Model paralyzed in zipline accident shares rehab progress

Pic shows: Berni, the beautiful Chilean model portrayed in images before her accident. A model who was paralysed after she fell from a zipline at her home has become an online celebrity after posting her rehabilitation programme online. Chilean stunner Bernardita Santa Cruz, 26, was already a keen user of social media where she regularly posted pictures of herself enjoying her hobbies of motocross, hiking and yoga. But she is now more popular then ever thanks to the pictures she has been posting of her rehabilitation which invariably show her smiling despite her situation. Her followers wandered what had happened when she suddenly stopped posting updates and it was several weeks before her next post in which it was clear that something had gone badly wrong. "Going to my training session. Thanks a lot for all your support and charming messages recently. I am going to be strong in order to keep on," she said. Her next post was a picture of her in a hospital room with the caption: "After four days, I sat up for the first time. "The secret is having the feeling of coming back, that is stronger than the sorrow I am feeling. Don’t stop coming here to see me." After a third picture, in which she was seen standing up while strapped to a support, she explained what had happened. "I fell from the zipline at my house and suffered a spinal injury that made me paraplegic. It's 11 days now and although it is difficult, I'm being strong. Keep praying for my rehabilitation." Since then, the model has started to share pictures from her rehabilitation at one of Chile's top clinics, Las Condes, in the capital city of Santiago. "Everybody shares sunbathing pics. For me, it was wanting to feel the sun and the wind again that helped me get out of my wheelchair," she said. Her spirit in the face of adversity and her winning smile have won her thousands of new followers on social media including some of Chile's biggest names. The actor Gonzalo Valenzuela and some of Chile's (CEN/@berni_santacruz)