Update on Dallas Friday's injury - 'I'm doing way better, way better'
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Dallas Friday is shown recovering at a hospital in Singapore
in a photo taken Wednesday on a camera phone by her father, Robin Friday.
from
www.orlandosentinel.com Speaking from her room at Changi General Hospital in Singapore, where she continues to recover from a severely fractured left femur and from severe breathing problems that put her in intensive care, Orlando's Dallas Friday said today that she intends to resume her professional wakeboarding career.
"I'm doing way better, way better," she said in her first telephone interview since Oct. 1, when she crashed during the final event in the 2006 Wakeboard World Cup series.
"I feel like I'm the luckiest girl right now. I have so many family members and friends and fans that have sent me e-mails and prayers from all over the world. I'm just blessed to be alive and have so many people who care. I almost died."
Considered the world's greatest women's wakeboarder, the 20-year-old Friday added that she hopes to compete next Memorial Day weekend in the 48th Masters Water Ski and Wakeboard Tournament, which she has won five years in a row.
"I'm going to be recovered and I am going to wakeboard again one day," Friday said.
In fact, on Sunday, when doctors took her off the respirator and removed her breathing tube, one of the first questions Friday asked her father was, "Dad, would you mind if I continue to ride?"
Yet even Friday and her father, Robin Friday Sr., who is in Singapore with her, acknowledge the recovery will take time.
Today, a doctor at the hospital showed her an X-ray of her left femur for the first time since she broke it while performing a complex jump called a "whirlybird."
When Friday crashed, she screamed and held her leg, which she said felt like "Jell-O."
"Once I got to the dock, everybody was shaken up," Friday said. "I kept my cool. I held my leg together. I stayed calm and then I went into surgery. I don't remember the next five days after that."
A doctor today told her she sustained at least seven fractures in her leg.
"It [the X-ray] looks like a Christmas tree -- like a modern-art Christmas tree," Robin Friday Sr., said. "It just branches out into every different direction imaginable."
Her voice still sounds raspy from the tube that helped her breathe for six days.
But signs of progress have lifted the family's spirits. Friday walked with the aid of crutches today for the first time since her crash.
"Her color is good; her mind is thinking clear; her appetite is great," Robin Friday Sr. said. "To see her big, brown, beautiful eyes looking at me again is just a joy beyond description."
Friday now has a private room in the hospital's general ward. Get-well cards and flowers -- including a recently arrived bouquet of three dozen pink and white roses -- have lightened the mood. Her father also has sung her hymns, as well as one of their favorite songs, "Edelweiss."
Friday has felt homesick, but she may be able to leave Singapore and return home as early as Tuesday.
"I'm hanging in there," she said. "And I just want to thank God and everyone for praying for me and keeping me in their hearts. I can't even describe how much I appreciate it and how much it means to me.
"I'm just excited and I look forward to coming home."
If you wish to send an email to Dallas, please do so at
dallas@alliancewake.com
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