Maria Deposada’s doctors might have thought she was recovering well from a car crash that happened when she was 89, but her family told a different story.

The Miami woman went from walking cobblestone streets on a European vacation to not wanting to leave the house, said her family’s lawyer, Jack Hickey of the Hickey Law Firm in Miami. The 2008 crash caused lasting pain throughout her body and a brain injury that changed her personality, he said.