Yolanthe Cabau was seriously injured last year in a fall from a horse. She broke her pelvis, lower back, and neck, and suffered bruised lungs. She feared she might never walk again.
The presenter and actress was horseback riding on Ibiza with her sister when her horse stepped on a stone, which shot away. The animal bolted, and Cabau was thrown. “I landed completely wrong and fell first on my pelvis, then on my back, and then on my head,” the forty-year-old Cabau said in an interview with the news agency ANP.
After the fall, Cabau briefly lost consciousness. When she came to, she felt nothing from her navel down. “And that did a lot to me. I was really afraid it wouldn’t be alright again.”
After a week in intensive care, Cabau was not allowed to travel. She therefore moved to a specially adapted house in Ibiza, where she would rehabilitate for months.
That rehabilitation lasted three months. Two months after the accident, she still couldn’t walk. “I had to accept that my body no longer did what I wanted. That was a very hard but important lesson,” Cabau says.
“I was always quite strict with myself. Through the accident, I learned to be kinder to my body because I saw how hard it fought.”
Recovery may still take at least two years
Almost a year after the accident, the presenter and actress is doing well again. “I’m walking in heels again and exercising again,” she says.
Cabau still suffers from the places where bone fractures were. According to her doctor, recovery may still take at least two years. “But I feel good, I feel strong. And blessed,” Cabau says. “I thank my body every day. You can want a lot, but if your body doesn’t cooperate, it can’t be done.”