PROVO, Utah — A Provo woman is still recovering from severe trauma after a sledding accident that left her with several broken bones and the need for brain surgery to recover from her head injuries.
Mckyliee Young,19, was tubing on December 16 when she says “I sat in the tube and slid down and I was I felt like I was going really fast . . . I flipped backwards and then I don't remember anything after that."
She was sledding with her boyfriend and other friends that night in what turned out to be a fight for survival.
“I like looked to my left and then I just see her like just smack right into a pole like the back of her head and it was really just crazy,” said Mckyliee's boyfriend Isaac Tidwell.
Her injuries from the accident were extensive and severe.
“Well, the one of the worst parts was they said, ‘We’re going to give you a list of the injuries that she has.
You might want to put it in your notes.’ And they started with the epidural hematoma bleeding in her brain.
And that's when I really lost it,” said her mother Brittney Grunig.
It happened at Rock Canyon Park, when Mckyliee suffered 21 broken ribs, two fractured vertebrae, a broken collarbone and scapula, and injuries to her skull.
“She has rods in her back screws in her back, pins in her head. She had to have that craniotomy," said Grunig, saying it was needed to drain fluid from her brain.
Mckyliee says she was actually nervous to go sledding that night, and wishes she would've followed her gut. But she wants her experience to caution others to be safe in the snow.
“If you don't feel like you want to do something, then that's okay . . . I couldn't have expected or prepared for this," she says.
“I think we take a lot for granted just in general in life, like going to the bathroom on your own and walking at one point and I have nerve damage in my right arm and so like, I can't wiggle my fingers or anything like that.”
Mckyliee does believe the experience has given her the ability to look at things from a different perspective.
She wants people to "be grateful for more like the really tiny things that we don't think about, but they're a big deal and they do a lot for you.”
Go here for a link to a fundraiser her friends have organized to help pay for Mckyliee's medical bills.
