Rachelle's Story

Speaker 1: The hardest thing as a mother, for me, was ... knowing that you hold their hand to cross the street and you give them a little tap when they run out, and you talk to them about cars, and all I could think of at the moment was, "I never told her not to stand on the highway."

April 29th, it was very early in the morning. It was about 8:00. My husband Mark, her father, came in and said, "I just got a call, Rachelle been in an accident."

Her friend had just had a heart monitor put in before this young lady and my daughter's first though was, "Is she okay?" And she went running to help her.

Speaker 2: She was getting out of the car to comfort her friend and then had the other car slide into her.

Speaker 3: So I walk around the corner and then I see Rachelle and I instantly think like, "Why did this have to happen? Like why?"

Speaker 4: There are certain things you look at if the ... if you think the leg is severed. The key is to decide, determine if that patient is stable enough, are you going to do an x number of things, x, y, z to then put her life in jeopardy. So the key is to decide if that patient is stable enough or can you control the bleeding without taking the leg, or the limb, without putting the life in jeopardy.

Speaker 1: And so it didn't dawn on me that I had two nurses on either side of me at that point in time and they sent us down and took us into a family waiting room, in the surgical area, and they said, "A surgeon will be in to see you." The surgeon came in and she sat down and she said, "Well, we weren't able to save the left leg, but we're trying to save the right." At that time, our worlds kind of got smaller a little bit, all of a sudden. We ... we weren't sure quite what we were hearing or even how to process this. We went from thinking our daughter had just gotten a cut, to our daughter has already lost one leg and they may be taking the other and that, I think they'd said that she'd had six pints of blood in surgery already. They said, "She is alive." Well, when you hear that, the legs don't even matter, when you hear, "She's alive."

Speaker 5: On the trauma units, most of the people are coming there from unexpected injuries. They haven't been ill. They haven't had a cold for a while, or they don't have chronic illnesses typically. So, it's a life-altering, life-changing event that just brought them to us.

Speaker 4: There's a lot of work that went on to save the leg. She's such a courageous, strong, young lady and you could see the determination. Everybody, that was one of the things that's driving everybody to do everything possible for her. Eventually, it just came to a point where it didn't seem like they were going to be successful.

Speaker 2: Once they said they were going to take her other leg, I'm like, you know, we had the conversation, "How do you feel?" And she's like, "I'm good. I want this done. Let's get this so we can proceed to the next step in my life." You know what I mean? It's just the way she was.

Speaker 1: It wasn't until she had finally made the decision, because it was her decision. Her Dad and I, you know, we're talking to the doctors and we always said, "Please, don't sugar coat anything. Our family is a tell it like it is, because we want to know. She deserves to know. If you don't think this is going to work, please tell her." And they did. They honored us in that way and when they told her, "This just isn't going to work." And she made that decision, "Okay, let's go." That's when I knew we were going to be okay, because we were able to stop the fight for something that they told us may never work.

Speaker 2: It's so amazing how positive she stayed through this whole endeavor. She's never really backed down. I think only one time have I ever heard her say something bad and I just said, "Hey, let's step back. We knew we were not going to be this and you're allowed to do that. You're allowed to have your bad day."

Speaker 7: [Lonie 00:05:33] is probably one that helped me through this, cause, no matter what I wanted, or needed, no matter how much pain I was in, he was right there. Even when I wasn't in trauma and I was in rehab, he would come over and see me, so, yeah. He was ... he's a really good nurse. Like a really good nurse.

Speaker 1: We had wonderful people from the burn unit that would come up and do her dressing changes ... and I would have to leave the room because I thought, "How is this child doing this? Her strength, again, is unbelievable." Once we didn't have that, I knew now we could start healing.

Speaker 5: To see somebody, like Rachelle, just fight every day ... and then come back to us smiling ... it's great to know that you were there with her.

Speaker 7: They told me I was going to be in rehab for 12 days, but ended up only being in rehab for 6 days, because my progress was really well. I was doing Physical Therapy really well. I was doing occupational therapy really well and they said, "There's no need for us to have to help you anymore. We're going to get you out of here and get you home."

Speaker 1: And you just want your child home. You want her home, even though she had the best care possible here, you want her home.

Speaker 7: Just thankful that they were there for me the entire time I was here. And thankful that they helped me out with what I needed.

Speaker 1: I don't see a child in a wheelchair right now that doesn't have legs, I see a child that's in a wheelchair, that's alive, thanks to so many wonderful people. And God forbid if there was every a trauma again, in my life, or our family's lives, I would want to be here, because I really feel, not only physically, emotionally ... Miami Valley has healed my family.