… a story of tragedy, of hope, and the power of love. Mir­a­cles do hap­pen, Noelle McNeil is liv­ing proof.

Noelle McNeil: “I Know Heaven Exists.”

~by Bill Kol­ben­schlag & Jason Berardi of the Brain Injury Asso­ci­a­tion of New Jer­sey


Noelle McNeil, a 25-year old Lit­tle Sil­ver, New Jer­sey, sur­vived a fall from a horse and had a reli­gious expe­ri­ence while in a coma. She has writ­ten a book called “Heaven Exists,” and her story is truly inspiring.

Lit­tle Sil­ver, NJ: Feb­ru­ary 11, 2010 — One of Noelle McNeil’s favorite things to quote is the Law of Con­ser­va­tion of Energy, which states that “energy can­not be cre­ated or destroyed.” For Noelle, this state­ment rings true in more ways than one.

Noelle, a 25-year-old Lit­tle Sil­ver res­i­dent, was liv­ing quite the life in her sec­ond semes­ter at James Madi­son Uni­ver­sity. Young, beau­ti­ful, pop­u­lar, and full of energy, she had tons of friends and all the poten­tial in the world.

One day she dis­cov­ered how life can change in a split second.

A com­pet­i­tive horse­back rider, Noelle was thrown from a horse at an eques­trian event in August of 2005. She sus­tained a brain injury and was in a coma for 10 days. After com­ing through the coma she told her fam­ily that she had been to heaven and back.

“I hov­ered at death’s door for two weeks,” Noelle describes. “I devel­oped a ter­ri­ble pneu­mo­nia that almost killed me. I devel­oped a sys­temic sep­sis infec­tion. My heart race alter­nately raced and plum­meted, and my oxy­gen sat­u­ra­tion rate also dropped pre­cip­i­tously. The mon­i­tors crashed and my death was immi­nent sev­eral times, but I survived.”

Even though she made it through, the out­look for Noelle’s future wasn’t good. Doc­tors said she prob­a­bly would never walk or func­tion on her own for the remain­der of her life.

This began her incred­i­ble jour­ney of energy, strength, and perseverance.

Noelle spent more than five months in reha­bil­i­ta­tion, and more than eight months in a wheel­chair. She had to learn to do every­thing all over again: walk, talk, eat, speak, etc. “It was the longest eight months of my life,” she said.

Her progress was remark­able. She found the energy within to over­come her dev­as­tat­ing injuries and get back on her feet again.

Today Noelle is doing very well. She has trou­ble with her mem­ory, has had surgery on her right eye, and has dif­fi­culty with the use of her right arm. She has gone back to school at Mon­mouth Uni­ver­sity and is study­ing Busi­ness and Marketing.

Noelle enjoys shar­ing her expe­ri­ence with oth­ers. She has spo­ken at her for­mer High School, Red Bank Catholic, and a retire­ment home in Tin­ton Falls.

Per­haps her great­est accom­plish­ment since the acci­dent is that she has writ­ten a book “Heaven Exists” detail­ing her story in jour­nal entry form. The book describes her incred­i­ble jour­ney in fas­ci­nat­ing detail.

Visit Noelle McNeil’s web­site @ www.noellemcneil.com