ON THE ROAD TO RECOVERY:Falling safe may have ruined teen’s modeling dreams
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“I’d just like to be able to smile again,” said McDonald during her first interview since she was crushed by a falling safe while working in the sporting goods department at Wal-Mart earlier this year. “I wish I could reverse time.”
McDonald said she remembers parts of the devastating event which occurred while she was helping a customer with a gun safe. McDonald recalled she was reaching up to a keypad at the top of a 357-pound metal gun safe which was resting on a shelf.
“The next thing I know Leonard (Madewell) was telling me the safe just fell on me. I was conscious the whole time,” McDonald said. “My entire body, except for my legs, was inside the safe when it came down on me. There was a smaller safe inside the big safe which hit me in the face when it fell, causing 15 fractures to my face.”
McDonald said Madewell was able to get the safe off her, noting his quick work likely saved her life. Madewell, a long-time employee of Wal-Mart, is now director of the ambulance service and was, at the time of the accident, a veteran emergency technician who had worked many accidents in his career.
McDonald was airlifted from the back parking lot of Wal-Mart and flown to Vanderbilt University Medical Center. She was induced into a coma by medical personnel during her flight given her severe head injuries. This is sometimes done to patients with severe head injuries to limit brain activity and thus reduce swelling.
McDonald said her family was told she would likely not live given her numerous injuries which included the facial fractures, skull fractures, internal injuries including a lacerated liver and broken ribs. Following a week in intensive care, McDonald said she defied the odds and was able to walk out of the hospital.
However, she left with lasting injuries including the inability to close her right eye and paralysis on the right side of her face. It is the paralysis which prevents her from being able to smile on the right, a condition she fears may never be completely corrected.
“I’m just 19 and I may have this for the rest of my life,” McDonald said. “This is something I will have to re-live everyday when people ask me what makes my face like this.”
Compounding her frustration is the fact there is a surgery she said may help the paralysis. Although not completely repairing the damage, McDonald said doctors can perform nerve surgery and perhaps restore some movement to the right side of her face. However, McDonald said doctors are refusing to conduct the surgery for three more months because she is under workman’s compensation. Under its guidelines, there is a six-month waiting period to see if the movement will come back on its own. However, McDonald said there is no chance of that since the damage was caused by trauma and not a stroke.
“I’m getting screwed here,” McDonald said. “By the time they do the surgery, I’m afraid things may be worse and it may not help as much. If I was paying cash, they’d already have done it.”
McDonald, a 2001 graduate of Grundy County High School, said she had been accepted into a modeling agency just before the accident — a dream which has now vanished due to the condition of her face.
McDonald said the whole situation makes her angry given her inability to earn a living or even seek a decent settlement for her injuries. The popular belief she will be able to seek a large settlement against Wal-Mart is wrong, she noted, saying, as an employee, she can only seek a settlement from workman’s comp and not Wal-Mart. The maximum settlement is around $90,000, but McDonald said realistically, given the status of her injury, all she is getting is $600 a month in workman’s compensation. The low amount of compensation, McDonald said, means she will lose her apartment and have to return home to live with her mother.
“I’ve been told I can’t sue for more than 400 pay weeks,” McDonald said. “If this had happened to a customer, they could have sued Wal-Mart for all it had.”
McDonald said local Wal-Mart officials have been nice to her. However, she noted, they have bosses at the corporate office to answer to so they can only do so much. McDonald said her main anger is directed at the company’s risk management.
“The safe should have been secured right in the first place,” McDonald said. “Anyone in their right mind should have known not to put a heavy safe like that on a shelf.”
While angry with the risk management department, McDonald said she will likely return to work at Wal-Mart when she is cleared to return by doctors.
“I have to earn a living and I worked hard to get where I was at Wal-Mart,” McDonald said. “I’d hoped to get into management at Wal-Mart and that was what I was working for. I just hope if I return and do get into management that people don’t look at me and think I got there because of the accident. I’ve worked hard for it.”
A benefit to help offset some of her bills will be held at Centertown CIC at 11 a.m. this Saturday.