Nirali Chauhan will be one of nine contestants on the upcoming season of “The Great American Baking Show,” which premieres Friday, May 5, on The Roku Channel. Chauhan graduated from Barrington High School in 2012. (Courtesy of Nirali Chauhan)
During her long recovery from a traumatic brain injury, one of the exercises that helped Nirali Chauhan was pretending to bake.
“Literally, we made a little kitchen for me in the rehab facility and would practice,” Chauhan, 29, said of her recovery team at Shirley Ryan AbilityLab in Chicago. “There was a time when I couldn’t pivot in the kitchen, bend over to use an oven, let alone bake for hours.”
Viewers across the country soon can see Chauhan’s baking skills in action as a contestant on the new season of “The Great American Baking Show,” which premieres Friday on the Roku Channel.
During her time on the show, her recovery was never far from her mind.
“I’d be doing something and I’d remember practicing it in rehab, and it made me so grateful to everyone who’d helped me,” said Chauhan, who graduated from Barrington High School in 2012.
Chauhan was injured 8½ years ago during a visit home to Barrington from college. Her family was getting together to remember her father on the anniversary of his unexpected death. That day, the batteries on one of the family vehicles had died, so a neighbor was asked to come over and give the car a jump.
On his way, he accidentally accelerated his SUV instead of braking. Chauhan was struck and ended up on its hood. When the neighbor hit the brakes, she was abruptly thrown and landed hard on the pavement, first on her sacrum — a bone at the bottom of the spine — then her head.
Though she was able to resume her education, Chauhan’s lingering medical issues eventually forced her to put school on hold.
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