This year, Feb. 22 wasn’t just a normal day for Kent resident Linda Louie.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
It marked the one-year anniversary of Louie’s car crash, an accident so severe, Louie spent several months in rehabilitation to try and get back to her normal self. She survived a head-on collision, but broke her ankle, cracked her ribs and suffered a Hangman’s Fracture, a break in the neck caused by force from the crash.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
“I feel lucky to be alive and don’t take anything for granted,” Louie said. “Whenever my mind goes back to the accident, I remember how strange the thoughts in my head where as I was crashing. Shock is a crazy and emotional experience.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Louie was driving home from a vacation in Oregon with her husband and their exchange student when a large truck swerved in front of her. Her husband suffered from a cracked sternum and damage to the nerves in his hands, while the exchange student was rushed to surgery for internal bleeding.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
“I was so thankful that we all came out okay in the end,” Louie said.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The doctor’s placed a Halo brace on Louie’s neck and told her she had to wear it for four months. Louie went from a long stay at the hospital to a nursing home for rehabilitation.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
“I would say that being in the nursing home was my darkest hour,” Louie said. “I woke up every day in a place I didn’t expect to be in yet and just felt like a caged animal.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Louie stayed positive by praying and by talking to friends, family, coworkers and students that came to visit her.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
“The one thing that helped me get through it all was my family, my coworkers and students,” Louie said. “They encouraged me, brought me flowers and made me feel appreciated.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Louie is an ESL teacher for adults at Highline Community College at the Kent Library. She has been there for several years and says she feels fulfilled by her job.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
“The first time I stepped foot in an ESL classroom, I knew this was my calling,” she said. “I love to help people and I love that moment when you can see them understand something. Their eyes light up, they get so excited and it’s just the best feeling for a teacher when that moment occurs.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Louie’s students couldn’t wait for her to come back to school. Louie worked hard to recover quickly by eating well, getting in regular exercise and resting.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
“I wasn’t about to sit back and let this accident take over my life,” Louie said. “I was going to do everything I could to get better. And it feels good to say I did it.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
It was six months later when Louie felt able to return to work.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
“Staff here have been very inspired to hear about her recovery from her class assistants,” said Andrew Wickens, a Kent Library employee. “When she returned to work, I was amazed at how positive she was, and how energized she appeared to be. She does have some difficulty walking, and continues with her recovery, but has come a very long way. Beyond being a very competent teacher, I\u2019d like to say that Linda is a lovely person.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Louie is thrilled to be back to life as normal.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
“I’m so happy to be back in the classroom and to be doing things I love like bike riding,” she said. “It’s amazing how something like this can make you appreciate the little daily things in life that we take for granted.”<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This year, Feb. 22 wasn’t just a normal day for Kent resident Linda Louie.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":226,"featured_media":3905,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-3904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3904"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/226"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3904"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3904\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3904"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=3904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}