Today I'm Grateful for Seatbelts.

Warning: Some content is a little graphic and the pictures are not for those with weak stomachs. I'll put the pictures at the end so if you don't want to see them you don't have to

On Sunday, July 28, my friend Eleanor and I were headed to scout camp for our last week of the summer. It was about 6:15 when we turned onto Snake River Road, a gravel road that would take us the last two miles to camp.  A mile later as we rounded a fairly sharp corner, our speed caused us to drift. As Eleanor tried to straighten us out, the overcorrection made us fishtail and then caused us to slide off the right side of the road towards some trees. I watched the trees coming right at me and I closed my eyes as I was thinking, “I’m going to die. I wish I could call my parents one last time.”

I’m not sure if I blacked out or what exactly happened. All I know is I was looking at the trees coming at us at about 40 mph, I closed my eyes, and then I heard Eleanor asking if I was ok and telling me to get out. I was hanging upside down in the car, suspended by my seatbelt. The car was facing back up the road the direction we had come from. I heard someone groaning; later I realized that it was me making the noise. I tried to reach for the door handle, but I couldn’t feel anything to my right. From looking at the car the next day, I figure what happened is the door was pushed out more than I was expecting it to be and even if I could have found the handle, the door was damaged so badly I couldn’t have opened it anyway. I told Eleanor that I couldn’t get out, so she told me to climb out her side. I was holding myself up with my right arm and as I reached to unbuckle the seatbelt, I noticed that it was covered in blood. Her seatbelts are the kind that the top strap buckles you in when you turn on the car, so I was able to unbuckle the lap belt, but that caused me to fall into the roof and then I had to untangle myself from the shoulder strap before I could climb out through the driver’s door. My eyes started to fill with blood so all I could see were blurry outlines.

As soon as I was out of the car I asked Eleanor to call 911. Miraculously Eleanor didn’t have any injuries. Before the crash, my phone had been in the door handle. I’m not sure how it got there, but as I crawled out, it was in my hand. It was covered in blood, but it still worked. I had Eleanor get me a shirt to hold against my head, and then I had her guide me to the edge of the road while she called 911. At this point, I thought that all I would need was a good forehead cleaning and that we’d be to camp within an hour. After all, I’d pulled myself out of the car and had walked around and nothing seemed to hurt.  I sat on the edge of the road holding my shirt on my head while I listened to her phone call, but as I sat there, my sternum and back started hurting so bad that I was scared I was going to pass out. That’s when I began to realize that things were probably not alright. I prayed over and over, “Please don’t let me die. Please don’t let me die.” I started getting discouraged as I thought about how far away we were from an actual town and tried not to think about how long it would take for an ambulance to get to us, if they could even find us at all. I noticed that the car was still running and the radio was still playing, which for some reason made me really mad. However, about 30 seconds after Eleanor hung up, I heard a faint siren. Incredulously I asked her if that was the ambulance and she said yes and that they were on their way. Focusing on the siren and on the music playing, I managed to stay conscious. At some point, one of the boys on staff, Keegan, and his dad stopped to see if we were ok. His dad tried to turn the car off, but said the keys weren’t in it. They stayed until medical response came and then left so they weren’t in the way.

I still couldn’t see very well, but someone (later I found out it was the sheriff) came over and started assessing my injuries. He was super nice and super positive and he made me feel really calm and like things would be ok. We even cracked a couple jokes, but I don’t remember what they were now.

I don’t know if not being able to see was a blessing or a curse; things seemed to move along swiftly but I also didn’t really know what was happened right around me. They strapped me to a backboard, loaded me in the ambulance, and then drove me somewhere. Later I asked and they said that we had driven back to bridge a mile up the road so that the helicopter could land. About 30 minutes later, they loaded me on life flight and we took off. I asked if I could look out the window and the paramedic said that if that was my plan, next time I needed to choose a seat that wasn’t a backboard. Then I asked him if we could go to Hawaii. He didn’t think that was very funny. The flight took twenty minutes into the Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center. The only time throughout this ordeal that I couldn’t remember/got confused about something was when he told me that they were taking me to EIRMC. I knew it was an acronym but I couldn’t remember what it stood for, so I asked and then he told me. He asked if I would rather they take me to Portneuf and in my head I was like, “Port-neuf….Port-nuef…what is a Portneuf?...” And I thought about that word for about 10 minutes. To him I just said, “Nooooo…. I don’t think I want to go there.”

When we got to the hospital, a barrage of people came out to get me. They all introduced themselves and told me their position, but I don’t remember any of them. At least by this time my eyes were pretty much clear. They wheeled me into an ER room, checked my spine for injuries and a lot of other things I’m sure but I can’t really remember what. Then everyone left. At first it was nice having some quiet, but the longer I laid there and no one came, the more freaked out I got. I’m sure they weren’t gone as long as it felt like, but I started wondering things like, “If I went into a coma, would anyone even know?”. I think at this point the shock of it all hit me. I was so cold my hands and feet were numb, but there was no one around to ask for a blanket. The pain in my chest and back was still making it difficult to breath. Finally after what seemed like an eternity, my cousin Jandy and her husband Troy came in. They live in Idaho Falls and Eleanor had called them and told them about the accident. I’m so glad that I have such a great and supportive family. Just seeing Troy and Jandy calmed me down and I started to think that maybe things would be ok again.

After a while they did 2 CT scans and some other lab work. The whole time I was in the giant neck brace that the EMTs had put on at the scene because they weren’t sure of the extent of my spinal injuries. They also couldn’t begin to clean anything out or stitch anything up until they knew if surgery was needed or not. I couldn’t eat or drink anything. My parents got there after the second CT scan and my good friends Chelsea and Aunt Day came too. My dad and Troy were able to give me a blessing. I am so grateful for the ability we have to communicate with our All-knowing Heavenly Father while we are on this earth. I was reassured that everything was going to work out in the end.

At about 11:30 or midnight, they were able to finally start cleaning out my head wound. There was a lot of glass, rocks, dirt, sticks, and leaves in it. I forgot to ask how many stitches in all she put in, but it took almost an hour and there are seven rows of stitches. I also managed to mangle up my second to smallest toe on my right foot. I wasn’t wearing shoes at the time of the accident so we’re not sure if the car cut it somehow or if I walked through something as I was walking around outside. Earlier I’d heard the doctor whispering to Jandy about it. They didn’t want me to overhear because they were thinking that it was severed to the point of needing amputation. The funny thing is, when I heard them whispering about my toe in hushed tones, I immediately assumed the worst…amputation. Luckily, the bone was still intact, just the flesh on the bottom of my toe was shredded so they were able to stitch it up as well. That was probably the most painful part; the doctor started scrubbing it before they numbed it. Then when they gave me the numbing shots, they had to administer them in between my toes. Keep in mind this was about 2:30 AM; not only was I exhausted, I’d been being poked and prodded and examined for almost eight hours now.

To sum up, I have three stitches on my toe on my right foot, which makes me limp but other than that I can walk just fine. There are a few scrapes on my legs, but that is all. My sternum and back (around my shoulder blade area) hurt like the dickens but they said that there is no bone injury in that area. I broke my C7 vertebrae, but luckily it is the part that juts out towards my back and not the part that wraps around my spinal cord. There is no spinal cord injury, but I have to wear a neck brace for at least a month to try to eliminate injury to tendons and ligaments. My arms and hands are fine. I have a concussion. On the top of my head/right forehead area I have a lot of cuts and abrasions and stitches, but it will all heal eventually. My cousin Jandy even asked the ER staff if they could make one of the scars look like a lightning bolt. I found out that the EIRMC ER staff isn’t the most humorous bunch. Oh well, she had the right idea. And last, my front right tooth, the tooth in between, and my right k9 is chipped or broken in some way. It is not too noticeable though so I am trying to be grateful for that. If I stand up or walk around for too long, my face and temples swell. And yesterday my eyes started swelling, if I ice them, it keeps them from swelling all the way shut. I think that I'm going to have a nice shiner on the right one. 

We finally got checked into a normal hospital room around 3 am. Both of my parents stayed in the room with me. I slept for about three hours.They told me that the doctor would come in a little before 7 AM and that after he assessed me I could probably leave. He didn't come until about 2 PM. That was a long hospital stay. I was able to shower off a little; I'm not allowed to get my foot wet and they didn't want me to wash too near to the cuts on my head, but anything was better than nothing. Besides, I had all the blood and water and saline solution from the night before still left in my hair. As I was washing my hair, huge chunks of hair came out with the blood clots. I'm guessing either the window or the road had something to do with that. For someone who already has thin, slow growing hair, that was pretty disheartening. But I guess it could have been worse.
We finally got to leave the hospital around 3. I had to wear some of my dad's clothes that he had in his car because they had cut mine off. We headed back to Swan Valley to get my car and gear from camp. The whole time I had been secretly hoping that I was going to be able to go back for the week, but that was not even an option.
I'm staying in Preston now with my mom. My dad had to leave for work this morning. Luckily both of my parents were in Idaho; something that doesn't happen very often. There were so many miracles and things that happened exactly right that I probably can't even list them all if I tried. I am so grateful that I have a Heavenly Father looking out for me and other angels as well. I know without a shadow of a doubt that He is the reason that I am still alive today, and the reason that I can still walk and function fully. It was a miracle that the sheriff and the ambulance responded so quickly. When the sheriff came to see me in the hospital, he told us that they are never in that area and are rarely able to get to an accident in that short of time. I will be eternally grateful that they were that close; hearing the sirens was honestly the only thing that encouraged me to hold on and wait for them to get there. I'm grateful that my family was so close and that they are so supportive. I'm grateful for modern technology and for hospitals. I'm grateful for the first aid knowledge and training that I have and that I was able to keep a cool head throughout the whole thing. And I grateful for parents who taught me the importance of wearing seat belts and that I was fully buckled in. I am positive that if I hadn't been wearing a seat belt, that I would not be sitting here today.

If nothing else, I hope to always remember that there are rules for a reason. Speed limits are meant to keep us safe. There is no reason that we need to be rushing around as fast as we do. It's better to arrive late than to never arrive at all. The next time you find yourself in a situation where you or someone else is driving unsafely, I hope you can remember my story and that it will help you to realize what is most important in life, and I can promise you that being on time and forsaking safety will never even make the list.

My amazing angels, Troy and Jandy

Lifeflight Helicopter

 
These are my attempts at smiling. When I smile, the movement cracks my forehead and makes it bleed. The second to last picture is of my Jabba the Hutt eye. And last but not least, a close up of my new hair cut.