February 5, 2012 - Reported in [eluniversal.com]. Translated from Spanish. "I woke up from the induced coma, and I was drowsy and looking to around, when I saw something high approaching me." "I realized that it was the Virgin Mary, she landed on my right side, stroked me his head, turned her hand and touched my face without saying anything, then went."

So tells Camilo Andres Avila Gomez his encounter with the Virgin Mary, pointing out that he could see it when he came out of a complicated surgery due to a stroke which narrowly takes life. With just 18 years who met yesterday, he suffered what is commonly known as thrombosis in his right side.

After your first procedure where removed you the right side of the skull and medical assessments indicated very low probabilities that survive, says that he had the divine sign.

"When I woke up completely, I had a rosary in my right arm. "Everyone knows that you can not enter anything when it comes to surgery, not even with clothes," he said. Camilo survived but the right side of his body was paralyzed. However, today after almost 3 months of the accident have happened already walking without cane and lives to tell his story to many people who have no hope of life.

It started with a headache

A headache, that seems very common for stronger that is, was the first alarm was Camilo. "In November of last year, I went to the Rosario Islands with some friends and there I had the worst headache of my life, I felt that I would explode, it was like a bum, bum, bum!." I thought it was flu and took a flu but the pain continued. "My friends thought I was drunk and started to hydrate me with serum", it has great lucidity.

"Me I back home to sleep and the next day when I went to bed, I fell because didn't me have half of the body." I was there until my dad was into the room to find me because I wanted to know from me, because I did not see from the day before; to the see me I slept by his side until the evening, and in the second attempt to stop me, I went back to fall. "Then be warned, with the help of someone I went up to a car and took me to the hospital", he adds.

His mother, Sandra Gómez, said that "arriving at the hospital they thought he was drunk, he was made the breathalyzer test and found no alcohol in his body." "The doctors said that their chances of life were very few and also told me that he was in a vegetative state".

A few days without half skull

The young man was in intensive care a few days until it was operated. "Camilo was covered with an artery in the brain and this obstruction caused a paralysis that people commonly known as thrombosis on the right side, which means that the person can not move half body." To the prejudice of the right side of the brain, this inflamed noticing an increase to the base of the skull which at one point came to commit his neurological status and took him to comatose. "Doing neurological exams, it did not meet normal stimuli and had dilated pupils, which usually indicates that the patient is going to die, although at the end it can survive," explains Juan Carlos Benedetti, neurosurgeon who is part of the medical team that performed the procedure.

"We had to leave the patient devoid of half skull, i.e. remove half skull bone and open deck or a membrane of the brain that is called the hard mother to allow the inflamed brain had more space and not checkerboard brain tissue healthy." "The fragment of skull removed, put into the patient's abdomen to preserve it and once the patient woke up and recovered his neurological status, turned to making a bone reconstruction," he added. The neurosurgeon said that these cases are very rare in children and young people from the age of Camilo and they are more common in older adults.

Evolving very fast

The mother of the Camilo notes that the operation in which you reconstructed the skull to his son, was on 17 December. Not yet two months since this happened, and Camilo already walking without cane. "The doctors say that he is blessed." "He walked three weeks after the surgery with cane and already in January released it," said his mother.

The same Camilo tells his story with all clarity. The doctors explained that this is due to that the affected area was not the left, which is responsible for language centres. It says feel like a miracle. "Those responsible for that is today recovering me, are mainly God and the Virgin, my family, my friends, people in my school, good treatment and knowledge of the medical team." I do not want to be left behind and I'm not going to be left behind, I want to move on with my life, I graduate, I want to live and live with the same faith in God. I believe there are miracles and today I consider myself one of them. "When they saw me little hope of life, not only lived but I recovered and I'm still recovering, I must now strive to move my arm and sure I will move, with the help of God and the Virgin", expresses Camilo.

Camilo is the second of three brothers. This year he graduated high school at the British school and wants to study international business in Bogota, next to his older brother, Juan David. Continues to make their therapies, and although still can not move his right arm, ensures that with faith in God, it will move. Meanwhile is dedicated to telling her story to give hope for life and thank God for all that has been possible and that seemed impossible. "I have two birthdays dates, one is February 4, and the other is on November 16 which was the first surgery, because after that I went back to birth", ends.