Inspiring Stories: Lindsey Vonn
Lindsey Vonn doesn’t know if she will ski again, what she does know is that she didn’t want to go out the way she did. The three-time Olympic medalist made her return to the Winter Olympics this February for the Milano-Cortina games, but seconds into her run down the famous course of Olimpia delle Tofane, she crashed and shattered her tibia, fibula, and ankle.
“My leg was broken. My skis were still on. My leg was torqued, and I couldn’t get my skis off. I couldn’t move, and I was yelling for help,” she told Vanity Fair. “I just needed someone to take my skis off.”“It’s so fucked up. I really feel like that was a horrible last run to end my career on.” She continued. “I only made it 13 seconds. But they were a really good 13 seconds.”In a new interview with the magazine, the athlete gets real about the pain—physical and mental—that she experienced, and how she’s doing now.“I was number one in the world, and potentially on my way to an Olympic medal,” Vonn said. “Now I’m in a wheelchair.”Her injuries were so severe that she had to spend weeks in the hospital getting multiple surgeries, and almost lost her left leg.Immediately after the crash, Vonn was airlifted via helicopter to the official Olympic clinic in Cortina, where they gave her painkillers and put her into a CT scan. She recalled, “Halfway through, I started sweating. I was just in such extreme pain. I screamed at the top of my lungs: Get me out. It just wouldn’t dissipate. It wouldn’t let up. It’s seared into my brain.”Dr. Tom Hackett, the head physician for Team USA Ski and Snowboard, then made the decision to transfer her to a hospital in Treviso, Italy, where a team of 20 doctors and nurses were ready for her. But some hours after the first surgery, Vonn woke up in extreme pain once more, and her leg would not stop swelling. “It’s getting worse, and she’s not responding to monster amounts of fentanyl, morphine, oxycodone, like every narcotic you can imagine,” Hackett remembered.Vonn was experiencing compartment syndrome, a dangerous condition where blood flow is restricted and causes widespread nerve damage. “There was a very significant chance that she was going to lose all function of her leg,” he said. But despite his fears, the doctor did his best to keep Vonn calm. “Dr. Hackett was on my left. There were a bunch of doctors and nurses around me,” she recalled. “He said, ‘Don’t worry, I’m going to save your leg. I got this. I’m scrubbing in.’”Vonn went through six surgeries in total, and is so thankful to her team of doctors and nurses, but she still carries the trauma from her stay in the hospitals. “It took everything I had for it to not drive me insane,” she said.Now, however, she is focusing on her physical and mental recovery. She is a champion, after all, and she is not ready to say she is retiring from the sport she loves. “I don’t like to close the door on anything, because you just never know what’s going to happen,” she said. “I have no idea what my life will be like in two years or three years or four years. I could have two kids by then. I could have no kids and want to race again. I could live in Europe. I could be doing anything.”
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