Horseback riding has been a favorite activity of Lauren Eberhart, a West Union teenager who suffered a back injury when she fell off her friend’s horse, Misty. Eberhart has also recently undergone cardiac ablation, a procedure to treat an irregular heartbeat that she has had since third grade. (Submitted photo)
All that remains for Lauren is to get back on that horse again!
Brian Smith
bsmith@thefayettecountyunion.com
It’s the proverbial advice for those who suffer any sort of setback. It just so happens to be literal in this case. On March 12, 2015, Lauren Eberhart fell from a horse she was riding and found herself in a situation that offered her the opportunity to decide whether or not she would “get back up on that horse again.”
“We were probably about a quarter of a mile from getting back to the barn, and Misty (the horse she was riding) was in a run, going about 34 miles per hour. The next thing I knew I was laying in the middle of the road,” related the 15-year-old who considers herself fortunate, all things considered.
Lauren was in the habit of riding fairly regularly with her friend, Heather Bettmeng. It was Heather who came to the rescue when Lauren had the accident, coming back to help her, and then contacting her mom. When they took Lauren to the emergency room, doctors told her she had a mild concussion and had broken three vertebrae. They prescribed some painkillers and muscle relaxers and offered her a brace to use.
“For the first two weeks I couldn’t do anything and never felt comfortable. The brace didn’t really help me much, and the pain in my lower left side was pretty bad. After a while it got better, and I took a pillow to school with me to sit on and that helped some,” explained Eberhart, who will be a sophomore at North Fayette Valley High School this fall.
Eberhart returned to work at the Town House about three weeks after the accident. Just as she was beginning to get back into a routine, she experienced a recurrence of atrial fibrillation, a type of irregular heartbeat, that had been diagnosed when she was in third grade.