An extreme sports practitioner broke over 100 bones when she fell 25 meters while practicing extreme yoga in Monterrey, Nuevo León, on the weekend.
Alexa Terrazas López, a 23-year-old student of the Monterrey Institute of Technology, was performing a yoga maneuver on the railing of an eighth-story balcony when she slipped.
Terrazas was rushed to Monterrey’s Zambrano Hellion Medical Center where she spent 11 hours in surgery, and will remain in sedation for at least two weeks. Surgeons will have to completely reconstruct her ankles, knees and face.
Through outreach on social media, Terrazas’ friends and family were able to raise enough blood donations to treat her, but the victim is still in need of platelet donations.
According to reports from friends on social media, doctors say Alexa will not be able to walk for three years and will need a great deal of physical therapy.
A native of the state of Chihuahua, Terrazas is the daughter of businessman Alberto Terrazas Syffert, ex-president of the state chapter of the National Chamber for Industrial Transformation (Canacintra) and owner of the construction conglomerate Grupo Punto Alta.
Her mother is Belinda López, director of the Chihuahua Independent Club, an athletic school that specializes in instructing soccer players using alternative training techniques.
A nutrition student, Alexa Terrazas’ passion for extreme sports garnered her moderate popularity on her Instagram account, which features photos of her jumping out of a helicopter and riding a zipline upside down, among other feats.
The popularity of extreme sports has grown considerably in the last decade, among amateurs and professionals alike, as has the number of injuries resulting from them.
A 2014 study by the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) revealed that more than 40,000 injuries were attributed to extreme sports annually during the 12-year study.
The study’s lead researcher and orthopaedic surgeon at the Western Michigan University School of Medicine, Dr. Vani J. Sabesan, noted at the 2014 AAOS annual meeting that social media culture had fostered the risk-taking among young people.
“Young people often lack judgement,” she said. “They see snowboarder Shaun White take the sport to a whole new level and some kids try to emulate his tricks. In effect, the culture says it’s OK to do this.”
Source: Infobae (sp), Today Online
