The Day My Life Changed Forever

Why are you in a wheelchair?

This is the most common question that I get asked. And the answer is simple. I’m paralyzed from the chest down. .

But that’s not actually what people want to know.

They don’t really care that I am paralyzed from the chest down. What they really care about is how it happened.

I wish I had the answer to that question. But the truth is I don’t.

I have no memory of the accident. What I do know about the accident has been pieced together over the years by things other people thought they knew.

For 21 years I have lived with these pieces of the story. A story I have told over and over again, but that I’ve never really known. Until this summer, when I decided to go back home. To find out the truth of what happened. To the scene of the accident. To the people that were there..

This is my story.

This is our story.

Once Upon A Time…

It was 1999 and I was 13. My family had just moved to a small town in Northern Alberta and I was starting grade 8 at a new school that fall. I was a fairly outgoing kid so by the time winter rolled around I had a large group of friends. A typical teenager, I also managed to find boy I liked, named Thomas.

On December 2nd some of the boys in grade 9 talked about going snowmobiling after school. Blake, Brandon, and Corey were the boys that had snowmobiles. I had become friends with them and had gone snowmobiling with Blake once before. Blake was best friends with Brandon and they were this larger than life duo that was always making jokes and laughing. Blake had a TV in his room and I always wanted to be at his house because it felt so grown up to be able to hang out in his room with a bit of privacy.

On this particular day, Blake invited me to go snowmobiling again and I was determined to go because I had heard that Thomas got invited to go too. I didn’t want to be the only girl going so I asked my friend Candace if she would come with me. By the end of the day 6 of us had a plan to go snowmobiling. Brandon Whittleton, Blake Madden, Corey Wald, Thomas Irving, Candace Reid and me.

I went home after school and asked my mom if I could go snowmobiling and of course she said no. I spent the next hour doing my best to wear her down, begging her to let me go. I told her that snowmobiling or “sledding” as the boys referred to it, was a perfectly normal activity for 14 year olds in small towns in Northern Alberta. I also told her that I had to go in order to make friends and that she was ruining my life if she didn’t let me go. I said all the things that 13 year old me could think of that might convince her to let me go. Normally my mom was pretty tough so I wouldn’t have had a chance, but she had just had a tooth pulled and was on some pain killers that made her really sick so she was at a disadvantage. Finally she caved and said that I could go as long as we stayed near the drainage ditch, which was a spot just on the edge of town that was close to houses and really flat.

The Decision That Changed Everything

*One of the snowmobiles that we were going to ride.*

When I met my friends at the drainage ditch everyone decided that instead of snowmobiling there, we were going to go out to Brandon’s, who lived on a farm, 15 kilometers away.

And the plan was to snowmobile there…in the ditches….along the highway.

This was definitely not what I had agreed to with my mom and I knew that she probably wouldn’t want me to go, but I was 13 and with the boy I liked so I made the most logical decision I could think of. Just pretend I was allowed to go and hope nothing bad happened .

So we snowmobiled out to Brandon’s house and when we got there we stopped for a minute to rest. I switched snowmobiles and gave my helmet to Candace because we were short one. I hopped on with Blake and we took off into the hills around Brandon’s house at around 4 pm.

One thing I vividly remember was feeling scared like I w

as on a roller coaster. I remember holding Blake so tight and squeezing my legs around the seat of the snowmobile. I hadn’t gone snowmobiling often and certainly not without any adults so I was really nervous. I remember thinking I couldn’t wait for it to be over and get back to town.

After we had been snowmobiling for a while it was starting to get dark and everyone had to be home soon so we started back towards Brandon’s house. Brandon, Thomas, Corey and Candace went ahead of me and Blake and when they made it to the fence line they stopped to wait for us. They waited.

And waited some more. But we didn’t come.

They all got worried and turned back to look for us. Brandon knew this area pretty well so when they didn’t find us right away, he knew something was wrong.

Finding the Crash

They decided to turn off their snowmobiles so that they could try to hear Blake and I, and when they did they didn’t hear anything.

Finally when Brandon was walking around he saw a glimpse of something at the bottom of one of the hills. He went to check and it was us.

*The top of the hill where the accident happened. We were in the trees at the bottom.*

When they found us the snowmobile was upside down on top of me and Blake. Because I wasn’t wearing a helmet and my face had hit Blakes, my nose was bleeding and my eyes were black. I was conscious but not coherent and I was saying that I couldn’t feel my legs.

Corey went to get help and the rest of the group stayed at the hill. For what seemed like hours while they waited for help, my friends tried to keep me warm and alive and watched as Blake faded away.

When the ambulance finally arrived Corey and Brandon had to bring the first responders to the accident site on their snowmobiles until a crew of local men showed up to help.

Blake died that night. I fractured my spine, had a hairline fracture in my skull and my eye socket, and a tear in my aorta.

The Beginning of the Rest of My Life

I woke up two weeks later in the hospital to learn that I was paralyzed from the chest down and that I would never walk again. The day I realized my life would never be the same was when a physio came into my hospital room to exercise my legs. This was the first time that I was awake during the exercises and when she lifted my leg out of the covers I finally saw that the feeling that I thought I still had in my legs was only phantom sensation. Now I understood what the doctors meant when they said that I would never walk again.

I spent the next 4 months in the hospital. Thomas called me nearly everyday.

When I got home life kept going. For me, Candace, for Thomas, for Corey, for Brandon, and for Blake’s parents. Thomas and I dated for 7 years, but I lost touch with everyone else that was at the accident. And for years I thought that that didn’t matter.

Until I got sick of telling the story of that night. A story that wasn’t really mine…and in which I was sick of being the hero. A story I didn’t actually know.

And so I went back. Back to the place and back to the people.

And while I went back for answers, what I found was friendship. Friends who hadn’t forgotten the accident, who hadn’t forgotten Blake, and who hadn’t forgotten me.

And I found closure. And gratitude.

The Hard Truth is…

I will never really know what happened that day. How we crashed or why.

What I do know is that I made it out alive and that Blake’s parents probably wish everyday that they could watch their son have the experiences that I have been so lucky to have over the past 20 years.