LAUREL — A Laurel woman is sharing her story of survival after she crashed into a semi-truck six years ago while texting and driving.
Twenty-four-year-old Tabbatha Courtney hopes her message about distracted driving resonates with the community.
"I was an 18-year-old girl who just graduated high school, and just won a national dance competition. And then the next day I couldn't walk," said Courtney Monday in Laurel.
Sept. 15, 2018, changed Courtney's life forever. She was driving to Park City from Laurel on U.S. Highway 10 after a long day of work.
"I was going around the last curve before the county line and I was on my phone. I think I was Snapchatting," Courtney said.
She doesn't remember much after that.
"What we think happened is I drifted off to the right shoulder of the road and then I panicked and overcorrected and I slammed head-on into a semi. And both of us were going like 65, 70 miles an hour," said Courtney. "A guy that lived in the neighborhood heard it and he came running out. And Lance, my boyfriend at the time, was just taking that road totally by chance. And he came up on the accident and, the guy was like waving his hand saying, hey, stop, there's been an accident."
Courtney broke both of her femurs as well as the right side of her pelvis. She also sustained nerve damage on her arm from her seat belt while the driver of the semi-truck walked away with cuts and bruises.
"When I was in the hospital, they said I had developed fat embolism syndrome, which is where bone marrow from long bone breaks goes to your lungs, but mine went to my brain," Courtney said.
She was put into a medically induced coma for over a week before she went to rehab.
"Both of my parents stayed with me for, like, two weeks straight. They didn't leave the hospital," said Courtney. "The next thing I remember is asking my boyfriend at the time to marry me. And now, now we're married."
Rehab wasn't easy for Courtney, but she came out on top with her family's support.
"The first real day I was there, they had me take a step and I couldn't do it. I just screamed out in pain and, my dad told me I needed to set some goals," Courtney said. "So every night I wrote down, okay, tomorrow I'm going to take five steps. And then that day I did 10 steps instead of five and each day I just blew it out of the water."
Courtney used to live with guilt but she doesn't regret what happened as it taught her a valuable lesson, one she's sharing with the community.
"I couldn't feed myself. I couldn't dress myself. I couldn't write when I went to the bathroom, I had to do everything, relearn how to do everything. So, my advice is, is it really worth your life?" said Courtney. "Is answering that snap more important than your life? Is eating that cheeseburger while you're driving worth it? It's not."
