Tough situations can sometimes make people see things from a completely different perspective, and sometimes even change their mind about a lot of different things. For one local young woman, a very tough situation did just that, and inspired many.
De Kalb High School senior Stephanie Studdard’s life changed almost completely a few months back according to her. She says, “On May 1 my life was changed in so many different ways. I was involved in a major car accident that not only scared me but scared many people around me. I was rushed to the hospital in an ambulance not knowing that I was about to get some news that would crush my world. I had broken my L2 vertebrae in half, had internal bleeding, and my spleen was bleeding as well. I was taken to the ICU where I found out I had to have emergency surgery on my stomach. My bowel and my spleen both had to be repaired, I was bleeding internally and becoming septic due to a hole in my lower intestines. Due to my broken vertebrae, I had to lay completely flat because my vertebrae were pushing on my spinal cord.”
But the tragedy didn’t stop there for Studdard, as she recalls, “On top of being scared because I was so unsure if I would end up paralyzed or not, I had to have my stomach cut open. Everything was then repaired and then washed out with saline because I was septic. After my stomach I had to have my back repaired. They repaired my back with hardware that fused my L1 and L3 together and donor bone was replaced inside to get it to grow over that hardware.”
