A Minnesota family says they were forced to help their daughter “escape” from the world-renowned Mayo Clinic after they say doctors first saved their daughter’s life, then would not allow her to be transferred to another facility.

Alyssa Gilderhus was rushed to Mayo Clinic on Christmas morning, 2016, after suffering a ruptured brain aneurysm.

Though her prognosis was grim, the then-18-year-old survived several surgeries and moved into rehab to recover from her brain injury. That’s when Alyssa’s parents, Amber and Duane Engebretson, began having conflicts with hospital staff.

According to interviews the family gave with CNN, there were several incidents in which they disagreed about the medical care their daughter recieved. They asked to have several health workers on their daughter’s care team removed; they asked to have their daughter transferred to a new rehab facility; they even got a lawyer to write a letter to make a formal transfer request. The hospital refused.

After several heated arguments with hospital administrators, Alyssa’s mother Amber was banned from the hospital.

What the family didn’t know then, but would later learn, was that administrators had begun proceedings with local adult protection agencies to request a guardian be appointed to take over Alyssa’s medical decisions.

They allege the hospital soon began isolating Alyssa. Staffers took away her phone, laptop and tablet, they told CNN, and visitors were banned from bringing devices into the hospital or from attending her rehab sessions.

In late February, 2017 -- two months after the Mayo Clinic had helped save their daughter’s life – Alyssa’s family decided they needed to help her escape.

They came up with a plan to trick the nurses who had been assigned to watch over Alyssa.

They told them that Alyssa’s grandmother was in the lobby to visit her but was too frail to come upstairs. When they arrived in the lobby with the two nurses following, they told them her grandmother was still in the parking area outside and headed for a minivan.

Then, as family members captured on video, they lifted Alyssa out of her wheelchair into the van. The nurses yell, "No!" and one appears to try to grab Alyssa’s arm.

"Get your hands off my daughter!" Duane Engebretson yells back.

After the van sped away, security guards at the hospital called 911 to report “a patient abduction.”

Police soon began an investigation. They learned that while hospital officials had concerns about Alyssa’s mother’s ability to make decisions for her daughter, Alyssa was technically an adult and, as other doctors would later corroborate, able to make decisions for herself. That included the decision to leave the hospital against medical advice.

Police determined there was no abduction and no charges were ever laid.

In a statement to CNN, the Mayo Clinic said it would not discuss specifics of Alyssa’s case but said it stands by the decisions it made regarding her care.

"Our internal review determined that the care team's actions were true to Mayo Clinic's primary value that the patient's needs come first. We acted in a manner that honoured that value for this patient and that also took into account the safety and wellbeing of the team caring for the patient,” the statement reads.

Now, more than a year after leaving hospital, Alyssa is able to walk on her own and finished speech therapy in the spring. She graduated high school and was selected as prom queen. And this September, the now-20-year-old Alyssa is set to enter Southwest Minnesota State University.