compensates for her memory problems by rereading her class material several times. \nMadiol said she feels lucky to be alive. Although she went through intense rehabilitation, she graduated from high school on time and is working on an education degree. She has hopes to teach high school honors English. \nHer family, friends and teachers offered her a lot of support during her recovery, she said . \n"I didn't do it alone. My mom is the miracle," she said. "She had to basically throw bricks at my head to get me out of bed some mornings. There were days that I looked at my mom and said 'I wish I had died.'"\nBut she said the expression on her mother's face kept her going.\nWith her mother's reassurance, Madiol came to believe that God had given her a second chance because He has a plan for her. Even now, she is amazed that her damages weren't more severe. \n"Christopher Reeve fell off a horse and can't hug his children," she said. "But I fell three stories and can run a mile"