It doesn’t get better; it just gets different.
It was the summer after I had just graduated high school. I could not have been more excited then to spend it with my friends before we all headed off to college. I needed to get a second job for the summer so I told my friends and one of them said that they needed help at a summer school for special needs children. I applied right away and later that week I went to the school to spend a day with the kids before I became a teacher’s aid there the following week. I live in a small country town about 40 minutes from my new job and four of my friends from my town were working there as well. We all carpooled together for our short 7:45-11:15 morning day. It was only Tuesday of my first week working at my new job. July 16th, 2013. At 11:15 we got the kids on the bus to take them home and then we walked over to our Jeep Wrangler we were riding in home. We had taken the sides off because it was extremely hot out that day and all piled in! That was the last thing I remembered.
About 10 minutes away from home we were t-boned by a semi truck and the next thing I knew I was in a corn field with a man over my shoulder. I just remembered being very hot and trying to sit up but my left leg was lying over my chest and the man next me kept telling my to lay down. When the firetrucks/cops/ and EMT arrived all I remember is a man on his pager yelling “There’s bodies everywhere.” I then woke up in the trauma bay to doctors yelling and giving orders, asking me tons of questions that my brain was not letting me answer. I do not know how much time went by before my family and friends arrived but thats when I learned that I had a fractured pelvis, fractured humerus/shoulder, fractured sacrum and SI joints, fractured femur, internal bleeding from my liver and spleen, second degree road rash covering my whole body, and a minor brain injury. I went into my first surgery a few hours later and then was transferred to the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit because I was only 17.
They filled my body with plates, nails, screws, and rods. I received about five blood transfusions to keep me alive so that they did not have to remove my spleen or part of my liver. I had tons of visitors to keep my spirits up and I was not told any news about my friends. I wasn’t allowed to watch TV or go on the internet because my parents wanted me to make it through my surgeries before hearing any bad news. I had my second surgery Friday to repair the rest of my body. I don’t remember much of my first week in the hospital. Sometimes I will have a flashback of being in pain and screaming when they moved me to get x-rays or when they would come take me in the middle of the night to do more testing. After my surgery my parents told me that Chris and Taylor had not made it and died at the scene. They were in the front seats and had there seat belts on so they weren’t able to escape the jeep. Joanne, Emily, and I were in the back and did not have seat belts so ironically that gave us a chance to survive because we were ejected. Emily had died the day of my second surgery. She fought as hard as she could but God needed her more. Her brain damage was too extensive and her brain swelled.
Now it was just Joanne and I. I was moved to the rehabilitation unit at the hospital about 8 days later and ended up spending about a month total in the hospital. I continued a rigorous physical therapy routine and ended up walking about 100 days after the accident. I spent four months in a wheelchair, two months with a walker and crutches before I walked on my own. I couldn’t have done it without Joanne next to me as we suffered almost identical injuries. After many neurological testings done in the hospital, the doctors agreed to let me go to college just 8 weeks later.
Almost a year after the accident I have completed my first year of college with hopefully only five to go before I become a physicians assistant. I am having my third and hopefully last surgery in December to remove an extra bone that formed above my femur while I was recovering. Joanne and I talk often as we still have not come to terms with what has happened. It is very hard to understand why things like this happen..why did we survive and they didn’t? That question is just something we will have to live with for the rest of our lives. I think about Taylor, Chris, and Em everyday and I am thankful to have them as my guardian angels but when they died apart of me went with them.
