Locked In

Paralympics champion and Dancing with the Stars contestant Victoria Arlen shares her courageous and miraculous story of recovery after falling into a mysterious vegetative state and how she broke free, overcoming the odds and never giving up hope, eventually living a full and inspiring life.

When Victoria Arlen was ten years old, she suddenly began having a quandary of health issues: asthma, pneumonia, fainting spells, ear infections, flu symptoms, and much more. Over the course of three short months, she lost her ability to speak, eat, walk, and move, and she slipped into a vegetative state. Victoria became locked inside her own body-able to think clearly and to hear and feel everything-but no one knew. She could not move or communicate and no one could hear her cry for help. Her daily sanity checks became her only connection to reality and a reminder she was still alive.

Her doctors wrote her off as a "lost cause," convinced her survival was uncertain and recovery unlikely. So Victoria remained a prisoner in her own body for nearly four years. It was during that time that Victoria promised God if given a second chance, she would make every moment count. And if she got her voice back that she would use it to change the world.

Then, at fifteen, against all odds and medical predictions, Victoria "woke up." She let her mother know through the simplest of communication: eye blinks. From there she began a nearly impossible fight back to life. Believing in the miracle of God's healing,she gradually regained her ability to speak, to eat, and to move her upper body. But because of damage to her spine, she faced permanent paralysis from the waist down.

Undaunted by her new limitations, she first began swimming for therapy and then competitively. And in 2012, just two years after coming back to life, she won a gold medal at the London Paralympics. The rest of Victoria's journey has been a story of surpassing the odds: winning multiple medals, becoming one of the youngest on-air personalities ever hired at ESPN, and finally - after nearly ten years of paralysis - beginning to walk again and even competing on Dancing with the Stars.

This is her story - the pain, the struggle, the fight to live and thrive, and most important, the faith that carried her through.