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An accident eight years ago forced her to learn how to walk all over again. Now, this student works to help others through their traumas.

It took Shanteria six weeks to learn to walk again.
"Excruciating pain or not, you had to walk every
day." (Photo by Daniela Aguilera)

“It felt like I was flying up in the air really, really fast,” says Shanteria, now 21 and a UF pre-med and Spanish major. “Then falling really, really slow. But strangely enough, my back felt elevated, like if a pillow was under it. Next thing I knew I was staring up at the sky. I looked at my lower right leg and I didn’t see it. It was bent underneath my body. I started screaming and I didn’t stop until I got to the hospital.”

With blood streaming from her injuries, a broken pelvis and femur fractures in both her legs, she thought she was going to die, and almost did. But Shanteria endured an eight-hour emergency surgery and prepared for a rigorous recovery. At first, she was bedridden with four rods coming 6 inches out of her abdomen and a titanium rod in each leg.

“It hurt like hell every time I moved,” Shanteria says. “I was in too much pain to care about absolutely anything. All I wanted was the highest possible painkillers I could take. Then I got addicted to the painkillers and had withdrawals. That was one of the worst days of my life. I didn’t know who I was or where I was. I was all shaky. Everything was just a big blur.”

It took her a month and a half after that to learn to walk again. She decided she wanted to be a nurse, so she could change people’s lives, but the nurses had something else planned for her.

“Oh no, honey,” one said. “Be a doctor.”

Those few words inspired Shanteria to do just that. “I want to do this, not only to show that people like me—low-income, from a broken home, a minority and a woman—could succeed, but also because I wanted to change someone’s life, give back what I had been given, make an impact.

“It’s amazing to me that someone can come in all crumpled up, their bones all over the place, and months later they’re walking because they had a great trauma surgeon. I left the hospital with a burning, burning passion to become a really great doctor.”

Shanteria had always worked hard in school, but after the accident, she returned with extra dedication. While in high school, she took college-level anatomy and physiology classes, participated in clinical rotations at hospitals. In college, she’s done summer internships and is now involved in the Emergency Medical Technician program at Santa Fe Community College, Shands and Alachua County Fire Rescue, where she takes care of traumatic accident victims and emergencies. The program teaches how to respond to emergencies in the field. The students deal with everything from people suffering from gunshot wounds, car accidents and heart attacks, to people who just need to be talked to on the ride to the hospital.

“One time I was sitting in the back of the ambulance and treating a patient and I had a sort of deja-vu,” she says. “Eight years ago I was on a stretcher right there. I wanted to become this and here I am.”

Only 1 percent of orthopedic trauma surgeons are women, and even less than that are minority women.

“I don’t hope she becomes an orthopedic trauma surgeon, because that’s destined,” says friend Lauren Hanna. “It’s something that will happen. Why hope the sun will come up every day when you know it will?

Hanna says Shanteria looks out for everyone. “We were driving one night, going to eat from the mall, and she saw stray cats. The girl keeps cat food in her trunk for those occasions. She’s really focused on helping others and making a difference.”

by Vanessa Molina