Alexa's Road To Recovery

It’s the phone call you hope you never get. The one where your son-in-law tells you your daughter was in a terrible car accident and has been rushed to the trauma center. It’s the call that brings you to your knees, rips out your heart, and causes your mind to go to places you never, ever want to go. 

On February 5th, we got that dreaded phone call, and for everyone involved, our lives were forever changed at that moment, but none more than our beautiful, kind-hearted, and devoted daughter Alex. 


Alex was a 23-year-old student of sonography. She was living and attending school in Arizona, less than six months away from graduation, when she was t-boned in the middle of an intersection by a Ford F150 truck. The driver of the truck ran a red light and struck Alex in her Mini Cooper as she entered the intersection on a green light. Her car spun out and was thrown over 100 feet into a field off the side of the road. Fortunately, the driver of the truck was not hurt and was able to walk away from the accident with nothing but a scratch on his right leg. Unfortunately, he didn’t have a valid driver’s license and was extremely underinsured. At the scene of the accident, while our daughter was fighting for her life, he was issued a ticket for a red light violation, a ticket for not having a driver’s license, and offered traffic school to clear the tickets from his record. 


After being unresponsive at the crash site, our daughter was rushed to the hospital trauma center, where doctors would discover she had an intraparenchymal hematoma (bleeding on the brain), left pneumothorax (punctured and collapsed lung), multiple rib fractures, grade 3 spleen laceration with grade 1 and 2 renal (kidney) contusions, grade 2 hepatic (liver) lacerations, sacral fractures, left anterior wall acetabular fracture extending into left superior pubic ramus, left pubic bone fracture at the symphysis, left ischium fracture, right superior pubic ramus fracture with extension into he pubic bone, right interior pubic ramus fracture, left posterior iliac bone fracture, right spinal L1, L2, L3 transverse process fractures, and the left temple scalp laceration. She was admitted to the ICU, a chest tube was placed, scalp lacerations were treated, and she was scheduled for a complete pelvic ring reconstruction surgery and possible spleen removal.


Prior to surgery, her surgeon said, “Let me explain in terms that are easier to understand. Her sacrum is broken in multiple places. Essentially the lower half of her body has been detached from the upper half, and her pelvis has collapsed in on itself, causing several breaks with her pelvic ring and both hips. On the scale of severity with this type of injury, she’s near the top.”

Two days later, she faced a 5-hour surgery where numerous bones were set, and bolts were put in place to secure her body back together. 

We are hoping for a full recovery, but it is too soon to know when she will be able to stand or walk on her own. She currently needs assistance with all of her most basic everyday activities. Including getting up, using the bathroom, bathing, getting into bed, etc. She needs a wheelchair and a walker to move from room to room. Gratefully she has family support to help her on a daily basis. But what she has lost in the meantime is devastating. She had to withdraw from school and the externship she had been placed in just one week before the accident; the school she would have graduated from in less than six months, which would have put her in her dream career as an ultrasound technician. Her husband Mitch, who was living in Idaho at the time of the accident, was in the middle of his last semester for his undergrad and was preparing to take the MCAT in May. To better care for his wife, he had to postpone the MCAT, delaying his future education by a full year or more.

Instead of attending her full-time sonography externship, Alex spends her days recovering from her injuries and works daily on physical therapy to both gain strength and relearn how to use her hips and legs again. Her main goal at the moment is to be strong enough and mobile enough to return to school, but this will require her to be able to stand for 8 hours a day. 


Alex has long dreamed of becoming a mother and looked forward to the birth experience. Her body's ability to accomplish this and the financial impact on this chapter of her life are yet to be fully understood, but we know that the costs could be significantly more due to the injuries that she has sustained. 

Early x-rays show that there may be a need for future corrective surgeries to better align her hips. The potential costs, both financially and emotionally, are difficult to determine at this time. 

The physical and emotional damage this has caused is beyond what any of us could have imagined. As parents, watching Alex and Mitch navigate this challenging circumstance in their lives has been excruciating. It’s unbearable to try and imagine what it has truly been like for each of them. Because the driver who struck Alex was underinsured, she and Mitch will be responsible for nearly all of the past, present, and future medical bills caused by this accident. As full-time students, the magnitude of this financial situation is extremely overwhelming and seems an insurmountable responsibility to face. 


It’s hard to describe the complete helplessness you feel as a parent when there is nothing you can do to help with the physical and emotional pain your child is enduring. Because there is so little we can do to help with that, we hope to ease the financial burden Alex and Mitch will face as the emergent, medical, surgical, rehabilitation, occupational therapy, physical therapy, and mental therapy bills come due. 

Please HELP US as we try to alleviate the financial burdens placed on our daughter and her husband and help them prepare for the uncertainties that their future holds. No matter how small, EVERY donation will help Alex and Mitch move forward and move past this devastating circumstance life has presented them. We hope that one day they will be able to put it behind them for good, but until then, we will do all we can to support them along the way. Please help us HELP THEM. - Tony and Wendy