July 23, 2014 at 2:10 p.m.
A crowning achievement
Prom helped to inspire recovery for Evans
A crowning achievement
By RAY COONEY
On Monday evening, her survival was anything but certain.
And the goal she set was ambitious to say the least.
The fact that she achieved it is a testament to her will.
On Saturday night, just five days after a brutal car accident that could have easily taken her life, Lyndee Evans was at prom.
••••••••••
Lyndee had planned on being at prom for a long time, probably longer than most of her fellow students. As Jay County High School’s junior class president, she had been in charge of much of the planning and preparation for the event during the last six months.
But her life changed drastically Monday.
She stayed after school, putting in more time working on the prom, and then was headed to Dunkirk’s West Jay Community Center to help with a gymnastics clinic for elementary and junior high students. It was raining, and, she said, as she began driving on county road 400 South, something didn’t feel right. It was as if something was going to happen, although she wasn’t sure what.
As she neared county road 800 West, where there is an S-curve to the north, her passenger-side tires left the road. She tried to steer her car back onto the pavement, but overcorrected.
“The next thing I knew I was sideways in the middle of the road trying to avoid the utility pole on the opposite side of the ditch,” said Lyndee. “The last thing I remember seeing before I woke up in the emergency room is the cross hanging from my rearview mirror.”
••••••••••
Lyndee and her family — father John, mother Lisa, and 15-year-old sister Lauren — have no doubt that God was watching over her.
John, Lisa and Lauren were at their home at 2296 East 200 South when James Roberts, who had been a substitute teacher at West Jay Middle School that day and came upon the accident, called and told Lisa what had happened.
See Prom page 5
Continued from page X
Before she was off the phone, John was on his way to the accident site. Lisa and Lauren headed for Jay County Hospital.
John said he didn’t have a concept of how serious the accident was as he drove to the scene. But when he arrived, he didn’t recognize the blue 1998 Chevrolet Monte Carlo his daughter had been driving.
The car was in the shape of a horseshoe, having slammed passenger-side first into a telephone pole on the south side of the road. The only piece of glass left intact was the driver’s side window, and the roof was jutting upward like the jagged edge of a crushed pop can.
Lyndee was already in an ambulance on the way to JCH, where Lisa and Lauren met her. After initially being stopped, they were allowed to visit her in the ambulance.
As Lisa talked to her daughter, who was covered in blood, glass and mud, Lyndee’s blood pressure plummeted. It quickly bounced back, but it was then that Lisa learned the severity of her daughter’s injuries, which included head trauma, as she heard someone ask about “the chopper.” She was told Lyndee would need to be flown to Parkview Hospital in Fort Wayne immediately.
John made it to JCH just as the Samaritan helicopter arrived, sprinted across the parking lot to the ambulance, and was able to have about 30 seconds with his daughter before she departed. After seeing the accident scene, those few moments meant everything.
“I was amazed to see her alive when I got to the hospital,” he said.
••••••••••
The 50-mile drive north on U.S. 27 to Fort Wayne was a long — and mostly quiet — one for John, Lisa and Lauren as they could only wonder what was happening with Lyndee.
When they arrived, they were relieved to find that she was not in surgery. She was being cleaned up, and it was clear that her jaw was broken, with one side sunken in and her chin crooked. But other than that, the only visible injury was a scrape on her foot.
Lyndee and her family would later find out she had a cut on her head that would require staples and suffered a hairline fracture near the base of her skull, which doctors described as looking like the shell of a hard-boiled egg that had been cracked.
That night a doctor asked Lyndee to set some goals, which is a part of the recovery process at Parkview’s Surgical/Trauma Intensive Care Unit. For most, those goals tend to be focused on getting out of bed or going home from the hospital.
“When they asked … her goal was, ‘I’m going to prom Saturday,’” said Lisa.
“All (the doctor) ever told her was, ‘That’s a lofty goal,’” added John.
It was a goal she said was important to her because she had a vision of what prom would be like and wanted to see how the plans she and the rest of the prom committee envisioned came together.
“I knew that because of the people we had working on it, it was going to be a great prom,” said Lyndee as she sat at home Saturday with Lauren and her friend, Ashley Motter, curling her hair in preparation for the dance. “Me having that goal set for prom tonight, I think that (helped).”
••••••••••
Lyndee had a long road ahead of her.
She was still listed in critical condition Tuesday, the day she and her family learned that her right lung had collapsed as a result of the impact of the accident. Surgery to set her jaw and wire it shut — a life-threatening procedure because of the head trauma she had suffered — took more than three hours late Wednesday night.
And as of Friday, she still had a tube in her chest to help keep her lung inflated. At that point, her trip to prom looked doubtful.
Lyndee’s spirits took a downturn at that news, but only briefly. She quickly took to doing the things she needed to do in order to make her goal happen.
“She never gives up, no matter what,” said Lauren. “Her little goals, whether they’re little to us or not, she’s still going to accomplish them. …
“She’s so strong-headed that you can’t step in front of her … she won’t listen.”
By Friday evening she asked Dr. Jeffery Yoder for one more chest X-ray, and, rather than disappointing his determined patient, he agreed. Her situation had improved.
So her chest tube was clamped, a test to see if she could keep the lung inflated on her own overnight. By morning, everything looked good.
Her chest tube was removed at 10 a.m. Saturday, and after a final X-ray, she was allowed to go home early Saturday afternoon.
“It was like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is actually going to happen,’” said Lyndee of the moment she realized her prom goal was going to come to fruition.
“She picked up her phone and started texting (all the way home),” chimed in Lisa.
“It’s a relief really, because I knew how bad I wanted it,” Lyndee said.
••••••••••
Going to prom was but one step in Lyndee’s road to recovery.
She won’t return to school for at least a week, by which point she will have the stitches out of her foot, the staples removed from her head and some of the stitches gone from her mouth.
She’ll be on a liquid diet for eight to 10 weeks. She can’t drive, swim or ride a bike for at least three months, and needs to have help going up and down stairs.
But Lyndee has already started to look toward her next set of goals.
She’s going to stay on the JCHS cheerleading squad and help the defending Indiana State Fair champion Patriots as much as she can throughout the summer. She’ll attend camp at the University of Kentucky this summer, and she hopes by the 2011-12 basketball season she’ll be able to once again do back flips all the way down the court.
Even before her ordeal, Lyndee had expressed a desire to go into the medical field. The quality of her care only served to reinforce that goal.
“I had no clue where I was,” she said of first waking up in the hospital. “I had no clue what was going on.
“They said, ‘We’re going to take care of you.’
“The way they talked to me, it really felt like home.”
Although the doctors told the family Lyndee was out of the woods in terms of surviving the accident following the successful surgery on her jaw, Lisa and Lauren both said they weren’t fully convinced until she was at home lying on the couch Saturday afternoon.
Lisa is relieved to have both of her daughters still with her, especially given that Lauren had considered making the trip Monday to Dunkirk with her sister to visit her grandmother.
“If there would have been somebody in the passenger side, they wouldn’t have made it,” said Lisa, her body shaking and eyes filling with tears. “I’m just thankful. I’m thankful Lauren decided to come home and (feed) her lambs and not go to mom’s. And I’m thankful everybody else who had to go to gymnastics that day found another ride.
“And I just know in my heart somebody’s watching out for us and he’s got plans for her later on … Because there is no rhyme or reason looking at the vehicle, looking at what took place, of why she really should be here.”
••••••••••
At home Saturday Lyndee talked about taking it easy during prom, saying she would probably stay in the commons for most of the promenade and walk out near the end. She had a wheelchair, just in case, and planned to stay for only about an hour.
But when she arrived, that wasn’t the case. Instead of last she was introduced first, as is generally the case for the junior class president.
“I guess I wasn’t surprised she was here because I heard all along that was her goal, and if that’s her goal she’s going to do it. That’s how she’s always been,” said JCHS guidance counselor and family friend Kristin Millspaugh. “But I was so shocked that she walked … It brought tears to my eyes.”
For anyone who didn’t know about Lyndee’s week, it would have been hard to tell.
Make-up covered the small bruise on the left side of her chin, the only visible blemish from her accident. Bandages barely peeked out from the edges of her dress.
She not only entered the gym first, but stood next to her friend and date, Dylan Friddle, throughout the promenade ceremony. At one point John asked her if she wanted to use the wheelchair, and she responded by telling him to take it back to the car. She wouldn’t need it.
Lyndee took the stage along with fellow junior class officers Mitchel Dull, Morgan Link and Aaron Loy, waving to everyone in the jam-packed gym as they cheered for her following a brief introduction from Dull.
“It was incredible — the response of everybody and just seeing everything — it was everything I imagined it would be,” said Lyndee, who also crowned Ryan Miskinis and Jordan McMillan as prom king and queen. “It was awesome.”
At about 9 p.m. she said she was tired from all the activity, but the fatigue didn’t slow her down. She stayed for another hour-and-a-half.
“It’s incredible,” said her friend Miranda Bollenbacher, who along with her sister Sara visited Lyndee at the hospital Friday and painted her nails in preparation for prom. “To see her from where she was Monday to now, you’ve got to thank God for it. … I’m really happy to see her here tonight.”
Hours earlier, in a sizeable group that had gathered at Lyndee’s home prior to the prom, Marilyn Isenbarger quietly captured the moment as she watched her granddaughter, in her purple mermaid dress, get swarmed by hugs and happy smiles.
“Miracles do happen,” she said. “We have proof.”
On Monday evening, her survival was anything but certain.
And the goal she set was ambitious to say the least.
The fact that she achieved it is a testament to her will.
On Saturday night, just five days after a brutal car accident that could have easily taken her life, Lyndee Evans was at prom.
••••••••••
Lyndee had planned on being at prom for a long time, probably longer than most of her fellow students. As Jay County High School’s junior class president, she had been in charge of much of the planning and preparation for the event during the last six months.
But her life changed drastically Monday.
She stayed after school, putting in more time working on the prom, and then was headed to Dunkirk’s West Jay Community Center to help with a gymnastics clinic for elementary and junior high students. It was raining, and, she said, as she began driving on county road 400 South, something didn’t feel right. It was as if something was going to happen, although she wasn’t sure what.
As she neared county road 800 West, where there is an S-curve to the north, her passenger-side tires left the road. She tried to steer her car back onto the pavement, but overcorrected.
“The next thing I knew I was sideways in the middle of the road trying to avoid the utility pole on the opposite side of the ditch,” said Lyndee. “The last thing I remember seeing before I woke up in the emergency room is the cross hanging from my rearview mirror.”
••••••••••
Lyndee and her family — father John, mother Lisa, and 15-year-old sister Lauren — have no doubt that God was watching over her.
John, Lisa and Lauren were at their home at 2296 East 200 South when James Roberts, who had been a substitute teacher at West Jay Middle School that day and came upon the accident, called and told Lisa what had happened.
Before she was off the phone, John was on his way to the accident site. Lisa and Lauren headed for Jay County Hospital.
John said he didn’t have a concept of how serious the accident was as he drove to the scene. But when he arrived, he didn’t recognize the blue 1998 Chevrolet Monte Carlo his daughter had been driving.
The car was in the shape of a horseshoe, having slammed passenger-side first into a telephone pole on the south side of the road. The only piece of glass left intact was the driver’s side window, and the roof was jutting upward like the jagged edge of a crushed pop can.
Lyndee was already in an ambulance on the way to JCH, where Lisa and Lauren met her. After initially being stopped, they were allowed to visit her in the ambulance.
As Lisa talked to her daughter, who was covered in blood, glass and mud, Lyndee’s blood pressure plummeted. It quickly bounced back, but it was then that Lisa learned the severity of her daughter’s injuries, which included head trauma, as she heard someone ask about “the chopper.” She was told Lyndee would need to be flown to Parkview Hospital in Fort Wayne immediately.
John made it to JCH just as the Samaritan helicopter arrived, sprinted across the parking lot to the ambulance, and was able to have about 30 seconds with his daughter before she departed. After seeing the accident scene, those few moments meant everything.
“I was amazed to see her alive when I got to the hospital,” he said.
••••••••••
The 50-mile drive north on U.S. 27 to Fort Wayne was a long — and mostly quiet — one for John, Lisa and Lauren as they could only wonder what was happening with Lyndee.
When they arrived, they were relieved to find that she was not in surgery. She was being cleaned up, and it was clear that her jaw was broken, with one side sunken in and her chin crooked. But other than that, the only visible injury was a scrape on her foot.
Lyndee and her family would later find out she had a cut on her head that would require staples and suffered a hairline fracture near the base of her skull, which doctors described as looking like the shell of a hard-boiled egg that had been cracked.
That night a doctor asked Lyndee to set some goals, which is a part of the recovery process at Parkview’s Surgical/Trauma Intensive Care Unit. For most, those goals tend to be focused on getting out of bed or going home from the hospital.
“When they asked … her goal was, ‘I’m going to prom Saturday,’” said Lisa.
“All (the doctor) ever told her was, ‘That’s a lofty goal,’” added John.
It was a goal she said was important to her because she had a vision of what prom would be like and wanted to see how the plans she and the rest of the prom committee envisioned came together.
“I knew that because of the people we had working on it, it was going to be a great prom,” said Lyndee as she sat at home Saturday with Lauren and her friend, Ashley Motter, curling her hair in preparation for the dance. “Me having that goal set for prom tonight, I think that (helped).”
••••••••••
Lyndee had a long road ahead of her.
She was still listed in critical condition Tuesday, the day she and her family learned that her right lung had collapsed as a result of the impact of the accident. Surgery to set her jaw and wire it shut — a life-threatening procedure because of the head trauma she had suffered — took more than three hours late Wednesday night.
And as of Friday, she still had a tube in her chest to help keep her lung inflated. At that point, her trip to prom looked doubtful.
Lyndee’s spirits took a downturn at that news, but only briefly. She quickly took to doing the things she needed to do in order to make her goal happen.
“She never gives up, no matter what,” said Lauren. “Her little goals, whether they’re little to us or not, she’s still going to accomplish them. …
“She’s so strong-headed that you can’t step in front of her … she won’t listen.”
By Friday evening she asked Dr. Jeffery Yoder for one more chest X-ray, and, rather than disappointing his determined patient, he agreed. Her situation had improved.
So her chest tube was clamped, a test to see if she could keep the lung inflated on her own overnight. By morning, everything looked good.
Her chest tube was removed at 10 a.m. Saturday, and after a final X-ray, she was allowed to go home early Saturday afternoon.
“It was like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is actually going to happen,’” said Lyndee of the moment she realized her prom goal was going to come to fruition.
“She picked up her phone and started texting (all the way home),” chimed in Lisa.
“It’s a relief really, because I knew how bad I wanted it,” Lyndee said.
••••••••••
Going to prom was but one step in Lyndee’s road to recovery.
She won’t return to school for at least a week, by which point she will have the stitches out of her foot, the staples removed from her head and some of the stitches gone from her mouth.
She’ll be on a liquid diet for eight to 10 weeks. She can’t drive, swim or ride a bike for at least three months, and needs to have help going up and down stairs.
But Lyndee has already started to look toward her next set of goals.
She’s going to stay on the JCHS cheerleading squad and help the defending Indiana State Fair champion Patriots as much as she can throughout the summer. She’ll attend camp at the University of Kentucky this summer, and she hopes by the 2011-12 basketball season she’ll be able to once again do back flips all the way down the court.
Even before her ordeal, Lyndee had expressed a desire to go into the medical field. The quality of her care only served to reinforce that goal.
“I had no clue where I was,” she said of first waking up in the hospital. “I had no clue what was going on.
“They said, ‘We’re going to take care of you.’
“The way they talked to me, it really felt like home.”
Although the doctors told the family Lyndee was out of the woods in terms of surviving the accident following the successful surgery on her jaw, Lisa and Lauren both said they weren’t fully convinced until she was at home lying on the couch Saturday afternoon.
Lisa is relieved to have both of her daughters still with her, especially given that Lauren had considered making the trip Monday to Dunkirk with her sister to visit her grandmother.
“If there would have been somebody in the passenger side, they wouldn’t have made it,” said Lisa, her body shaking and eyes filling with tears. “I’m just thankful. I’m thankful Lauren decided to come home and (feed) her lambs and not go to mom’s. And I’m thankful everybody else who had to go to gymnastics that day found another ride.
“And I just know in my heart somebody’s watching out for us and he’s got plans for her later on … Because there is no rhyme or reason looking at the vehicle, looking at what took place, of why she really should be here.”
••••••••••
At home Saturday Lyndee talked about taking it easy during prom, saying she would probably stay in the commons for most of the promenade and walk out near the end. She had a wheelchair, just in case, and planned to stay for only about an hour.
But when she arrived, that wasn’t the case. Instead of last she was introduced first, as is generally the case for the junior class president.
“I guess I wasn’t surprised she was here because I heard all along that was her goal, and if that’s her goal she’s going to do it. That’s how she’s always been,” said JCHS guidance counselor and family friend Kristin Millspaugh. “But I was so shocked that she walked … It brought tears to my eyes.”
For anyone who didn’t know about Lyndee’s week, it would have been hard to tell.
Make-up covered the small bruise on the left side of her chin, the only visible blemish from her accident. Bandages barely peeked out from the edges of her dress.
She not only entered the gym first, but stood next to her friend and date, Dylan Friddle, throughout the promenade ceremony. At one point John asked her if she wanted to use the wheelchair, and she responded by telling him to take it back to the car. She wouldn’t need it.
Lyndee took the stage along with fellow junior class officers Mitchel Dull, Morgan Link and Aaron Loy, waving to everyone in the jam-packed gym as they cheered for her following a brief introduction from Dull.
“It was incredible — the response of everybody and just seeing everything — it was everything I imagined it would be,” said Lyndee, who also crowned Ryan Miskinis and Jordan McMillan as prom king and queen. “It was awesome.”
At about 9 p.m. she said she was tired from all the activity, but the fatigue didn’t slow her down. She stayed for another hour-and-a-half.
“It’s incredible,” said her friend Miranda Bollenbacher, who along with her sister Sara visited Lyndee at the hospital Friday and painted her nails in preparation for prom. “To see her from where she was Monday to now, you’ve got to thank God for it. … I’m really happy to see her here tonight.”
Hours earlier, in a sizeable group that had gathered at Lyndee’s home prior to the prom, Marilyn Isenbarger quietly captured the moment as she watched her granddaughter, in her purple mermaid dress, get swarmed by hugs and happy smiles.
“Miracles do happen,” she said. “We have proof.”
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