CHURCH HILL — Volunteer High School junior swimmer Bethany Wade didn’t know if she’d ever walk again following a horrific car crash in September, much less be back in the pool practicing with her teammates last week.
She has metal rods holding together her pelvis, which shattered and punctured her bladder, as well as metal rods holding her pelvis to her spine.
As a result, her running career on the Falcon cross country team is probably over. Bethany told the Times News on Wednesday, however, that she fully expects to be competing again on the Falcon swim team for her senior year in 2021-22 — an accomplishment that didn’t seem possible in the days and weeks after her Sept. 5 crash.
Bethany has been a competitive swimmer since she was 8 years old and joined the “Stingrays” — and it seems like it’s always been a part of her life. She does the 100 meter and 200 meter freestyle, and sometimes the 100 backstroke and the relays.
“Even if I wasn’t a competitive swimmer, swimming is important to me,” Bethany said. “I wasn’t sure if I was going to get my movement back to be able to swim.”
She added, “I never thought I’d be back this soon. In the hospital they told me I’d be walking after three months, but not this well. I’ll always have nerve damage in my left leg and ankle, but I think I get along pretty good.”
Through this horrible ordeal she has adopted the philosophy that all things happen for a reason.
“I think God has given me a testimony to share with people,” Bethany said. “If you just keep your faith you can get through whatever you’re going through.”
”The best day ever turned into the worst day ever”
The accident occurred on the afternoon of Sept. 5 while Bethany was driving home from shopping at The Pinnacle in Bristol. She was on Stone Drive almost to the Kingsport Pavilion when things took a drastic turn for the worse.
Bethany and her mom, Becky Wade, sat down with the Times News on Wednesday to talk about what happened and how they got through it.
Bethany: I wasn’t paying attention. I was kind of zoning out and I was barely off the road, and then I got scared and over-corrected, and I just spun off into this big embankment.
Luckily, another driver named Justin Cross was behind her and witnessed the crash, because her car wasn’t visible from the road afterward.
Bethany: He stopped, and he called 911, and he prayed with me. He cut the seat belt off my neck because it was choking me.
Becky: Her brother was in Navy boot camp, and that morning we got our first call from him. So it was like the best day ever because we got to talk to her brother, and right after that she left to go shopping. The best day ever turned into the worst day ever.
Bethany: When I went into the embankment I hit a bug piece of concrete, and I think that’s why I got hurt so bad.
Becky: There was some off-duty EMS and firefighters who had been in training in Bristol and were coming back and just so happened to see what was going on, and they stopped. God orchestrated all these people to be there at that moment.
Bethany: I could tell I was hurt. My arms weren’t broken but I couldn’t move — especially my left leg — for a real long time. I was in shock, but I could tell I was hurting in my pelvic area. They were asking me to move my legs as they were cutting me out of the car, and I couldn’t, and I thought I was going to be paralyzed. Then when I got to Holston Valley I started hurting really bad.
”She would have bled to death down there waiting”
Becky has the Life 360 app on our phone, and usually when Bethany is driving, Becky is keeping an eye on her.
When Becky received notification that Bethany had stopped on 11-W, she and her husband Casey thought maybe Bethany was pulled over, maybe her car broke down. When Bethany didn’t call, they went looking for her.
Becky: We got to the crash sight and there was still a lot of police there, and they reassured us that she was awake and alert. But to see that car there without her, it was scary.
Bethany: They had to do tests to see what was wrong. I was bleeding internally and it was making me really nervous because they were all panicking.
Becky: Her pelvis shattered, and part of the bone went into her bladder, so she was bleeding internally, and they had to give her units of blood. That’s why if he (Cross) hadn’t found her, she would have bled to death down there waiting.
Bethany: My spine detached from my pelvis, and my pelvis on my left side was completely shattered.
Becky: It was broken in several places. I don’t know that it was completely pulled away from her spine, but parts of it were. It was just kind of crumbled.
Bethany: Before I got to Holston Valley I was scared if I was going to live or not. I kept saying, am I going to die, am I going to die, and they kept saying, we’ll try to help you. I have nerve damage in quite a few places in my left leg especially. I couldn’t move it at all in the hospital. For a long time, even after I was out of the hospital, I thought I may never walk again.
”It was devastating, and she just cried”
Becky and her husband Casey were able to see Bethany at Holston Valley, and the doctor explained that once she’d received blood her injuries were no longer life-threatening.
Doctors decided that her pelvis repair would require the work of an orthopedic surgeon, a urologist and a neurologist, and she was flown by helicopter to the University of Tennessee Medical Center. Unfortunately, it took three days to be able to get both surgeons in the same operating room at the same time, which was frustrating. Adding to the frustration was the COVID-19 rule limiting one parent in her room.
Becky: When they flew her, they told her dad and I she’ll be in surgery by the time you get there, so go home, pack a bag, take your time, because she’ll be in surgery. When we got there she’s still in trauma and they haven’t taken her back yet. It was Labor Day weekend, and she laid there with that injury for three days. They had a lot of life-threatening things that had to be taken care of.
Bethany: I remember being down there and bones were sticking out of people.
Becky: Even though hers was bad, there were some others that were worse.
Her surgery was scheduled for that Tuesday, and then the hospital informed them that night it was canceled again.
Becky: It was devastating, and she just cried. It was heartbreaking. They asked, what can we do to make it better, and they said you can let her dad come in too. So we got special permission to have both parents in during COVID when they’re not supposed to do that, and I feel like that was a door God opened to have both of us in there to support her. And then the next day she was able to have her first surgery.
”We’ve seen miracle after miracle throughout this”
Bethany has undergone two surgeries, and she’ll have another this summer to remove some of the hardware from her back.
Becky: After her surgery there was no movement in her left foot at all, and they said she may never get that back. We were looking at life-altering injuries.
It took a while for feeling to return to her left leg, and she didn’t walk, stand or put any weight on her legs for 101 days.
Becky: She’s doing great. It’s not 100 percent, but God has definitely had his hand on her. She’s been on homebound status at school, but she was in Homecoming, so she went out there in her wheelchair, and she won princess for her class. Even though she wasn’t in school she still got to participate in that.
Bethany: The day they said I could walk, I was definitely not stable, but where I had gotten so much movement back in my legs, it came back pretty quick. As far as just getting in the water and swimming, I’ve been able to practice with swim with the team twice. Everybody was glad to see me, and I did better than I thought I would. I swam the entire practice my first day back, and I wasn’t by any means fast, but it felt good to be back.
Now that the worst part of this ordeal is behind them, Becky is able to better understand why God put this challenge before Bethany and her family.
Becky: It has made our faith grow, just from prayers from our family, our church family, our community — its made us all grow. Like she said, she has a testimony to share about how God has protected her, and how we’ve seen miracle after miracle throughout this whole thing. Everything does happen for a reason, and I think it is to bring God glory through everything that she’s been through.
