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Kim Whitton, the former Azle city secretary, is a very lucky young woman.
She is unemployed right now but a year ago, she almost died in a motorcycle accident.
Her husband Warren was driving the cycle on July 10 when, for some reason that neither of them can remember, it crashed. Both were severely injured. Neither was wearing a helmet, she recalled this week. “Everything is coming back together,” she said with a cheery smile. “I can laugh and I can talk.”
But doctors told the couple they were “four minutes from death” when they arrived at JPS Healthcare of Fort Worth as “John and Jane Doe,” Whitton said. The couple were riding with friends when the accident occurred. One of those friends left the scene of the accident, and although the other remained, emergency personnel did not know the Whittons’ names. “Someone found my cell phone and dialed ‘Mom,’” from the directory, Whitton said. “That’s how they found out who we were.” Kim was in a coma for three weeks, she said. Warren was in a coma for 40 days. “At first, no one knew if we would live,” she added. “Then, doctors told my parents I probably wouldn’t walk again.” She breaks into a big smile at that, because she had just successfully scampered across a parking lot and into the Azle News office in strappy little sandals. She has come a long way. “I had to re-learn everything,” she said. She and her husband went through separate recovery and rehabilitations because they were covered by different insurance providers, she said. His injuries were also severe, and the couple have been separated from their two daughters for more than a year. They are working with a counselor to “reintegrate” each child with her parents, Kim said. The children have been under the temporary guardianship of Kim’s parents, but she is anxious to have them back before the older one starts school in late August. “They need to be home,” Kim said. She acknowledges that “there have been hurt feelings” within the family, including the two small girls, a four year old and a 10 year old. Her youngest recently asked her “why” she had gone for a ride without a helmet, Kim said ruefully. “I told her it was a stupid mistake,” she said. Warren’s recovery has been equally remarkable, Kim said. “He took an annual exam to renew his electrician’s license and passed it” while he was recovering from his injuries, she said. The impact of their crash caused their unprotected heads to smack into each other – a frontal lobe in her brain was damaged, while two lobes in his brain were damaged in the back, she said. The damage left her without some memories of her past, she said. She also faces one more surgery, to repair damage in her inner ear, which will occur early in August. “It doesn’t matter what happened exactly,” Kim said this week. “Why go over it and over it?” Kim and Warren will both be able to return to work at some point in the future, she said. “They told us not to worry about that right now,” she said. The family received lots of support and assistance from her colleagues at the City of Azle, which maintained her status as an employee through the end of the year. She received accumulated sick leave and vacation time, which lasted until short term disability insurance “kicked in,” City Manager Craig Lemin said this week. She was also eligible for long-term disability insurance. Many of her co-workers within the city helped her family, especially the children, with gifts and other remembrances during the year, she said. “People at the city were so generous,” she said. |
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