Greetings from Domelandia,
After losing track of Lisa for several years, I got a call from her in April of 2020. It was a gift to get her call that day. She and I are close in the way that people are close because they laugh about the same things, like the same music, and enjoy doing the same things. We were fishing buddies--we'd meet up at Ringo's, buy a bunch of lunch food, and head out to whichever lake was calling to us that day. We liked to smoke a bit of plant material and laugh our asses off. Lisa has long blonde hair and a sultry voice. She's beautiful. She is kind, generous, and her heart is wide open. She is very easy to love. Her nickname is LisaJawea, so named by her friends because of her habit of roaming around in wild places.
She told me that she'd been through hell during the time we hadn't talked. She'd had numerous health problems before and after her abusive boyfriend threw her down some stairs.
She moved back to her friend Rick's ranch in Idaho and put her life back together. She was in poor health and suffering from PTSD. She needed a knee replacement, and worked hard for a year and a half, getting her body in shape so the surgery would be successful. She gave herself a break from men and relationships, too. Lisa waited and then met a new guy. He had a beautiful house in northern Idaho. She moved in with him and they began working on the place, putting in a greenhouse, planting flowers, making a home.
It was awesome to hear that she was doing well and had a happy relationship. She was having issues with her knee after the surgery--undissolved stitches that were causing her a lot of pain. She couldn't get the doctor to agree to fix the problem, and that was frustrating to her. We promised to keep in touch, sending texts and photos when we couldn't make time for a phone call. It was awesome to have my friend back.
When I lost my dog Stella in December, I called her. I knew she'd understand because she'd recently lost her best dog friend Jenna. Everything seemed fine then.
Last week she called me. She said, "How are you?" I said, "I'm wonderful! Doing really great!" I said, "How are you?" She said, "A lot's happened since the last time we talked."
She said she'd finally got the knee surgery done to remove the stitches that were causing her grief. She said she and the new guy had called it quits. He told her he loved her but wasn't IN love with her. He told her he was moving to Seattle and she could stay in the house as long as she liked. I said, "Oh my god I'm so sorry." She said, "Wait, there's more."
Lisa told me that soon after she was hit with this major life-changing information, she couldn't reach her mom for their daily phone talks. After two days of no response she found out that her mom was in the Twin Falls hospital many hours away, in the Intensive Care unit with double pneumonia. Lisa decided to have the new guy move her back to Rick's ranch so she could be closer to where her mom was. She arrived at Rick's with her cats and all of her possessions on February 4. I said, "Oh gosh, Lisa!!" Lisa said, "Wait, there's more."
The next day, she was driving to Twin Falls from the ranch when the drive line in her vehicle became separated. She crawled under the car and was able to reconnect it well enough to get there. She said it was making a horrible noise. The transmission was shot. (YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!!!)
On February 6, she and her son Phil (in a different vehicle) were making the 2-hour drive from the hospital back to the ranch. They were in the passing lane on I-84. Suddenly a car came roaring up beside her vehicle, driving in the narrow lane of the highway next to the median. Lisa said he must've been going at least 100 miles an hour. She and her son watched in horror as the driver weaved through traffic, causing havoc. He wasn't slowing down. When he tried to pass a semi on the left, he lost control of the car, which became airborne. Lisa said she lost count of the number of times the car rolled, side over side and end over end. It finally came to rest on the other side of the highway. I said, "Holy shit, Lisa!!" She said, "Wait, there's more."
She turned to her son, and said, "I've got to help." Her son said, "Mom! Your knee!" She said, "I have to. Call 9-1-1 now." She jumped out of the car and limped her way along the median fence, looking for an opening so she could get to the wreck. When she got there she saw that the driver was breathing. She'd worked as an EMT twenty years ago, and told me her training 'just kicked in'. The doors were smashed. She got into the back seat. She said something to me like, "Sue, the right side of this guy's head was separated from the main part of his head and was laying on his shoulder. I looked around in the back seat and found one of those big sponges--you know the kind you use to wash your car. It was still wrapped in plastic. I unwrapped it and used it to hold the man's head together. I stabilized his c-spine and waited for the EMTs to come."
By this time, I'm yelling, OH MY GOD LISA and of course she tells me, "Wait."
People were running up to the car. She told one man to find a fire extinguisher and put out the fire that was threatening to make the car burst into flames. She instructed others to take off the doors so the emergency workers could reach the driver. She told her son to summon Flight for Life. She says Phil protected her while she attended to the injured man, making sure her mask stayed in place and trying to keep blood off of her. She stayed right there until the First Responders arrived.
That happened a week ago. Her Mom is still in the hospital nearby and has told Lisa that she will keep fighting. Hearing that made Lisa happy. She said, "If I get to have my mom for even a few more days, I'll be grateful."
The 21-year-old driver of the car is still alive. She said he knew his name at one point but is in pretty bad shape and is still in the ICU in the big hospital where he was airlifted. She calls every day to see how he's doing.
I told Lisa, "You are a Goddess. You are a Hero. You are Awesome." She says, "No, I think just about anybody would do the same thing. I'm just thankful that I had the knowledge and the courage. And I know God was there."
After she finished telling me all this, I told her, "I'm exhausted!!!" to make her laugh. And she did.
I told her I wanted to write this story so everyone will remember what happened.
