You Can't Make This Stuff Up (#9)

Whenever I evaluate patients who suffered some type of traumatic injury, I am usually seeing people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Out of all of the different types of hospital settings (e.g., burn units, traumatic brain injury units, coma units, spinal cord injury units) I have worked in, one story sticks out above all others. It is a quick story, but it goes like this. A young woman decided to drive in her car one day go get some groceries. She was sitting at a stop light, minding her own business, when a giant tree suddenly collapsed from the side of the road and crushed the roof of the car. The force of impact was so strong that it broke her neck, caused a spinal cord injury, and left her paralyzed from the neck down for the rest of her life. To this day, I cannot even fathom what must go through her head every day because it is such an unbelievable, unlucky, and tragic event.