Finding her center of balance took an amazing amount of courage.
Having lost her right leg and hip after a Jan. 25 snowmobile accident, Shiann Sanchez learned more than how to lean slightly to the left to stand on one leg. She learned that she’s got enough guts to get back into the swing of life, even if that means moving in a wheelchair.
I wrote about Shiann, 17, in February, when she was fighting for life at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle. She was airlifted after the accident during a family vacation near Snoqualmie Pass. Her first of more than two dozen surgeries removed her hip and leg.
She remembered the helicopter ride. Shiann said she felt pressure on her right side and had a headache. Her main concern was when her rescuers cut off the expensive snowsuit she was wearing. It was her boyfriend’s.
After several days in the hospital, the family gathered around her bed to tell the Marysville teen she lost a leg.
“Mom was talking,” Shiann said. “She said she loved me. She grabbed my hand.”
Through her tears, Tina Fryberg told her daughter that the accident was so severe, to save her life, they took her leg and hip. Her father, Eugene Sanchez from Forks, said more than a dozen family members in the room all cried as Shiann was given the news.
One day she reached down, she said, and it all clicked.
Shiann showed me an X-ray that revealed there is nothing to the right of her tailbone, which itself is still healing from a break.
Doctors said she would be bed bound for a year.
They were wrong. Shiann is back at Marysville Alternative School, practicing driving, and can raise out of her chair and balance on her left leg. She hadn’t been able to toss out any of her right shoes.
“You never know, someday I might get a leg,” she said. “There is good news. There’s more leg room in the car.”
She said she’s saving money on razors. It’s faster to put one sock on. She lost 50 pounds – the weight of her leg.
Things weren’t always so funny. Her first day back at school, she felt uncomfortable riding the special needs bus. Some of her medications made her tired. She got depressed.
Tears came and went. She really wanted to graduate this year, but will be 18 when she gets her diploma in 2005. She and boyfriend Garren Stewart can’t go for drives and spontaneously stop to climb rocks.
She lost her job at Boom City where she used to be a runner.
She couldn’t reach food on top shelves of the kitchen.
Before the accident, she enjoyed playing basketball.
She can’t vacuum and she won’t wear shorts. She planned to shop for more skirts soon. Shiann liked the way skirts draped over her knee.
“I’ll admit it, I cry,” Shiann said. “My body is still upset. I find that understandable.”
One time she wished she hadn’t survived the accident.
Her high pelvic amputation is called a hemipelvectomy, the least common lower extremity amputation. It is difficult to make an artificial leg because there is no place to attach the prosthesis.
The hope at Shiann’s house is for technology to advance prosthetic design. Her father said an artificial leg could be cumbersome and hard to operate. Shiann may still spend some time at a Shriner’s Hospital where children and teens receive treatment in the area of orthopedics, burns, spinal cord injuries or loss of limbs.
The top student was applying for a scholarship before her accident. She intended to go to college and maybe open a restaurant some day. As we talked, she flinched now and then, explaining the syndrome of phantom pain in missing limbs when nerves go haywire, she said.
But overall, this was a good day. The night before, Shiann had a dream that her great grandmother came from Heaven to tell her she would succeed.
With the help of family and courage, Shiann balances the good with the bad.
Columnist Kristi O’Harran: 425-339-3451 or oharran@heraldnet.com .
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