Story By: Angjela Trajkovska, Sub Editor: Joseph Golder, Agency: Central European News

This stunning former Miss Argentina has revealed how she did not who she was after fainting and hitting her head because she was not eating “enough” when working out in the gym.

Argentine model Claudia Barrionuevo, 27, says she collapsed in the bathroom of her friend’s house minutes before going to the gym and hit her head against a skirting board in 2016.

The model, who has worked in China, United States, India and Costa Rica, said she was happy but pressured after her career took off when she was named Miss Argentina 2015.

Pictures Credit: CEN/@claudiabarrionuevo

She said: “I wanted the entire world to like me. I fainted because I was training a lot, morning and afternoon, and did not eat enough.

“When I woke up at hospital I could not answer my name. I did not recognise nobody, nor remember anything. I asked for a mirror to see myself, because they were showing me photos and I could not recognise myself.”

She reportedly remained in intensive care for a few days before being transferred to a normal ward where she was monitored.

She said: “They told me I had psychogenic amnesia as a product of fainting because of stress, overburden, and exhaustion of energy.

“They were putting me asleep so I could rest, because I was worried a lot because I did not understanding anything.”

She remembered she was forbidden to leave the house because she did not know how to return home. She was sleeping next to her mum, because she was waking up with nightmares, according to local media.

She said: “She [her mother] was hugging me but I was rejecting her as I did not know who she was. I feel guilty for making her go through that.”

But a month after she fainted, Claudia vomited and was crying when she called her mother “mum”, who she had been called Mercedes (her name) after the fall. 

She said: “The medics said that I had an astonishing recovery.”

The model was raised in the village of El Carril in the province of Salta in northern Argentina and started modelling at age 16.

She was Miss Argentina in 2015 and competed in the Miss Universe pageant.

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