TARA LLANES UPDATE
Top BMX/mountain bike racer Tara Llanes crashed and suffered a serious spinal cord injury in the Jeep King of the Mountain finals in Colorado on September 1. She is currently has no feeling or movement below the waist. Her family is posting frequent updates on Tara's Myspace page, http://www.myspace.com/mtbtara (You may need to copy the link and paste it into a search engine to get to the site). The postings tell an ongoing and inspiring story of Tara's efforts to stay positive and start working out to minimize her condition as much as possible.
She will be doing her post-op rehab at Craig Hospital, which is also where BMX rider Steve Murray is doing his rehab. Murray was paralyzed below the shoulders when he crashed doing his signature double back flip at the opening stop of the DEW Tour.
Information on Tara's fundraising foundation is posted on her Myspace page. Both the BMX and mountain bike communities are uniting in efforts to help this much admired champion racer. Adventure Sports Weekly will keep giving weekly updates of the ongoing story as Tara deals with (as doctors call it) a life-altering injury.
Below is the newest update from Tara's family:
It has been a few days since the last update and we are EXTREMELY HAPPY to report Tara has been accepted to Craig Hospital and should be transported to begin her rehab most likely Tuesday. We are ALL very excited but as you can imagine, Tara is more excited than anyone.
Tara was able to get into some comfy clothes today...basketball shorts sand a cut-off t-shirt. Although she was incredibly sad to give up her hospital gown, she finally felt normal getting into some workout gear.
On another good note, the doctor took out her stitches/staples today in her back. We will be posting some photos of her new scar hopefully tomorrow.
If you are planning on sending anything to Denver Hospital, we suggest to hold onto it until she gets settled in at Craig. I will post her new address once we get the information. Until then, don't forget to visit tarallanesroadtorecovery.com and make a donation.
Again, we appreciate EVERYTHING all of you have done. Tara should be able to devote some time to her MySpace this week so please, keep those comments and emails coming. She may not be able to respond but she appreciates all of it.