Nurse Saves Her Own Legs After Crash

Stacie Reis doesn’t remember the accident she had when driving home from visiting her grandfather in the hospital. All she knew was that she woke up a half-hour later in her upside-down car at the bottom of a ravine. Her phone had no service. Reis is a nurse, and knew she had to perform first aid as best she could, because it might be some time before she was found.

"I don't remember what happened," said Reis from Vancouver General Hospital, six weeks after the July 4 accident that left her with two broken legs, a broken pelvis, a broken sternum, multiple rib and spine fractures and feet that bore mostly broken bones.
In the minutes after she became conscious, she knew it was bad. Both legs twisted awkwardly to the left at the knee.
"The way they were pinned, it wasn't natural," she said. "The nurse in me was like, 'You need to straighten these out otherwise you're going to cut off your blood supply, you'll lose your legs."
So she did.

A group of Reis’ friends found her at 8 the next morning, 14 hours after the crash. Emergency services soon followed. Reis remembers hearing someone say her legs would have to be amputated, but doctors later said that her actions in straightening out her legs, no matter how painful, likely saved them. Reis has undergone several surgeries and is looking forward to the day she can walk again.