A woman shares the horrifying experience of waking up after a week on a ventilator to find out her husband was dead and she was left critically injured.
Gini Thomas and her husband Joe had been married for 17 months when they were involved in a catastrophic motorbike incident that changed her life forever.
Colliding with a car that had run a stop sign, the couple were thrown from the bike.
After spending a week in a coma, she woke to find her leg was torn to shreds, and lost her husband, who had died on impact.
“Joe was killed instantly, and I was critically injured,” the 38-year-old charity ambassador from Montgomery, Alabama, US, told http://NeedToKnow.co.uk .
“I broke every bone in my right leg in several places.
“All I remember is seeing the car coming straight towards us, but I did not have time to react, I blacked out on impact.
“When I regained consciousness a few moments later, I was sitting in the middle of the road.
“The first thing I saw was my broken femur sticking straight up through my jeans.
“I had bones sticking out of other places in my leg, and the leg itself was crooked.
“I thought to myself ‘Okay that’s probably gone, this looks really bad, but it doesn’t hurt. I must be in shock. I’m probably going to pass out soon.’
“It took five medics to load me onto the stretcher, not because I’m heavy, but because of how fragile my leg was.
“Nobody told me that Joe was dead, but I had asked several people to please check to see if he was breathing.
“I could tell by the conversations happening around me that he was dead, but nobody knew that I knew.
“As soon as they shut the door of the ambulance, it was like a switch flipped, and that is the moment I felt pain.
“I started to scream, and the medic put a needle in my arm, and I passed out.
“I didn’t wake up for a week. I was on a ventilator.
“I think my family and my doctors did not want to have to tell me that I had lost my leg and my husband, so that is why they made such a big effort to try and save my leg.”
On 12 August 2012, Joe was declared dead, leaving Gini to deal with the loss of her husband.
She added: “When I lost Joe, I really thought my life was over.
“You spend so much time with a person, building, planning for a future together.
“All of a sudden that person is gone. All of the plans are wiped out. I was completely devastated.
“My first memory after the crash was a week later when I was being taken off the ventilator – I remember my arms being restrained by nurses as I was being told to cough.
“Once things settled down, I looked over to my mom and whispered, ‘Joe’s gone, isn’t he?’
“She nodded yes, and we both just cried.”
After three years of attempting to save her leg, she opted for an above-the-knee amputation on 18 August 2015.
She said: “I was actually excited and hopeful about amputation because I thought a prosthetic leg would be much more functional than my destroyed human leg.
“I woke up from surgery feeling relieved.
“It was a long recovery process, but luckily I had an amazing support system.
“My parents basically let me move in with them so they could care for me.
“The house I lived in with my husband was two stories, and all of the bedrooms and full bathrooms were upstairs so I could not have lived there while I was recovering.
“There were plenty of days where I was deeply depressed about everything, but my friends and family never let me get lost in the darkness.”
Following the amputation, she was fitted with her first socket prosthesis in early 2016, helping her get back to normality.
However, by the end of 2017, she started having issues with bone spurs, growths that formed at the end of her femur, causing excruciating pain when she tried to walk.
She added: “They would always grow back, and I had to have multiple revisions.
“Meaning each one made my limb shorter and shorter until I was unable to comfortably fit a traditional socket prosthesis.”
This meant she had to start looking for different prosthetic options, before finding one which would attach an anchor point to the end of her leg, prior to fitting the prosthetic.
In October 2021, Gini had the surgery, hoping it would make it easier to use a prosthetic leg.
She said: “They attached some metal that sticks out of my skin and is secured by my femur.
“In January 2022, I had the second surgery of the process to attach the metal that sticks out of my skin.
“It is screwed into the anchor that was placed in the October before.
“Over time bone has grown in and around the anchor making it very stable and secure.
“And by May 2022, I was able to start walking again.
“It took several months to progress to walking without any aids.
“I had spent the last four years on crutches, so it took a lot of time and effort to rebuild all of the muscle I had lost.”
Now, the disability advocate feels incredibly fortunate to be surrounded by medical professionals helping her every step of the way and vows to never give up.
Gini added: “I owe a lot of my success to the surgeons, prosthetists, and physical therapists who never let me give up.
“Life is good now.
“Even though I still have bad days, I’m able to share my experiences with others and help educate others about life as an amputee.
“I also now currently work part-time as an ambassador for Integrum, the company that makes the OPRA implant system that I use to attach my prosthesis.”
She has even started sharing her life on TikTok (@ginithomas ), with one recent video receiving over 18.2 million views.
In the clip, she can be seen lying on her sun bed with her fake leg off, leaving the piece of metal that sticks out.
The post gathered 710,000 likes as well as 7,600 comments from amazed followers.
Lucas said: “I am titanium!!!!” [sic]
Roy added: “Yo man got him a lil robot.” [sic]
Someone else commented: “Pirate.”
One user wrote: “omg cool but very scary.” [sic]
“that scared me so bad,” added another fan. [sic]
Gini added: “The videos I upload to TikTok are meant to be somewhat educational, but also humorous.
“I’m sharing my life and experiences as an amputee, good and bad.
“I want people to understand that while I do have a disability, that does not make me any less of a person.
“Everybody is different, that’s what makes life interesting!
“I think our differences should be celebrated, never shamed.”
