"I Survived Being Hit By A Car"

Lenny and I, Diane Ladner, would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who took time to come to our need when we needed help.

December 12, 2022, around 8 a.m., I was hit by a car while out walking. It was just a really bad accident. I had eight broken ribs, two punctured lungs, a severed artery in my spleen. My pelvis was shattered, I had a broken right hip and broken right femur, 6-9 were broke in my back, and the rest of my back was cracked. My nose was broken, face bones cracked, and I had a brain bleed.

Once I got to Vanderbilt, I was revived the first and had lost 8 pints of blood at that point. During the surgery of fusing my artery back to my spleen, I was revived the second time.

My pelvis had to be reconstructed, and I now have five screws in my pelvis, a pin in my hip, a pin in my femur, two rods and eight screws in my back.

We would like to thank David Rentschler for taking the day off work and staying with Lenny all day at the hospital and also for stopping in every three days to check up on us. I’d also like to thank Karen Rentschler for stopping in every day when needed and for organizing dinners and just sitting with us when we needed her to.

We’d also like to thank the community for the outpouring of help we received. The ambulance personnel did a great job keeping me alive and the police did a great job making sure traffic was clear. We’d like to thank Pan Harding, Rose Fricot, Liz Christian and Storm Gregg for putting their lives on hold for seven weeks and staying with us throughout the day, every day for those seven weeks, as well as in the evening when needed. I want to thank God for sending his Angel that morning and keeping me in her wing. God saved me that day, and I just praise God daily for his love.

I would like to also thank Heather Norris and her staff at Lewis County Physical Therapy for getting me up and walking again. I went in a wheelchair and was walking without a cane after 14 weeks of intense therapy. They are great to work with.