Hit By An 18 Wheeler and Survived
October 25, 2018
![Rachael Popejoy Denver Health Trauma Patient](/-/media/images/modules/patient-stories/rachael-popejoy-denver-health-patient.jpg)
By: Rachael Popejoy
The last thing I remember from July 6, 2006, was driving on I-70 and waiting for an 18-wheeler truck to pass me.
It was around lunchtime, a beautiful Friday afternoon, and I was working as a nanny. Myself and the two boys I was watching were heading back from a fun trip to the Denver Zoo. Soon after I merged onto the highway, that’s when everything went black.
![Rachael Popejoy in a coma at Denver Health](/-/media/images/modules/patient-stories/rachael-popejoy-trauma-patient-denver-health.jpg?h=200&w=155&hash=86A329B99644A05EF0E477252B1FE7C7)
The first responders on scene –Denver Firefighters from station number nine and Denver Health Paramedics –rushed me to Denver Health. The expectation was that I was going to be "dead upon arrival" and to get ready to harvest my organs for donation. I credit those firefighters and paramedics, the emergency room doctors at Denver Health, trauma surgeon Dr. Clay Burlew and brain surgeon Dr. Kathryn Beauchamp – who operated on me for more than eight hours while she was eight months pregnant – for keeping me alive.
![Rachael Popejoy Family and Friends](/-/media/images/modules/patient-stories/rachael-popejoy-family-and-friends.jpg?h=155&w=300&hash=E488CFF129DF10B9E49548E6B1A783DF)
My skull was crushed in on one side, and the doctors had to remove my skull plate to relieve swelling in the brain. They operated on both sides of my head. I slipped into a coma. At this point, there was a less than 50 percent chance I would survive the weekend. It was so grim that family and friends came to the hospital to say goodbye to me.
But thanks to Denver Health, I survived all of it.
I would spend the next two-and-a-half weeks in the Intensive Care Unit, not waking up from that coma until July 22, on my 23rd birthday. I call that my “rebirth birthday.” I am truly amazed that I am still here.
![Rachael Popejoy at Denver Health today](/-/media/images/modules/patient-stories/rachael-popejoy-recovery-denver-health.jpg?h=200&w=134&hash=1846E209D3280223901FBDA60681B46F)
After five months of recovery, I relearned how to walk and talk and eventually gained back my memory. I owe it all to the great care I got at Denver Health. I call Dr. Beauchamp my guardian angel.
Note from Dr. Kathryn Beauchamp, who still remembers caring for Rachael all these years later: “Rachael was an amazing story of recovery. I always learn more from my patients and their families than they learn from me. Amazing.”