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Survival mode: MHS graduate recovers from life-threatening collision in Croatia

T-R PHOTO BY EMILY BARSKE - Maddison Wignall, a 2013 MHS graduate, was involved in life-threatening collision in Croatia in September. She is home recovering now.

Tim Wignall usually starts his day very early in the morning. When he saw his daughter Maddison was calling him at 4:30 a.m. on Sept. 6, he figured it was nothing out of the ordinary. He thought she was calling to check in from her trip in Europe. It would be about lunch time for her with the time difference.

Instead, what he heard on the other end of the line was a parent’s worst nightmare.

“Mr. Wignall, this is Maddison’s friend in Croatia. She’s been involved in an accident. She was on a scooter. She got run over by a taxi and she’s being life flighted to the hospital.”

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At the end of August, Maddison took a vacation to Europe. A 2013 Marshalltown High School graduate and University of Iowa alumna, she works in Chicago at the accounting and consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers and travels the country every week helping insurance companies solve operation challenges with digital solutions.

Contributed photo - Maddison suffered a punctured lung, bruising, two dislocated shoulders and broken bones due to the collision in Croatia.

This trip, however, was her first time overseas and it was a vacation plan she threw together pretty quickly.

The first part of her trip she went to Amsterdam and Lisbon by herself — Maddison went outside of her comfort zone exploring solo. She ended her trip meeting up with five friends in Croatia. They lived aboard a sailboat and traveled between the islands as a part of an organized group tour. Her favorite part was sleeping in a hammock on the boat at night.

On the second to last day, they went to see a view from the top of the mountain that everyone told them they needed to see before they left. They rented scooters to go ride up the mountain which had winding, traverse roads. Maddison was on the back of the scooter with her friend Zach driving.

They turned a corner and met a truck head on. They were run over. Maddison lost consciousness upon contact but regained it and realized she was under a truck. Knowing things weren’t good, she put herself to sleep. When she woke up, she was in the middle of the road, out from underneath the truck.

Passersby and the four other friends had lifted the truck off of her. Being on an island, it took about 40 minutes for emergency crews to arrive at the scene to take them down the mountain. The Croatian Army flew Zach and Maddison to a mainland hospital in an open-air helicopter.

Contributed photo - Maddison poses with Tim Wignall, her dad, after getting out of the hospital in Croatia.

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Maddison laid in a bed, in the KBC Split hospital, staring at the ceiling for a very long time. No one there would talk to her. Some nurses and medical students spoke English, but most of the doctors, nurses and staff spoke little to none. There was not much privacy and hardly any windows.

Throughout the hospital stay, Maddison stayed in survival mode. Reminding herself that the Croatian health care was just different, not better or worse. The best way she could describe it is they were setting her body up to heal itself.

“They don’t come up to you and say ‘Do you know where you are? Is everything OK?” Maddison said. “There’s no bedside manner. Regular people kept walking by and looking at me.”

The emergency room was taking care of Zach first because he faced more life-threatening injuries. He had a ruptured liver and lacerated kidneys. While waiting seemed to be forever, the responders were preparing to evaluate her.

Contributed photo - Maddison's X-ray shows one of the plates put in her elbow in Croatia is crooked. It was later replaced when she got back to the U.S.

Once they did all of her scans, Maddison was brought to a room where she sat on a countertop and two men behind her held in a sitting position with her knees up. Three men on each side of her pulled her arms across her body and set her breaks. Her shoulders were dislocated inward and broken across her like a bear hug. She had a compound fracture on the left humerus and since the arm was twisted 180 degrees inward she could see the bone sticking out of the body and bleeding.

They put a wet towel in her mouth and with no drugs, the men yanked them apart and set the breaks. Maddison described it as something you’d see in a military movie. It was the start of care she’d receive for the next several days as they worked on her injuries, which were mostly skeletal, though she had one punctured lung (both were bruised) and cuts all over.

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Tim’s immediate alarmed reaction after hearing Maddison’s friend on the phone quickly turned to trying to keep calm. They told him she was conscious and alert — he knew she was alive. Her consciousness was enough to offer him some relief, which helped him keep his emotions in check to start working on the situation.

As soon as he got off the call, he called Maddison’s mom — Amy Stone — to let her know what had happened. They decided they needed to split up resources between going to offer Maddison support and staying to get the situation figured out at home.

T-R PHOTO BY EMILY BARSKE - Maddison kept the plate and screws that were put in during one of her surgeries in Croatia. When she returned to Iowa, they replaced the work done on one of her elbows.

Amy and Rob, Maddison’s stepdad, booked a flight and got on a plane that night. With a 24-hour journey, most of it up in the air, Amy had to wait until she got there before she knew her daughter was alive.

Meanwhile, Tim was getting in touch with the U.S. Embassy in Croatia. He didn’t think regular people could just call the U.S. Embassy, but getting ahold of them was fairly easy. Not everything was that easy.

He consulted health care professionals at home and overseas trying to figure out the best care that she could receive. He looked at medical evacuations to potentially get her to a hospital in Germany. It was ultimately decided that because of her punctured lung it was more of a risk to fly than keep her in the Croatian hospital.

When Maddison’s friends did arrive at the hospital — they had to take a two-hour ferry ride from the island to the mainland — they were able to offer more frequent updates. When Amy and Rob arrived, they were also able to provide updates so Tim could consult whomever he needed to so they could get answers.

“Once I knew Maddison was going to survive, I really kind of went into a problem solving mode,” Tim said.

Contributed photo - Despite the accident, Maddison wants to return to Croatia someday.

Amy was able to send photos of the scans and charts — most of them in Croatian — for U.S. doctors to look at. Dr. Chinedu Nwosa from Mercy Medical Center in Des Moines was involved fairly quickly, offering consultation and evaluating the medical information that they could send him from Croatia.

After Tim had figured out that she was receiving the best medical care possible, he figured out logistics like how insurance would work in Croatia. He called Maddison’s job and got everything set up for her to be on short-term disability. He made plans for her to get into Mercy Medical Center as soon as they got back. He helped line up translation.

A GoFundMe page was created to raise money for her expenses and they quickly achieved the goal they set. They are thankful for everyone in the community who stepped up in some way. It took a village to begin the care that was needed.

He flew over on Sept. 18. His suitcase was full of Maddison’s requests — a box of Captain Crunch, a box of Kix cereal and a jar of Skippy reduced fat peanut butter.

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Contributed photo - Maddison is projected to be independent again in four months.

Maddison had three surgeries in Croatia. They put an eight-inch pin in her right shoulder, a plate in left shoulder and a plate in her elbow — all titanium.

The conditions she experienced in the hospital were tough to navigate. You couldn’t talk to a nurse outside of their rounds. While she was waiting for her mom to arrive, she had to shout to get attention. She started with no mobility in her arms, excruciating pain and only her mind to keep calm. She tried to play doctor for herself, keeping as many mental notes as she could. The pain and injuries were very uncomfortable and the foreign surroundings only added to the challenges.

Yet, she said, they took care of her the best they could. She is mindful of the cultural differences and thankful for what they did. They saved her life.

“I tried to keep a pragmatic mindset and be understanding to their staff,” Maddison said. “Understanding and respectful of their culture. Understanding that this is the medical care that they think is excellent and being respectful of that. I didn’t want to be over entitled or overreacting or rude to their staff. That was a big concern of mine.

“Something I told my parents about too is be ready that this is very different and we’re not going to get upset with them … It’s a lesson of being reminded and respectful of other cultures.”

Her journey to recovery felt like starting all over. Many seemingly small milestones, like being able to feed herself, were major emotional moments.

On Sept. 18 she was released from the hospital. Zach was released about the same time — he returned to work last week.

Maddison and her family stayed in an apartment for a few more days before beginning the trip home which was set to include a flight to Germany, a flight to Chicago and a flight to Des Moines. At that point, only Tim and Amy remained with Maddison in Croatia. While the hospital had cleared her to fly, Maddison was still nervous about whether they could be sure.

Her work paid for business class seats for the three of them on the return home Sept. 24, which allowed her more space to be comfortable. All the flight attendants were accommodating, even using the food cart to block off the bathroom since she needed the door to be open because she couldn’t yet go independently. She played Scrabble with her dad to stay calm. After the initial flight, she felt more relief.

Tim said he envisioned more relief would come after landing in Des Moines. But getting home ended up being one of the hardest parts in recovery.

In Croatia, Maddison had been in survival mode. She was focused on living and the necessary healing to go home. But she had psychologically suppressed all the emotion and the trauma she experienced. Because of the anxiety, they checked her into Mercy immediately instead of a few days later like they planned.

“They said to deal and cope with all of that pain and the hospital situation there that I was kind of in a suppressed mental state,” Maddison said. “When I got here it was very overwhelming so we went right to the hospital.”

Mercy first took care of the psychological challenges and addressed the hysteria she was experiencing. She was afraid of being touched because the providers in Croatia didn’t always move her around in the gentlest way. She had flashbacks of the accident.

After taking care of the mental shock, the hospital worked to redo her scans and charts. Before leaving Croatia, the doctors could tell from the photo her parents sent that the elbow plate would need to be redone and had made plans for surgery.

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Maddison is still making progress. She was released from Mercy on Sept. 29. Right now, she still has to be with someone at all times. She goes between her mom’s house in Bondurant and her dad’s house in State Center. Her parents take turns getting her to five therapy sessions a week — three are physical and two are psychological.

“It’s hard to look at her now and know how broken she was,” Amy said.

Maddison has struggled with not having her independence. Since graduating from the University of Iowa in the winter of 2016, she’s lived in Chicago on her own. Though the lack of independence has been tough, she’s enjoyed being home and each day she gets a little bit better. The first day she could dress herself again was a major milestone.

She’s up to about 30 percent mobility in her arms. The doctors project she will be independent again in about four months.

Maddison did not press charges against the driver because she truly believed it was an accident. While the situation is rare, Tim would advise that anyone follow a similar method to how they responded.

“You need someone on the ground there for the emotional side of things,” he said. “And you need yourself or someone you trust to work out everything at home …. Work it from both sides of the ocean.”

They would have lost the first 24 hours of research if Tim had gone immediately, too.

The experience is not scaring Maddison, though.

“I don’t think it’s something you can prepare for,” Maddison said. “I also don’t think it’s something that should scare people from having those experiences. The likelihood of an accident happening is pretty low.”

She’s looking forward to going on another trip soon. She’s not sure where it will be.

“Thank you from me to everyone in the community that has reached out to help my family,” Maddison said.

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Contact Emily Barske at (641) 753-6611 or ebarske@timesrepublican.com

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