“I wasn’t quite prepared for what I was about to see. They told us his wrist was shattered and he had amnesia. Two weeks before his surgery, I had a prophylactic double mastectomy. Sounds crazy, right? This past summer, the radiologist made a mistake and didn’t compare my scans and basically stated that I had cancer. I decided to go flat. The anxiety was real.”
‘Get here quick.’ My husband was sitting in a truck with a black eye swollen shut, trembling. ‘What happened to me?’: Woman recounts the lessons her farming family learned during unexpected hardships
‘It was exactly 4:00 p.m. There were no other cars around me for about a mile. I noticed the truck turning left and wasn’t slowing down to turn. In fact, he was speeding up. This was it. I knew I was going to hit him.’
“That day I felt a strong feeling that I needed to put my seatbelt on in her driveway. I thought it was a little bit odd, because I usually didn’t put my seatbelt on until I was leaving her neighborhood, but I put it on right then.”
‘It was playtime on the playground. My student looked anxious. I climbed to get closer to him, placed my foot on the rail and tumbled, hitting my head on a metal pole. I fell to the ground.’
“That’s it. That’s all it took. Five minutes to change my entire life.”
‘The tree crushed the roof of the car. My head compressed. My spine burst. I don’t remember it. I woke up thinking it was a nightmare. ‘There’s no way I could still be alive,’ I told myself.’
“Life has changed. The depth of loss I face daily. But everyday I am faced with a choice. Will I choose to survive today or will I choose to thrive? No matter the lemons or curveballs, the choice is mine.”
‘Last night I was a mama alone in the ER with my sick baby. As my feverish child sobbed, I paced the waiting room. There was panic across faces.’
“But as I would learn, I wasn’t actually alone.”
‘I was ejected and thrown 50 feet from my car. I died that day. I knew I couldn’t feel my legs, but I didn’t know why. I was told I would never walk again.’
“I think every girl dreams of walking down the aisle to her husband. I had pictured it in my head since I was a little girl. I didn’t want that picture to play out differently just because of my accident. So I chased my dream.”
‘I was staring at the scale in disbelief. The needle stopped at 320 pounds. I knew I wasn’t skinny by any means, but was I really 320 pounds?!’
“Yes, I had always been one of the bigger boys, but I was never ‘fat.’ I was a football player. A wrestler. A soccer player. I was big, but athletic.”
‘Ginger ale slowly fermented and turned into a bomb. It detonated at the exact moment she walked passed it. The force of the blast knocked her unconscious to the ground.’
“Shelly was busy and didn’t pour it out right away.”
‘Nobody sets out to be a junkie, an addict. I certainly never did’: Police officer admits ‘humiliating’ spiral to addiction after on-duty injury
“I was a shell of the person I formerly was. This has been humbling, humiliating and a real struggle.”
‘Colton may not live. I need people to realize the seriousness of a head injury.’: Mom’s plea after 6-month-old rolls off bed
“This started from him falling from a bed that is only 2 feet off the ground.”
