Samantha's Tragic Accident Abroad

SAMANTHA’S STORY

Samantha is a 19-year old ambitious, passionate young woman who fights for what she believes in. She is someone who opens her mind to see the little meaningful beauties in life and always aims towards accepting what life brings along. She is always eager to learn and curious about what she does not know. Samantha worked during and after high school to save up money, and in the end she decided to travel to South America. South America has taught her so much and wherever she went she made great friends whom she always ended up caring for like family. She loved to feel the different personalities of the different countries throughout South American and through her travels had found volunteer opportunities that all taught her many things about topics from tradition, international relationships, responsible tourism, Spanish, permaculture, how to mix and structure an “adobe” home, making artisanal jewelry, how to use a machete, how to know when particular plants are ripe for picking, why the indigenous Andean wears the poncho, and so much more.

My sister and I decided to travel together, I had not seen her for a long time and we were missing each other immensely. In the middle of our trip we were just passing through Lima to go volunteer in an environmental and cultural preservation project located 8 hours away in the jungle. It was on June 8th 2016, my sister, Samantha Sech, and I, Alice Sech, were involved in a deeply horrible and shocking accident. A big bus rode over and paused on my sister’s bottom, right leg. Here is the story of that fateful day that occurred on a pedestrian crosswalk in Miraflores, Lima forever changing the course of our lives. 

THE ACCIDENT

Having the right of way, the green light visible to cars and pedestrians, the crosswalk seemed safe to cross.  There were no cars turning, or driving through the intersection and there were other pedestrians crossing at the same time as we were. Speedily making a sharp right turn from the busy main road the bus (a large ‘grey-hound-like’ city transit) came out of nowhere and stuck Samantha on the side of her body. The force of the impact pulled her underneath and the double-wheels ran over her right leg.

I started screaming, the bus driver heard me, stopped, but for a number of seconds the entire weight of the bus was on Samantha’s leg. I continued to yell, was banging on the doors, gesturing him to back up, trying everything in my power to direct him off of my sister’s leg. When he finally did she experienced the most excruciating pain and majority of critical injuries. I will never forget the horrifying and heartbreaking image of my baby sister lying under the bus, screaming in agonizing pain.

HER INJURIES

Samantha sustained multiple injuries to her right leg: she suffered high amounts of blood loss, an open wound from her upper thigh to just below her toes, loss of soft tissue, de-gloving of skin on her lower leg and foot, rip and separation of her anterior tibial artery, shredding of her bone on the top of the bridge of her foot as well as 3 fractures in her astragalus bone of her foot.

The problems did not stop here. Once we arrived at the hospital and I called her insurance company to notify them about Samantha’s tragic accident, they informed us that it was expired. My family and I could not believe what we were hearing. We discovered that there was a misunderstanding about Samantha’s travel insurance. Before Samantha left for her travels to South America, we were under the impression that it would last for the duration of her travels. At this point we had no choice but to pay out of our own pockets. In Canada family and friends quickly pooled their credit cards at the news of my sister’s accident and her travel insurance to lend us the money to cover her medical expenses and emergency flight home. If it wasn’t for them, we don’t know where we would be.

TRAUMATIC EXPERIENCES – potential AMPUTATION

To date, Samantha has undergone 10 surgeries and is expected to have several more in the near future. The doctors have been able to repair her fractures, re-generate stable blood flow, provide blood transfusions, consistently clean her wounds to prevent infections, provide skin and muscle grafting on her leg (transplanting other parts of her body to vitalize her leg) and eliminate dead tissue (skin, fat and muscles on her calf) which affects the mobility of her foot forever.  Even with all these surgeries, there’s a possibility that she could lose her leg.

Though her leg is beginning to heal, it is difficult to accept that her injuries have caused irreparable damage to her leg, but also life-altering impediments to her entire body that may hinder the long and painful recovery ahead. There is also no guarantee of the leg’s function, this now lies in the hands of the physiotherapists and months of rehabilitation.

YOUR HELP

Now that some of the chaos has diminished, there is no time to celebrate as our focus is slightly shifting on recovering the money to our family and friends that have so graciously lent to us. We need to search for external means of financial aid and kindly ask the public’s help by donating any means to Samantha’s cause. Samantha’s accident is ONE tragedy. Witnessing her suffer through 10 surgeries is another. And now thinking that our family may need to  resort to other painstaking means to come up with this great sum of money is yet another distressing issue. To date the medical bills and emergency air ambulance are $107,188.65 CAN.

Any amount of donation will help. It all adds up. By helping us spread the word through posting our story on your social media pages, forwarding emails to your contacts and sharing with your communities will help us increase the chances to receive donations from other outlets. If we exceed in our donation goal, we would greatly appreciate having some extra financial support for Samantha’s future rehabilitation bills, her further recovery and special needs in her future because of her life-altering injury. Your support and involvement will help us immensely. We want to graciously thank everyone that has put in the effort to spread our cause and generously contribute a donation to help my family through this overwhelming time.  Thank you from the bottom of our hearts ♥