Tabitha Hale suffered swelling on the brain after falling off her horse. Her husband feared she’d never speak again. But when she awoke, she surprised everyone.

When this wife suffered a potentially life-changing blow to the head, her husband thought she would never be able to speak again. However, when she came around, she had one thing to say. She told her husband, “Don’t ever let them do that to me again.”

Tabitha Hale lives in Lula, Georgia, with her husband Jacob and their four sons. The busy mom worked as a secretary for the city of Oakwood, GA. But in her spare time, she harbored a love for horses.

In March 2016 Tabitha was preparing for her first horseback trail ride. Both she and Jacob were new to horse riding, and so she wanted to cram in all the practice she could. As a result, she got Jacob to watch the kids while she and her mother, Kim Smith, went out for a ride.

The pair headed to a nearby farm to warm up, and everything seemed to be going smoothly at first. But all of a sudden, things took a terrifying turn. Without any warning whatsoever, Tabitha’s horse bolted and all she could do was cling on for dear life.

“I was yelling, hold on, Tabitha, hold on, Baby, just don’t panic,” Kim told CBN in 2017. “And I’m chasing her up the road. She goes around this little curve, and I lost complete sight of her.”

When Kim finally regained sight of her daughter, she discovered her sprawled face-down on the ground. As she got closer, it became clear Tabitha was unconscious and, worryingly, blood was dripping from her ears. Kim dialed 911 there and then.

Kim knew that something was desperately wrong, and so she began to pray. “I went into, ‘God, help me!’” she said. “It was a panic, you know, get it here! You know, show me, show me what you can do in this moment right now.”

Paramedics rushed Tabitha to Northeast Georgia Medical Center. It was there that doctors revealed the mother-of-four had fractured her skull. What’s more, the fracture had caused bleeding in her brain, and it had begun to swell.

For Jacob, seeing his wife look so helpless was heartbreaking. “Especially when you can’t talk to her and she can’t talk to you or, she’s unconscious. It was a scary moment,” he told CBN.

With the swelling on her brain getting gradually worse, doctors decided to operate and take away a section of her skull. This would relieve the pressure building up inside her head. And the surgeons needed to act fast: if they didn’t perform the procedure, they feared the worst for Tabitha.

“If it swells a little bit more it can just press on the brain stem and the next thing you know is she can deteriorate really fast. To the point of no return,” neurosurgeon Dr. Arun Jacob told CBN. “Her breathing can stop, her heart can stop. And essentially, she will be brain dead in a matter of an hour, maybe not even that.”

Thankfully, Tabitha survived the surgery. But there was a chance the procedure could have left her with both mental and physical disabilities. Now, all her family could do was hope their loved one would wake up soon with minimal damage.

For Jacob, his concern was that his wife wouldn’t even remember her family. “I guess my biggest fear in the whole thing was that she just wouldn’t recognize me or our boys,” he told CBN. “I wasn’t worried really about her, she was in a wheelchair or anything like that, I just wanted her to know who we were.”

Before long, Tabitha began showing some indication of recovery. With some prompting for her doctors, she was able to move her toes. And this small movement provided her family with an immense amount of hope.

Buoyed by Tabitha’s improvements, he doctors were keen to push her even further. So they made the bold decision to remove her from her ventilator. Critical care nurse Candi Jarvis had the job of removing the machine and getting Tabitha to breathe on her own.

Thankfully, the nurse’s risk paid off. “At that moment, it was like you could see Tabitha’s fight in her reach down and she took the deepest breath,” Kim told CBN. However, Tabitha’s road from recovery was far from over.

However, the mom impressed everyone with her speedy recovery. What’s more, it seemed like she had some idea of what had happened to her. In fact, within hours after coming off her ventilator, she was speaking. And she told Jacob, “Don’t ever let them do that to me again.”

Within a week, Tabitha had regained the ability to walk. And, much to her husband’s delight, she knew exactly who her family was. As a result, just nine days after her accident, doctors sent her home.

Tabitha’s speedy recovery surprised everyone. “Even the physical therapist that was there, you know, he was like, this doesn’t happen. This does not happen,” Kim revealed. “That was a big wow for me, that I knew that okay, we’re on the downhill slide now. That this is – this is going to be good.”

And everything was “good.” Following surgery to repair her skull, Tabitha returned to work. And now she has a newfound passion for life. “No matter what comes up against me, it’s not going to bring me down,” she told CBN. “As long as I know that God has me by the hand and He is carrying me through, and nothing else matters.”