She was in pain, she was frightened but she knew she had to do something. If she failed to act, she might lose her legs.
A Canadian nurse has revealed how her professional training kicked in when he car skidded off a road and left her 40ft at the bottom of an embankment.
Stacie Reis, from Prince George, British Columbia and who is a neonatal nurse, said she could see that something was wrong with her feet.
Doctors have told Stacie Reis it will take her a year to walk again
“I noticed my feet were real broken,” she told GlobaNews.ca.
“They were twisted to the side. My little nurse brain was like, you’ve got to straighten those up because you’re going to…lose your blood supply and then you’re going to lose your legs. I just prayed for a while and so I then picked them up and I moved them. It was really painful but I did it.”
Ms Reis, 27, was missing for 14 hours while friends search for her along Highway 16. All the time she sat waiting and wondering, hoping someone would come soon.
“It was a scary feeling because she was gone, she was just missing as if she disappeared from the face of the earth,” said her mother Sharon Reis.
Eventually she was found by friends who were searching for her.
Doctors who treated her told her she had suffered a broken sternum, ribs, and pelvis plus contusions to her heart and lungs.
They told her the fact she had set her broken legs “probably played a big part in saving them.”
Ms Reis is now on the long road to recovery. Doctors say it will be a year before she will be able to walk. A fund-raising page has been established to help her.
“Being a patient definitely has influenced what kind of nurse I’m going to be,” she said. “I think I’ll be an even better nurse when I go back.”
