Near fatal car accident/Broken neck survivor
On April 22, 2017, about 7pm my 9 year old daughter and I got in my car to go down a few blocks to my friends house to let her dogs out because they were out of town. My house is down a dirt road in a small rural Texas town,so when we pull out of our driveway we pull out onto the highway going into town. My 9 year old daughter wanted to go with me so she could play with the dogs for a little bit. She asked to please sit in the front, I never let her sit in the front because she isn’t old enough, but for some reason on this day I told her okay but just this once. We put our seat belts on and as I stopped before pulling onto the highway to looked and I saw a truck coming but he was about a mile down the highway, which should have given me plenty of time to pull out and drive safely, as the speed limit drops to 55 and then to 45 right before you get to my driveway. Little did I know this man had fallen asleep with his cruse control set on at leas 80mph. I reached about 200 feet from my driveway when I glanced into my rear view mirror and saw that he was right there and not slowing down. I pushed the gas pedal to the floor, thinking if I could get going a few miles faster maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, I also tried pulling over to the side of the road hoping he would go past us. When he hit us I was only going about 25mph, he rear ended us and hit slightly on the drivers side of the back of our car which caused us to spin. I remember hitting my head hard on the window and thinking okay we are just spinning it won’t be too bad, then we rolled twice. We landed on the passenger side in the bar ditch. I never lost consciousness and then I heard the most beautiful sound in the world, my daughter saying mommy I’m scared, I knew she was alive. I asked her if she was okay, she said she bumped her head and her wrist hurt a little. I had her look at me and answer a few questions, to make sure her head injury wasn’t too bad. I had her undo her seat belt and then undo my seat belt (I should have left mine on) then I had her crawl out of the car. The man that hit us then picked her up out of the broken glass and tried to get to me to help. As soon as I moved I knew my neck was injured bad, more than whiplash bad like really bad. Living in such a small town it took our volunteer EMT’s about 20 minutes to arrive but luckily an off duty EMT heard the crash and was there in seconds. She held my hand and asked me all the typical questions, can you move your feet your hands, does you stomach hurt, where do you hurt etc. I told her i hit my head hard and my neck was hurt really bad. She stayed with me until the ambulance arrived, and as I started praying she joined me, which really helped me stay calm. My husband and son’s who are 15 and 17 arrived about a minute or two after the wreck because the heard it from our yard. Hearing their voices also helped me stay calm. Finally the volunteer fire rescue arrived about 30 minutes after the accident and it took them almost an hour to cut me out of the car with the jaws of life, they were then able to put a neck brace on me. I was air lifted to the nearest hospital which is about 30 miles away. They did x-rays on my arm and an ultrasound on my abdomen, and really thought I was okay. Then I went for the cat scan which showed I had broken my neck in 4 places, C1, C2, C6, and C7 and also had a skull fracture. They then decided it was best to fly me to a bigger hospital so I flew in a small airplane to a hospital in Dallas Texas. I had two more cat scans and an MRI and two days after my accident I finally had surgery. They said I broke C1 in three place and C2 in half, they said this is as close to an internal decapitation as you can get. C6and C7 were dislocated and jammed on top of each other and C6 had fractured and the fractured piece was lodged in the nerve going down my left arm, my doctor said my nerve was intact but severely bruised. I was fitted with a halo cast and had a fusion on C5 C6 C7 and T1. I was in ICU for 3 days then a regular room on the same neurology floor for another 3 days then I was released. The doctors said it was the most serious neck injury they had seen where the person was coherent and not paralyzed or dead ever. I will also add that my daughter came out of the wreck with a mild concussion and a bruise on her wrist and a piece of glass in her foot. If i had made her ride in the backseat like I normally do she would have been seriously injured or worse, there was no backseat let in my car after the accident. The hospital in Dallas is about 5 hours from our house so that drive home was terrible, every bump and every stop hurt so bad, plus the anxiety I had every time a vehicle was behind us or passed us. Being home was great, no more being woke up every couple hours for this or for that. I have had to sleep in a recliner which actually isn’t bad at all. I’m not sure how long I will be in the halo brace, my next appointment is at the end of July so hopefully I will get it off then, but my last CT scan showed that C2 wasn’t healing like it should, the doctor said I may have to have to have C2 fused, which I really don’t want because it will severely limit the my motion and movement in my neck.I feel telling my story and reading other’s stories is very therapeutic for me. We are all survivors, and I have found that concentrating on the good and being thankful is the best therapy for me, I also try very hard to stay away from the “What If’s” they never do any good.
