:: STORIES OF HOPE ::

• Share Your Story

•  Carrie
•  Diana
•  Michael
•  Josef

Carrie

In August 2007, Shands HealthCare employee Carrie Dunn arrived at the Shands at UF Level 1 Trauma Center following a serious car accident. Her car was totaled when a driver ran a stop sign at about 55 mph and struck her vehicle’s driver’s side during her 5:30 am commute from Williston to Shands at UF. Dunn’s right foot was nearly severed – an injury that would have forced most doctors to amputate her leg. Her additional injuries included a broken collarbone; fractured ribs; punctured lungs; abdominal wall rupture; and a broken leg. The trauma team performed four essential surgeries within the first month after the accident.

“I knew from the beginning it would be hard, but I also knew I had a ton of support to help me every excruciating step of the way,” Dunn said. She spent five weeks at Shands at UF and seven weeks at Shands Rehab Hospital. She was then treated for several months as an outpatient at the UF Orthopaedics and Sports Medicine Institute.

Dunn has regained 85 percent of the feeling in her foot. Once confined to a wheelchair for eight months, she is once again walking and also driving from Williston to her job at Shands at UF. She and her family insist that she wouldn’t be alive today if it wasn’t for the expert care she received through the team of UF physicians and Shands HealthCare providers.