A young woman was 'almost split in half' after her seat belt 'cut through her like a sword' in a horror car crash.
Gina Arnold spent three days in a coma and three months in intensive care undergoing 20 surgeries after the ordeal, which she has no recollection of.
The 22-year-old, from Michigan, US, had been driving when she lost control of her car causing the vehicle to flip seven times before hitting a tree.
She says the force of her seat belt pulling her back left her with a torn abdominal wall as well as two collapsed lungs.
"They described my abdominal wall being cut like a sword by the seat belt," said Gina.
"Even though it did save my life, it caused many life threatening injuries and tore my whole abdominal wall right in half.
"There hasn’t been a case like that they knew of in America - without a complete abdominal wall.
"Even though it was a whole abdominal wall tear there is no specific name for it so I am under the traumatic hernia category because it basically is one giant hernia."
Despite being stabilised, Gina's parents were warned by doctors that her future was unclear.
Gina added: "I don’t remember what happened, I just know people told me it was raining - I lost control and over corrected.
"The person behind me said my car flipped seven times and hit a tree.
"I remember nothing of that day and ended up in a coma for three days.
"Both lungs collapsed and my whole body was so swollen they couldn’t see for weeks what kind of broken bones I had.
"I had multiple emergency surgeries to stabilise me - they had to remove part of my small intestine and part of my ileum."
Gina went on to be in Beaumont Hospital for three months where she spent most of her time in the intensive care unit and endured 20 abdominal surgeries.
The student and respite worker said: "The pain was the worst pain I have ever felt - I basically had to learn to walk again which wasn’t guaranteed in the recovery.
"They even told me I might never leave a hospital setting or live a good quality of life."
In an attempt to repair Gina's abdominal wall, surgeons tried loosening the broken muscle to relax with Botox but that failed multiple times.
When she eventually left hospital, Gina's stomach ended up swelling three times its size as she had no structure to her intestines.
She said: "When I got out of the hospital I was nowhere near close to recovery and I had no abdominal wall, no mesh, no nothing.
"My stomach grew three times its size because I had no structure so my intestines - in any normal person they would be tightly coiled but now it had the ability to uncoil in my stomach.
"If I was to get hit in the stomach, it would put me out for days so doctors put me on bed rest until they thought of a surgical plan.
"As well as the damage to my abdomen, I had tons of bruises, a broken shoulder and clavicle.
"I also had a broken piece of bone in my leg and a huge cut that opened up my whole bottom left foot - I couldn’t even put pressure on it for almost a year. Luckily I had no brain damage, just a major concussion."
It was 14 months on from the accident - which happened in October 2017 - that surgeons finally decided on what procedure Gina needed and underwent the eight hour surgery to help keep her abdominal wall in place.
She said: "It was an extremely risky surgery and the first time my surgeon did something like this.
"They basically took a huge piece of mesh and wrapped it around my stomach - they then attached it to each strip of muscle, my pelvic bone and the top of dead muscle on the top of my sternum area.
"The biggest risk that was extremely likely was the muscles I did have remaining were at risk of tearing because of how thin and weak they were."
Fortunately, this didn't end up being the case and Gina's surgery went as planned.
Now, 18 months on, Gina's doing well despite surgeons being concerned that her body might reject the mesh used to repair her abdomen.
Gina added: "Many surgeons thought I would never live a normal quality of life again so I've surprised a lot of them.
"The police who responded to my accident thought they were walking to a dead body when they saw my car ripped in half and me partially ejected out of the vehicle.
"It is a part of my life now because everyday I learn what I can and cannot do.
"One day I’ll be in so much pain I can barely get out of bed and the next day I could feel perfectly fine; it’s about learning my limits for example I can’t jump or lift over 15 lbs again in my entire life.
"They have made it very clear there is no plan B for me yet so I have to be extremely careful with how I live my life.
"But I am so lucky to be alive and to me, if I was able to survive something so crazy and so rare, so I'm just grateful to still be here."
