My Daughter Was Alive, But She Was Badly Hurt

Full of life. That’s how I would describe my daughter…so full of life. My beautiful, outgoing girl had just graduated from high school and she was enjoying her last summer days at the beach before college. She had a job at a daycare and she was so excited for the future…for life to begin.

The call came in the evening. I could hear my daughter in the background.  The man on the other end of the line told me to come to the hospital right away because my daughter had been in a very bad car accident. We reached the scene and the police told us to stand back. I yelled, “But I’m her mother!” The police office said, “I don’t care; just get to the hospital and wait.” I didn’t know it at the time, but the police didn’t want us to watch as they tried to get my daughter out of the car; they didn’t want us to see it. I was in shock…complete shock.

My daughter was alive, but she was hurt very badly. Her injuries were severe – broken nose, eye socket, sinus cavity.  She broke two bones in her left arm and all of the bones in her hand.  She lost her index finger, had to endure skin grafts.  Her neck was injured and she had to wear a halo for 10 weeks. She was in a coma for two weeks. Since then, she’s gone through seven surgeries and procedures to check her sinus cavity because if it got blocked she could die. The doctors said her neck wouldn’t heal for at least a year. It was all so hard on her. It was unimaginable.