A Korean athlete told the story of how a motorbike traffic accident gave her an amputated arm, fractured cervical spine, and thoracic spine
Fitness athlete Kim Na-yoon talked about a past traffic accident that changed her life.
Kim Na-yoon‘s daily life as a fitness player with only one hand was revealed on TV Chosun’s “Star Documentary My Way”, which aired on March 20th.
Kim Na-yoon, who worked as a hair designer before the accident, said,
“I started in the beauty industry when I was 17. I lived with work as my top priority. I even thought I was destined to do that job. In 2018, an accident occurred when I was 27. I remember everything because I didn’t lose my memory at the time of the accident. It was the beginning of the heatwave. It was extremely hot. Due to the nature of my job in the beauty industry, vacations and holidays are not long, so I used my holiday days to leave Chuncheon with a light heart while thinking about traveling somewhere near Seoul. My transportation was a motorcycle. I slipped on the national highway and rolled over.”
“I thought I had just fallen down, but I couldn’t get up. A friend of mine came and cried, saying I didn’t have arms anymore. I wondered if I had heard it wrong. When I touched this side, I felt that I had no real arm there and I couldn’t move. My arm was amputated and flew away, and I couldn’t get up because I had 19 fractures from the cervical spine to the thoracic spine. I though my arm was going to rot. I asked my friend to find my arm because I thought it shouldn’t rot to an extent that I couldn’t re-join it, and my friend went to find it. I went to the emergency room nearby.”
She said,
“I heard that there was a difficulty in surgery due to too much damage to my arm, although it was not delayed enough to cause necrosis. The joint surgery was successful, but it was amputated again due to sepsis. The left hand is a very important role for hairdressers. Most of the time, the hair length and angle are adjusted with the left hand. I felt like my goals, dreams, and everything I have done so far was collapsing. Then the frustration began. I cried a lot. I wonder hat If my transportation was not a motorcycle, who was at fault, and why this happened to me. I didn’t think of those questions anymore because I thought it would be the right answer not to think like that. I was grateful, because if it was my throat which was damaged, I would have died immediately. I’m right-handed, that’s why I was rather grateful that my left arm was amputated.”
