Stefanie Schaffer was a senior Community Health major at Castleton when she embarked on a dream vacation with her family to the Bahamas in 2018, a trip that would change her life forever. Schaffer was headed to see the swimming pigs of the Exuma Cays with her mother, sister, and stepfather when the tour boat she was on exploded right below her feet. The explosion severely injured her mother, killed another passenger, and left Schaffer with catastrophic injuries to her lower extremities, resulting in her lower legs being amputated, damage to her kidneys, liver, and spleen, and a spinal cord injury. She also suffered a traumatic brain injury and would spend four weeks in a coma with only a 50 percent chance of regaining consciousness.
“Mentally I would look around and see these machines that were keeping me alive, and I felt like I was lying in that room basically just waiting to die,” Schaffer writes.
She began writing “Without Any Warning: Casualties of a Caribbean Vacation” as a way to cope with the trauma of the accident and endure the long, difficult recovery.
“Writing has always been natural for me, something I’ve really enjoyed, and it’s how I’ve expressed myself,” she explained. “I wasn’t thinking far ahead when I began writing. It was therapy for me; working through my story was something I wanted to do.”
She decided early on that she wanted to share her experience.
“I had the idea that this would become a book, and hearing that other people who knew my story thought that I should write a book, too, gave me the validation to start the project,” she said.
Looking for a place to start, Schaffer sat down at Speakeasy Cafe with former Rutland Herald reporter Yvonne Daley.
“The original thought was that Yvonne would be helping me write or do the majority of the writing, which I didn’t know if I could do it because I had only ever done college papers and things like that,” she said. “But when I sent her my first chapter, she loved it, and I realized it was something I could do.”
“Without Any Warning” took approximately two years to write. As Schaffer navigated penning an honest portrayal of her experience, she kept in mind the reasons it was important for her to author the book.
“I needed to take control of the story and get my voice back,” she said. “I felt for the group of us who were on that boat that day, that our story wasn’t being recognized, specifically that the government of the Bahamas wanted it to go away. And so, this was me saying that we went through this.”
The book describes her family’s attempts to get answers for how this happened, who was accountable, and the frustration with the legal system in the Bahamas that seemed determined to erase the accident.
“I thought if I published it in black and white words, what happened to us would exist forever, and it would bring awareness and a warning to others of possible dangers when traveling outside of their country.”
The 25-year-old hopes her memoir will inspire others. Being an avid athlete and outdoor enthusiast, Schaffer has worked hard to get back into sports, including biking and cross-country skiing. Her neighbor, who uses a hand cycle, lent her one and took her on her first bike ride.
“There are so many cruel moments that somehow are now in the past, each gone, each survived,” Schaffer writes about competing in her first bike race. “With each motion of these pedals, I again work through every emotion – the anger, the hatred, the heartbreak, the joy, the grief – and they carry me along like a strong wind behind me.”
Schaffer has become an advocate for body positivity, working with a talent agency in California on photoshoots for brands targeting young audiences. She posts photos on Instagram showing what it is like living with a spinal cord injury and as a double amputee. There is also a discussion in the works for a movie based on “Without any Warning,” and Schaffer hopes to write a children’s book in the future.
“It’s got to be hard for kids, who may have been born with a difference or were hurt early on in their life, to not have books for their age group that really represent them. I think it would be cool to do that,” she said.
In the end, challenging herself and doing the work to heal – both physically and mentally – has strengthened Schaffer.
“Sometimes we think that failure or change is the end of the world, but it’s not,” she said. “It’s just a chance to learn and grow.”