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SALT LAKE CITY — Kendal Levine, 20, is defying the odds after a devastating accident overseas.
“It’s been miracle after miracle,” said her father, David Levine.
On Sept. 5, 2014, Kendal Levine, from Stansbury Park, was serving an LDS mission in Australia when she got out of her car to take a picture of a double rainbow.
That was a life-changing moment.
“She got hit by a 4,000-pound car going 40 miles an hour. The doctors in Australia were like, she shouldn’t be alive,” David Levine said.
Kendal Levine didn’t suffer any broken bones or damage to her organs, but she spent three weeks in a medically induced coma and lost 100 percent of her muscle tone.
Her parents, who were living in Hawaii, moved her to a hospital there, closer to their home.
“The neurologist told us all she would ever be is a girl in bed. He never expected her to get any better,” said Kendal’s mother, Melody Levine.
Her parents refused to accept that and got their daughter into a rehab program at University Hospital, where she’s been since Nov. 15.
Kendal Levine’s fighting spirit has gotten her far.
“You don’t tell her she can’t do something because she’ll prove you wrong,” David Levine said.
The neurologist told us all she would ever be is a girl in bed. He never expected her to get any better.
–Melody Levine,Kendal's mother
Kendal Levine had surgery to reduce swelling in the brain and is learning to walk again. Her short-term memory is also improving.
“There are no long-term effects other than her brain rewiring,” Melody Levine said. “She’s almost back to exactly who she was before the accident.”
Kendal Levine will be leaving the hospital on Feb. 27 and then attend outpatient therapy in Salt Lake City.
On March 3, she would have been coming home from her LDS mission in Australia.
She still has fond memories of the country she served and hopes to finish her mission there someday.
She said she also wants to go back to school.
“That’s been a big help, right? All the people’s prayers around the world,” David Levine said, to which Kendal Levine replied, “Yup.”
To donate to Kendal and her family, visit their GoFundMe website here.
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