Mom sent the hired hand back to the house to tell my dad. He called the ambulance, then he and Matt ran down to the road. Then Mom sent Jay and Matt to the neighbors’ house for help. Out in the country, a “neighbor” is up the road on a huge farm of their own. They aren’t right next door. If you turned right out of our driveway, our neighbors were up a long hill, and their house was also at the end of a long driveway. The boys ran as fast as they could to the neighbors’ front door and collapsed to the floor, shouting, “Sara’s been hit by a car!” I cannot even imagine how scared my brothers were while running all that way to get help and thinking their little sister was most likely dead. As soon as our neighbors, who were also close family friends, understood what the boys were saying, they started rallying everyone they could think of to call. Word traveled quickly, and before long there were cars and farm trucks lined up for miles down the road. People came to help.
Forty-five minutes later, the ambulance came screeching up the road, weaving around cars till it came to a stop. I was still unconscious, but at least by then, they knew I was alive.
The EMTs put rubber casts around my legs and took me to the hospital in Boonville. My injuries were too severe for them to handle, so they sent me to the hospital at the University of Missouri in Columbia, about thirty miles away.
I had a severe concussion and had been unconscious for almost two days before I finally woke up in pain. Mom finished telling me what had happened, but I couldn’t quite take it all in. It was about to get even worse.
A young, handsome man named Dr. Breedlove, probably just out of medical school, came in and told my mom that my left leg needed pins put in immediately. The problem was that since my concussion was so serious, they were afraid to put me under anesthesia. The room went silent as the reality of what he was saying set in.
He went on to explain that the procedure would go like this: They’d give me local anesthesia to try numbing my leg as much as possible, and then he would use a hand drill to get the pin into my left knee. It was a difficult decision, because he felt sure that if we didn’t put the pin in, I would have a deformed leg for the rest of my life. And I don’t know if you’ve ever seen my legs, but repairing them was the right decision! I have great gams!
My dad was at work, so my mom’s father, Papa Floyd, said he would stay in the surgery room with my mom. I remember the nurses on either side of me, holding me down as Dr. Breedlove picked up the drill. Every time he brought the drill close to my leg, I cried out, saying, “Wait, wait, wait!” I just couldn’t let him do it. I was absolutely terrified. I mean, imagine someone wanting to drill a pin in your leg while you’re lying there wide awake. But after my several attempts to stop the inevitable, Dr. Breedlove finally just told the nurses to hold me down so he could get it over with.
* * *
As soon as the drill hit my leg, the pain sent me into shock, and I mercifully passed out. I didn’t wake up for ten hours. My mom told me later that Dr. Breedlove was so upset and probably traumatized that he said, “I will never, ever do that again.”
When I woke this time, my mom was there. I looked down, and my body looked like Wile E. Coyote’s after a run-in with the Road Runner, but no one was laughing. My left leg was in traction, with pulleys, weights, and cables hanging at my feet. The cables had to be adjusted several times a day, and pain would shoot through my ankle all the way to my head. My right side was in a full cast from my hip to my toes. Both of my arms were sprained and bound.
For six agonizing weeks, I remained in that hospital bed.
As an eight-year-old who loved to run free and wild, it was pure torture being strapped down, hardly able to move, and in pain nearly all of the time. Also knowing that my whole summer was passing me by… I couldn’t swim or do anything fun—well, talk about feeling sorry for myself. I got through each day with the help of the sweet nurses and staff at the hospital and all the amazing people in my life. As soon as the news of the accident spread, and it was covered in all our local media, I was inundated with gifts, money, and stuffed animals from family, friends, and people in the community.
My family and friends also coordinated shifts to spend time with me. With my dad working most nights, and a farm to run, my mom couldn’t always be with me. My mother was only thirty-two years old at this time, and she had five kids. I just can’t imagine the stress that she was under. Every evening, Granny and Papa Floyd came to visit me, and Granny brought me fried chicken. Granny’s love language was acts of service, with a strong emphasis on cooking, and I loved fried chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy. I’d ask for it all the time, and I was so spoiled and clearly her favorite (my siblings may disagree) that Granny brought it every single night.
“Brought your favorite!” she’d say as she walked into my hospital room with a smile. Granny and Papa Floyd would stay with me during that cozy evening time until visiting hours were over. To me, from around 5:00 p.m. till bedtime is the BEST time of any day. It could very well be because that’s when Granny and Papa would come to the hospital and I would eat dinner and they would sit with me and watch TV or just talk to me. It made me feel so safe and loved.
But being in the hospital really was unbelievably boring. And there were like two channels on the crappy TV they had. I remember it seemed like M*A*S*H was the ONLY thing on at all times. Every time the theme song would come on I would get so sad. I’ve always been very affected by music. Later I learned that the name of the song is “Suicide Is Painless,” and I’m like, “Well, of course it depressed the crap out of me!” I didn’t particularly like the show anyway. I was too young to understand it and I didn’t get why people seemed happy to be in Korea.
My brother Jay seemed particularly traumatized by my accident. It truly was a horrific accident, and we were all aware of the miracle it was that I survived. And I was his little sister and he adored me, so he volunteered to stay many of the nights at the hospital, sleeping on a little couch bed on the side of the room. In the night when I needed help with something, I’d call out for him, but he was a very sound sleeper.
“Jay! Wake up, Jay!” The end of my bed was absolutely covered with the stuffed animals that people had brought, and I would throw them one at a time at him until he woke up and helped me. He and I spent hours doing crossword puzzles, reading, and watching M*A*S*H. I was so touched and moved by his concern for me that I didn’t want to say anything about it for fear of embarrassing him. So I just tried to play it cool. But I will never forget how upset he was over the whole thing.
Smiling through the pain
A few times over those six weeks, I’d have a sudden, overwhelming feeling of pain and panic consuming me. “I want out of this!” I’d scream, thrashing around till someone held me down and calmed me. I felt like I was being buried alive and couldn’t move to get out. It made me so claustrophobic, and I still am very much so today. I can’t stand to feel trapped or confined. I’m terrified of elevators—not elevators themselves but being trapped in one. Honestly, if I were to ever get trapped in an elevator, I don’t know how I would cope. Or if I would cope. Just talking about the idea of being trapped inside that confined space makes me start sweating and makes my heart race. If someone even pretends to hold me down and not let me move, I will scream bloody murder. I’m no psychologist, but I would guess that being in traction in a hospital bed for six weeks without getting up one time, and then being in two full casts on both legs for another year, would make anyone claustrophobic. And contribute to several other issues in the anxiety category.