Jo's Fight for Mobility After Tragic Accident

My name is Jo Phoenix Freedom and I am the woman in the video that was run over by a semi and lost my leg. I was at a stop sign on a gravel road at an intersection to a county road when I was hit from the right. My feet were still on the gravel road when I was hit. Meaning the semi crossed the center line and was partially on the shoulder. It was a beautifully warm fall day, September 4 2003 at about 11:30am. I looked to the left where traffic should be coming from, the corn was still in the field blowing in the Iowa wind. I looked right, duck! I went between the tires of the cab and tried to grab the axel, which was a big mistake. When my hand hit the frame it shattered my hand, broke all the bones, dislocated every joint in my arm almost taking it off. Then the wheels of the trailer rolled over the left side of my body crushing and tearing off my leg. I watched as the semi moved back over into the correct lane and I lost sight of it from the angle I was laying in the middle of the road. I saw every heartbeat puddling around me and knew I was on a very limited time before I didn’t have enough blood left in my body. I looked around to make sure I wasn’t going to be hit by another car but the road was empty as far as I could see. I saw the driver walk up to me and he said “I can’t believe you are alive”, I said “I need an ambulance”. He said ‘I’ll go get you one”. I remember thinking to myself, what is he going to do, go chase one down? I said “my phone is in my pocket of my pants on my leg over there”. He started walking back to his truck and out of my line of sight. I never saw him again. So I did the thing you are never supposed to do and moved. I used my right leg and right arm to scoot myself towards my leg. The first push with my leg and I heard and felt a crunch in my back, then my right leg didn’t work. Suddenly that 15 feet to my leg with the phone in the pocket seemed a lot farther away. I drug myself over to my leg using my right arm and picked up my leg and put it on my chest then went digging through the pocket for my phone as I was staring at the bottom of my work boot. I called 911, before the days of E911 so I had to explain where I was because the county road and the name of the gravel road wasn’t enough I guess. I realized I needed to make arrangements for my girl and my son for when they got out of school so I called my pastor. I knew he would pick them up. I then called my sons father to tell him I was in an accident and wasn’t going to walk it off. He was asking me all kinds of questions that I couldn’t answer as I was still in the road bleeding. I thought the right thing to do was to tell him, he had the right to take care of our son while I was in the hospital. The first responder arrived, he was just a kid, 19 or 20 years i don’t think his training prepared him for the mess that was in front of him. He went and got a blanket, then put it under my head. I remember thinking I’m getting cold I could have used that blanket over me. A sheriff deputy showed up with a first aid kit and started wrapping the stump of my leg up. Shortly an ambulance arrived. They scooped me up and drove a short way and picked up a paramedic who decided I wasn’t going to live for an ambulance ride to the hospital and they called for a chopped. The ambulance drove for a short distance and I was loaded onto the helicopter. They called my husband, who decided id rather die than live without my leg, even after the doctor at the first hospital told him it wasn’t likely I would survive the surgery to reattach the leg. My first surgery was 28 hours long and they didn’t bother to actually stitch up anything. They wrapped my leg and arm in what looked like cling wrap. I remember looking around wondering what happened to the world, I was in what looked like a cubical made of green drapes on a metal frame. Everyone that came into my area was covered head to toe in green scrubs. I didn’t understand what they were saying. I heard helicopters above me. Due to all the medications I was on I was hallucinating seeing cats, dogs, cows, goats, sheep walking around. I spent most of 2 years in the hospital and rehab to relearn everything, from speaking to feeding myself. I had 49 surgeries to try and reattach my leg, I ended up with an vancomycin’s resistant infection that eventually leg to gangrene. The 50th surgery took my leg back off. To say I was relieved is an understatement. The vancomycin was making me pretty sick and it wasn’t working even though I had a pic line right into my heart and I had it running 24/7. I’ve had 6 more surgeries since then because of breaking pieces of me femur off, the infection flaring back up, but I was healing.

My girl spent most of her senior year taking care of me. I remember the look on her face when I was too weak to pick up my walker (they gave me an untrained on, it didn’t walk me, it threw me on the floor). I was always strong, fast, and able, now I was in a body cast and couldn’t even pick up my walker 2 steps or use it to transfer to the hospital bed now in my dinning room. I was carried into my house because I couldn’t walk or stand. I was soaked in sweat from the effort of being carried. She only went to school 1 day a week to turn in assignment and pick up the next weeks assignments. She took her test and quizzes on that day. She graduated with honors, I was so proud of her. She took an impossible situation and made the best of it.

Gradually the cast became less and less as some bones began to heal. But I was still stuck in a wheelchair due to my back being broken. My surgeon told me I’d never walk again. I never for one second believed him. I knew I would walk. It took quite a while, years actually for me to figure out how to get my remaining leg to move where I wanted it to. We were decorating the Christmas tree and I managed one small step. And if I could take one, I could take more. I found a small house in a little hole in the wall town and bought it 2.5 years after the accident. The town carnival came in May, and a couple of the guys in town carried my wheelchair up to the carnival, they decided I had to go. There I saw a pool table in the bar/restaurant there. I love pool, I learned to walk holding onto that pool table and my pool stick because it’s really hard to play pool from a wheelchair.

Over the years since then I’ve had multiple prosthetics. I’ve broken a few of them, the last one I broke picking up a fridge over the edge of a threshold. They have a weight limit and the fridge exceeded it lol. Without insurance, I can’t get a new one as they are very expensive. I’ve remodeled my house to be handicapped accessible… with only one leg and crutches. There are some things I couldn’t do, like pick up a toilet and carry it across the room when I gutted my bathroom. My son and his girlfriend helped with the things I couldn’t do. But I am still stuck without a leg, and that is what I am hoping for with this. My old one is too old to repair, and is standing in my closet in the corner reminding me that I can’t walk.