“I was already kind of through the intersection, and I’m told she hit us before we got all the way through,” Brown said.
The crash could have cost Brown her life, but more than a year later, she’s able to celebrate Thanksgiving with her two boys after first responders from the Dayton Fire Department came to her family’s aid and surgeons at Miami Valley Hospital’s Level I Trauma Center helped save her life.
“I just feel like I’m truly blessed and thankful, because I know a lot of people have bad things happen and they don’t make the best out of it.. I’m just really thankful for everybody that helped us—the doctors, the nurses, the EMS staff, the people at the rehab center, my mom,” Brown said.
Witnesses said her vehicle flipped about three or four times after it was struck on the driver’s side, ejecting one of her children from the vehicle and pinning the other one underneath it.
While her children—Dominic, 5, and Leonne, 9—spent a few days in Dayton Children’s Hospital, each wearing neck braces for a short time and one with a cast on his broken arm, they each made full recoveries.
“They’re great now. If you see them now, they’re full of energy,” Brown said.
For Brown, it took two months at Miami Valley Hospital and then a month in rehab working on getting her mobility back. Brown didn’t wake up until two days after the accident.
“June is kind of like a blur to me,” Brown said.
Brown suffered a liver laceration, as well as lacerations to her spleen, kidney, and diaphragm. She also had a collapsed lung and fractures to her ribs, spine, and pelvis. Doctors had to remove her gall bladder and part of her liver following the accident.
“We had to take her almost immediately to the operating room,” said Dr. John Bruun, who was one of the physicians who treated Brown, along with Dr. Freddy Katai.
Brown, who serves in the Army Reserve, had to go through multiple surgeries for her injuries.
“She’s an amazing person,” Bruun said. “Her attitude, her (being) a single mom and active duty military, it was a pleasure to know her as a person and to be able to have a chance to take care of her.”
Treating traumatic injuries and performing emergency surgeries is a daily occurrence for the trauma center at Miami Valley.
“It feels like a lot of responsibility. It feels really humbling, too,” Bruun said.
They’re one part of a team that includes EMS first responders, CareFlight, and others to get patients to their operating rooms, he said.
“We’re a cog in the wheel, and we get a lot of help from Heaven,” Bruun said.
Bruun and Brown have bonded over a shared sense of humor. Bruun has recently taken to sharing “dad jokes” with some patients and other medical staff as a way to bring levity to a heavy atmosphere.
“This is a really hard thing for people to go through, so I just started giving some what I call dad jokes,” Bruun said.
He’s always the joke puller, Brown said.
“The nurses told me he would walk around with a joke book in his pocket, and he always would tell me jokes, so I would always come home and tell my kids the jokes, and now our little thing is we do jokes every day,” Brown said.
Brown has taken her kids to meet the firefighters who came to their aid.
“The job that they do in general, having to be on-call, those 24-hour shifts, I have much, much respect for them,” Brown said.
Credit: JIM NOELKER
Credit: JIM NOELKER
The recovery and rehab process for Brown gave her a new appreciation for mobility, saying she was thankful for the people who kept her on track in the healing process.
“There would be days I didn’t want to get up,” Brown said. “...They wouldn’t let me miss a day.”
The accident has also made her more intentional about seeing family, as well as planning fun activities with her kids.
“I want to make it a point now to take that time to go see people, to spend a little time with family,” Brown said about seeing her family members out of state.
With her kids, Brown takes them skating or on trips to Lego Land and Hocking Hills, as well as plans family movie nights to make sure they prioritize fun times together.
“I want them to enjoy being kids,” Brown said.
Brown’s recovery was a difficult journey, but she said she’s thankful today for the people who helped her kids and her get her through it.
“It was a tough time, but I am truly, truly grateful for everybody that helped,” Brown said.
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