Former Dublin Wives star Virginia Macari-Smurfit has told of her ‘toughest’ days where she used to be ‘screaming in bed with pain’ after she was diagnosed with a rare spinal injury.

In October 2024, Virginia, who is married to Peter Smurfit, was rushed to hospital, where she was diagnosed with Conus AMV, which is a rare spinal vascular malformation. She was left paralysed after a cluster of veins had burst in her spine.

The 50-year-old had collapsed while working out in her home gym in Miami, Florida, where she has been living for the past four years

In 2025, Virginia underwent major surgery on her spine and over the past year and a half, the reality TV star has been sharing her miraculous recovery online as she has to learn how to walk again.

And while her recovery saw her battle her darkest days, Virginia said her husband Peter Smurfit – who she married in 2024 – and her son, Thor, stepped up to look after her.

In her first interview in ten years, Virginia exclusively told EVOKE: ‘(It was) Definitely tough but Peter just turned into a champion, with patience and everything. The two of them (Peter and Thor) are thick as thieves, they always gang up on me,’ she said jokingly.

‘But Thor is quite mature for his age. He’s a very caring and loving boy. I know the two of them were worried but they handled it very well.

‘Thor is a really intelligent kid, but no child should have to watch their parents and vice versa being sick. So, I always had to keep my wits when I was lying in bed.. sometimes I was screaming in pain.’

The Irish-Italian star previously lived in Marbella, where she met Peter, but she revealed that U.S. doctors told her if she collapsed in Spain, she would’ve died.

‘The surgeon said to me that if this happened to me in Spain, I would’ve died because they wouldn’t have had the technology to take it out. They took out the cluster of veins. I was born with it but I didn’t know.

‘The surgeon said that AVM happens a lot but it usually happens in the brain, and it is rare it happens in the spinal cord.’

Virginia also renewed her faith during her recovery – but said she was ‘angry’ at God initially.

‘Every day is a new day, and I take it step by step because it is the only way to do it, otherwise you get really anxious…I do pray a lot. But I was angry at God and I was wondering why he was putting me through this.

‘I spent a lot of time in my room in bed and staring at the ceiling. Even when I was angry at him, I always had my bible and my rosary beads, and I would still say my prayers.

‘I remember thinking – because praying means a lot to me – I remember thinking that I would love to tell people that God has helped me throughout my healing journey and all the suffering I have gone through.’

At the start of the year, Virginia was contacted by the SIGEF Women Summit, which asked her to be a keynote speaker at their event in Malta to talk about her message of faith and resilience.

‘It was around January/February. Then a few weeks went by, and I was doom scrolling on Instagram and I saw this message they called me and asked me to be the keynote speaker and talk about how much God has meant to you.

‘When you look at social media, religion is becoming less embarrassing to talk about. I really appreciate that. It is like the whole world is awakening and people are becoming more confident to talk about their faith. I think the world really needed that now.

‘It made me realise what was more important in life. I stopped following things that made me feel nothing. God had to give me a wake-up call.’

In her speech, Virginia references her chance meeting with Peter in Marbella at a Sunday lunch ‘she nearly didn’t go to’.

‘A Sunday lunch I nearly didn’t go to. A seat beside a stranger.. a stranger who would later become my husband.

‘I want to start by asking you all a question. Do you believe in miracles, because I never fully understood them until one altered the course of my life. It began with a single decision, a Sunday lunch I nearly didn’t go to.

‘A seat beside a stranger, a stranger who would later become my husband. That decision took me from Marbella, the place I had called home, all the way to Miami to build a life with him, and by what I can only describe as a miracle, it placed me within minutes of one of the very few hospitals in the world with the expertise to treat the condition I didn’t yet know I had.

‘The doctors even asked me, How did you get here? Because cases like mine are so rare, most people never reach the specialists capable of treating them, and the truth is there is no logical explanation for how precisely life positioned me before everything changed.

‘A yes, that felt extraordinary at the time, would go on to become far more significant than I could have ever imagined, a decision I made for love would end up saving my life.

‘I had no warning, no sense that anything was wrong, because a few months after we were married, during a simple set of exercises I had done 1000 times before something ruptured within my spine.

‘They discovered a cluster of veins had wrapped themselves inside my spinal cord, had violently burst, sending blood up to my brain, a rare malformation that had existed silently my entire life waiting.’

Virginia has also revealed that during her excruciating recovery she has penned her first memoir and hopes to release it later this year.

‘I started it in October and I’m still working on it. It’s nearly finished. I have editors looking over it. It really means a lot to me.

‘It’s a memoir mostly about faith and resilience and renewing yourself. But it is not just about illness and recovery. It is also about when life takes something away from you and you think your life was the way it was but everything has changed.

‘I also have some really personal stories in there about all the things that happened at home while I was recovering. Some of them are funny, some of them are sad. Some of them will make you cry.

‘I remember when I was recovering I was looking on Amazon for a book like that and I just put pen to paper. I haven’t really promoted it at all. It’s written by me and it was simple but beautifully written. It’s honest and I really hope it can help someone.’