Happy ending for near death experience

VILLISCA"About 9:30 p.m. after completing a 14 1/2 hour shift at Alegent Health Mercy Hospital in Corning on Dec. 28, Dixie McCuen chatted on the cell phone with her husband as she drove toward their home in Villisca. The road looked clear and dry that starry night and she was eager to be home with Chad and their three small sons. They meant the world to her, and she knew the feelings were mutual. She and Chad had survived some tough situations, but as the 24-year-old considered her future, it’d never looked brighter. Then she hit black ice. McCuen’s car began fishtailing. She struggled to hold the car on the road. For a split second, it seemed she’d succeeded. Then, apparently, her wheels hit a dry spot and that, combined with her efforts to correct the fishtailing, sent the car off the road. She screamed as her car slammed into a pole. She was alone and she was hurt. Where was her cell phone? She couldn’t find it. She realized it had shut off. “I thought, ‘I’m a nurse, so what should I do?’” McCuen said as she talked about the night that changed her life. “I reached down to find my phone. I pulled on something to move it, and realized I’d pulled my foot above my knee.” Further assessment told her she had two bones protruding through the skin of her right leg She was hurting in lots of places. She saw what she thought was smoke rising from her car. Fearing fire, McCuen tried to pull herself free using her elbows, but her legs stayed partly pinned. She didn’t know it at the time, but the accident had taken a toll on McCuen’s body. She had three broken ribs, a fractured right arm, crushed her left ankle and in her right leg, both her tibia and fibula were broken and would require surgeons to drill through her kneecap and insert two rods before she’d have hope of walking again, At one point, physicians thought they’d have to remove her left leg because of the severity of the crushed ankle that might prevent circulation. In the end surgeons used six screws to stabilize the ankle. It will still be many days before she’ll be allowed to move it. As a nurse, McCuen had seen lots of accident victims come to where she worked in ER and med-surg. And she’d seen people die from less serious accidents. As she considered her situation, she felt her right side swelling. Had she lacerated her liver, she wondered. A determined McCuen pulled herself as far out of the car as she could. She lay there looking up into the starry vastness of a cold December sky. “I got to lay there, and think a bit. At first I screamed for someone to hear me, but then I realized that was ridiculous. I was alone. I looked at the stars,” McCuen said, “and I said a prayer.” McCuen pled with God. She talked to God about her husband and about the kids. “I told him I felt like it wasn’t my time and I begged God to let me be there for my husband and kids. I begged to see my boys again. I could feel my right side swelling and I thought for sure I’d lacerated my liver.” Then, after the prayer, I got really calm. He must have heard me.” At home in Villisca, Chad had heard her, too. The phone had cut off as she’d screamed, but he knew his beloved wife since May 17, 2002, was in deep trouble. But he had an infant son, a 4-year-old and a 6-year-old who needed to attending. He quickly got his grandmother to come in as he sped toward the highway to find his wife. The lights from the car driven by a young man named Kyle Shipley shone onto the crashed vehicle scene. Shipley stopped, got out and called across the road, “Do you need help?” McCuen told him she did. She hollered for him to please call 911, which he did, reporting the seriousness of the scene before his eyes. He also tried to reach his mom, a nurse herself. McCuen told him she was a nurse and she knew she needed help. She asked if she could use his cell phone to call Chad, which Shipley loaned to her. It’d been 12 minutes since Chad had heard Dixie’s screams and as he answered his cell, McCuen told her husband, “Honey, I’ve been in an accident.” “I know,” Chad said, “I can see your car in my headlight right now.” Chad came quickly over to Dixie who told him, “I’m penned, can you move the car door?” No problem. He ripped it off. “My legs are broken,” Dixie told Chad. “You think your legs are broken?” he asked. “I know so,” she told her husband and she lifted off her coat that she’d made into a makeshift tourniquet. “When I moved the coat, at first he looked terrified as he said, ‘Oh, my God.’ Then he got down and laid next to me and held me until the ambulance arrived. He told me 500 times that he loved me. I remember I told Chad I was so sorry we couldn’t go skiing, I knew he’d really wanted to go and I’d been kind of holding back on that idea, but he’d really had his heart set on it. He just kept holding me and telling me he loved me. I knew, no matter how things turned out, everything was going to be okay.” A reason to live She’d met Chad when they were both 15 and working at McDonald’s in Red Oak. Neither of them were content with their situations at home and they both dropped out of school. Before long they got married and had Christian, their first child. But they’d wanted to get schooling. They completed their GEDs and started college when Christian was seven months old. Four weeks after enrolling, Dixie found out she was pregnant with Jadyn. When he was born, Chad kept on with school, but Dixie took a break to tend to her young sons. She started courses again before long, both working with tough schedules and circumstances. But they were determined. Both graduated with associate degrees the same day; Chad in auto body and mechanics and Dixie in nursing. She took her examination after graduation and is now an RN. They know they took a hard road, but they’ve traveled it caring for each other. “I’m proud of the way we’ve worked to accomplish the completion of our education goals,” Dixie said. Speaking of their teamwork and her admiration for Chad, she said, “He’s always been good to me. He nursed me back to health after I had a C-section, taking his week of vacation to care for me. I’m very lucky to have him.” On that December night, the ambulance arrived and got her moved enough so she could be life-flighted to a hospital in Omaha. “But I had no benefits where I worked. The hospital (in Omaha) took care of some of her medical needs, even considering loss of her leg, but because she didn’t have coverage, they let her know she had to leave after a week. McCuen couldn’t do a thing for herself and she was far from healed. “I had no benefits where I worked and the hospital wasn’t going to let me stay. I was going to be dismissed earlier than when I’d be ready to be dismissed. A friend came (Megan Shatava) and I told her I didn’t know how (being dismissed) it’d work and I couldn’t stand or anything.” Facing the challenge Shatava took on the challenge. “She talked with Kathy Morgan, the social worker at Alegent Health Mercy Hospital. Kathy got behind it and they (staff administrators) said I was going to be admitted to (their) hospital whether I could pay or not.” “I didn’t have benefits, but I think friends and the generosity of the hospital, I think that’s a heck of a benefit. They kept me until we had help ready here at home.” The help that’s with almost immobile Dixie while Chad’s at work is Chad’s mom, Brenda Martin. “I have a verse for what happened,” Martin said. “What the enemy meant it for evil, the Lord meant for good. This experience has brought she and I closer than we could have ever imagined.” “I don’t know what we’d do without her,” Dixie said. “I want to say thank you to some many out there who’ve helped us. Some have brought casseroles.” “One did last night,” Martin added, “That was a life saver.”