Full Recovery Seen as Estefan Leaves Hospital

Singer Gloria Estefan left a hospital today, two weeks after a bus crash broke her spine, and the Miami Sound Machine vocalist promised she would soon be back performing at “100%.”

Estefan thanked doctors, nurses and staff at the Orthopedic Institute Hospital for Joint Disease for their work in “putting me back together.”

She called the experience “the most difficult thing in my life,” and said she was “thankful for the miracle of being alive.”

The singer faced reporters, cameras and hospital workers from a wheelchair. But she ended her news conference by standing, unaided.

Estefan, 32, was injured March 21 when her tour bus was struck by a tractor-trailer on an icy Pennsylvania highway while en route to a performance. She was transferred to the hospital one day later, and doctors implanted two steel rods to stabilize the area where she broke vertebrae.

“All the positive prayers and thoughts sent my way helped me in my recuperation,” said Estefan, who was accompanied by her husband Emilio. The couple’s 9-year-old son also was injured in the crash.

Doctors have estimated it could take up to six months for her to fully recover.