Brieonna Cassell spent almost a week in a ditch, suffering from serious injuries, while an entire community searched for her.
Cassell spoke with ABC7 after she was recently discharged from the hospital after more than a dozen surgeries to save her life and her legs.
"One of the first things I told myself was, 'Alright, you gotta stay calm, because if you freak out, it's not going to help you,'" Cassell said.
She said she had calm despite excruciating pain. Cassell had compound fractures in both legs and her forearm, and numerous broken ribs and vertebrae. She had fallen asleep at the wheel on a rural Newton County road under the cover of darkness.
"My car ramped up, it smacked into the embankment on the other side, it crunched like an accordion," Cassell said. "It threw my body into the floorboard."
Cassell thought she'd be found by sunrise, but her car was deep in the ditch hidden from view of the road. Her phone, thrown from her cupholder during the crash, laid just a few feet away.
"I mean, I felt it. It was at my fingertips," Cassell said. "I was able to reach over and touch it, but I kept pushing it farther, I couldn't grab it."
She used a pair of jeans to soak up water in the shallow creek at the bottom of the ditch to stay hydrated, fighting each day and night to stay alive. A 41-year old mother of three, she said it was her family that gave her strength.
"My kids are, my kids are most, that's who I was really worried about," Cassell said. "I wasn't leaving my babies."
When she woke up on the sixth morning still trapped, she said she knew time was running out.
"I said, 'I've done everything that I can think of. I cannot get out of here alone. You have to let somebody see me or I'm not going to make it out,'" Cassell said. "And it wasn't even an hour later that Jeremy pulled up."
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A local volunteer fire chief was alerted by his employee of Cassell's car. He called 911, and Cassell was airlifted to Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, where she endured 13 surgeries.
"I get emotional talking about all that too, because if it wasn't for them, I wouldn't be here," Cassell said.
ABC7 talked to Cassell on Wednesday, three months to the day she was found in the Newton County ditch. She's not back on her feet yet, but said it's only a matter of time before she's walking again.
In the meantime, she's working on publishing a book detailing her harrowing ordeal.
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