The author who overcame paralysis ready to run in the first half marathon

Shaunta-Maé Alexander had a long journey to the start line of half of Sunday’s United Airlines NYC, not just because it is from Sacramento, Calif.

The 35-year-old author of the children’s book and the aspiration actress has overcome a life-and-paralysis life-to run her first half Marathon. More than 27,000 athletes are expected to receive a 13.1 -mile tour in Brooklyn and Manhattan organized by New York Road Runners.

Alexander is part of the organization’s athletes program with disabilities, and it will be guided by Tunde Oyeneyin. The Peloton -based instructor in Brooklyn inspired Alexander to learn to walk again and help to punch her athletic abilities.

“I was part of the Peloton community and saw all these people in the community running racing and doing all these things,” Alexander the post told.

“I said to the Lord,” She continued, “If he could restore my walk, my movement, then I would walk as if I have never walked before.

Alexander, who grew up in custody, said her first major health issue appeared when she was 9 years old.

She began to have stomach pain and problems to keep food down. The problems worsened – and she was hospitalized at 12 as she tried to go out to eat.

“I couldn’t get out of the car because the pain was teasing,” Alexander recalled. “I couldn’t stand up. I couldn’t catch my breath.”

Finally, when she was in high school, Alexander was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, a chronic condition that irritates and causes swelling in the digestive tract.

Inflammation and ulcers can induce bad side effects such as diarrhea, stomach pain, cramps and bloody excrement.

“I was the baby who had to have two bags, not just a backpack, but an extra bag with extra underwear, with diapers, with medicine, all these types of things, because I couldn’t control my intestines and because at any moment I could be in teasing the pain,” Alexander said.

“I couldn’t participate in activities like everyone else because of Crohn’s disease, which really had a great effect on my mental health at the time.”

Other conditions “just a kind of constant, one after the other” – the pot is a rapid heartbeat when rising from a sitting or stretched position and the chronic pericarditis is when the bag around the heart becomes inflamed.

Then, in 2019, when she was about 30 years old, Alexander found herself in the hospital again with a severe ignition of Crohn by food poisoning. She suspects she took it from a fruit smoothie.

She underwent a colonoscopy so that doctors could assess the extent of her intestinal damage – a rare reaction to the anesthesia used in the La paralyzed procedure.

“I couldn’t move my arms, I couldn’t move my legs. I couldn’t talk,” Alexander described. “I had a cognitive issue. I had memory issues. I couldn’t tell you simple things like math. If you were to ask me what five plus two are, I was unable to tell you.”

When she was dismissed from the hospital about a month later, she can walk with a it run. Physical therapy helped some, but she still fought to move her legs without help.

She suffered a major obstacle in 2021, being paralyzed from the waist down.

“I had really got depressed. I had no real quality of life, I had given up because I would be sick all my life, and it was the straw that broke the camel’s back for me,” Alexander said.

In January 2022, she decided to make a difference. Motivated by the love of the “wicked” star “Cynthia Erivo for Peloton, she began to take Oyeneyin’s Weight and Weight Weight classes from her 3 pound weights.

Weeks later, she bought a peloton bike and bent it with her hands for hours a day. That April, she could slowly climb her legs, and she got her first live journey with Oyeney in June.

In November, her family helped her buy a Pelotoni violation as she tried to walk herself.

“We don’t hear much about how patients and individuals who go from paralysis or any kind of damage they are in bed and do not use muscles … Go back to reactivate those muscles and reactivate those joints and how much painful it is, but it was too much,” she said.

Alexander focused on her training for walking and strength – eventually walking on the routine turned into running and running.

She finished her first 5k in June 2023 and some races since then.

Now, it is ready for its first half marathon. Alexander is collecting funds for the Nyrr team for children to support children “were like me. Underdogs. Others. Those who didn’t get inside.”

She has made a long way – and she has to go a little further, with the oyeneyin next to her.

“Shaunta-Maé is an unstoppable force. It is an inspiration and the fact that I have been able to play a role in how much it has come is such a great honor,” Oyeneyin Post told. “I can’t wait to enjoy it at every step in that line of finish.”