KNIGHTDALE, N.C. - Potential lack of health care, not lack of love, has put wedding plans on hold indefinitely for a North Carolina couple after the bride-to-be was paralyzed in a freak accident.
Rachelle Friedman was paralyzed from the chest down after one of her bridesmaids shoved her into a pool just a month before her June wedding to her college sweetheart.
If Friedman and her fiancé, Chris Chapman, tie the knot, Friedman would stop receiving the Medicaid checks she needs to pay for her constant care and rehabilitation. Still, Chapman hasn't left his love's side.
"We know we're a strong couple," Friedman, 25, told ABC News. "And when I got hurt, it never crossed my mind that he would ever leave."
As a married couple, their combined income would be too high to qualify for the Medicaid payments. So the pair plan to live together in a home in the Raleigh suburb of Knightdale until they can figure out their insurance issues and have that dream wedding Friedman was planning for last June.
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Friedman was enjoying a night out with her bridesmaids when one pushed her into the shallow end of a pool as a joke. Friedman hit her head on the bottom.
Friedman forgave her friend and refused to tell ABC News the friend's name, saying they are still close and had pushed each other into swimming pools as a joke many times before the accident.
Friedman, an aerobics and dance instructor before the accident, initially had no feeling below her collarbone. But she can now type with her thumb and sit up in bed on her own after months of therapy.
