Gaynor Young shares her story over tea

POLOKWANE – Gaynor Young’s accident when she fell 18m down an unguarded lift shaft in December 1989 sent shock waves throughout the country.

She is currently a sought-after motivational speaker and was the guest speaker at the Cansa Tea at Bolivia Lodge recently.

The young actress was an understudy for the role of Guinevere in Camelot when she had to stand in for Kate Normington on that fateful day.

After the fall, she underwent a six-hour operation, and was in a deep coma for four weeks and in a semi-coma for another three weeks.

When the 28-year-old actress eventually went home to her parents in George, she was not able to walk, talk, hear, blink or close her eyes or swallow and her right side was paralysed. She broke both her arms and legs, all her ribs, all the bones in her face and her one lung was punctured in the fall. The doctors advised her parents to put her in an institution, as all she would be able to do was lie in her bed and stare at the ceiling for the rest of her life. Her face muscles were completely paralysed and would remain so, the doctors said.

A speech therapist prescribed ice-packs twice a day on her face for at least 10 months. Six months later, Gaynor asked the doctor who told her parents she would not be able to use her facial muscles and talk again to apologise to her parents for telling them that. After 12 months, she could move all her facial muscles.

She was told she would never be able to walk again – today she walks, albeit with a limp. And she hears again, after two cochlear implants, the first one of which took place in 2007. She has 40% of her eyesight and is immensely grateful to be able to see “rainbows, my mother’s face and a sky full of stars”.

There was not a dry eye at the tea as Gaynor told the audience about the wonder of being able to hear again, to hear her parents talk instead of lip reading and to hear the birds chirping.

“And to hear music again – it is fantastic to hear music again,” she said.

“It is sheer bliss to be able to hear mosquitoes! I used to pray to God to heal me of my deafness. He has made me hear again. I am so unbelievably grateful.””

She describes herself as a “miracle child”.

“The accident didn’t stop me believing, but I asked what God who loves and cares would let you fall five storeys. But now I can see, my face moves, I can walk and I can hear. That I am alive is the biggest miracle. I got my faith back. I learned that I am an inspiration to people and that while I am on earth, I will not get an adequate answer as to why the accident happened. But God will one day in heaven have a lot of explaining to do,” she quipped. “I don’t look back and say what could have been. I now live in the here and now. I am utterly content and at peace.”

Gaynor told the audience that we all experienced a lot of emotions.

“But how we deal or rather choose to deal with circumstances is what makes us who we are.

“I have found that it is only when something has been taken away from one that one is aware of its true value. Life is such bliss, with its ups and down. I love life. I am incredibly blessed. I can hear birds sing. I can see rainbows.”