The Long Road to Recovery - Jessi lang on surviving a near - Fatal car crash - The j - Turn ep. 18

One year ago I was involved in a near fatal collision. The accident was not my fault but I'd like to think that even if it had been I'd be sharing this story with you because we're only human and reminding myself of that has been helping me get thru this. August of 2013 was looking like it was gonna be a spectacular month. First I bought a brand new 2013 Subaru WRX. Over the last six years I've gotten to see time in a variety of vehicles on every type of terrain possible and I developed deep appreciation for every driving surface, but there's something I find feverishly fun about mixed terrain and a car that can find its grip in any weather. Rather than compete in a rally I choose an STI but as a daily driver the WRX has all the characteristics I look for in a car. As if that weren't enough two weeks after I bought my precious new car I flew to Germany to tackle a couple big bucket list items starting at the Nurburgring a track so epic it feels sacrilegious to spell its name without the umlaut. Like any enthusiast I've long dreamed attacking the green hill and doing it in an iconic car like say a 2000 Porsche 911 996 GT3. Warned about its tricky gearbox and demanding clutch but the 996 and I got along famously and I enjoyed every gear changing every one of those seventy-plus turns. I would like to spend a full week at the ring but the next day i woke at 4AM and drove 6 hours southeast to meet Bjorn Berak from AP Sports line and to drive the AP Audi R8 GTR. Have you seen this car if you've seen images of this car you'll understand why I was beyond enthused to get my hands on it. First things first if visually stunning half a million dollar prototype and it also won the fastest R8s on earth thanks to APs engineers who increased the horsepower from my 525 to 620 and used carbon fiber to drop 220 pounds of weight. It can reach 202 miles per hour and every inch of it is gorgeous. When we arrived at the location Bjorn showed me all the changes that AP made and we said by to the video crew so that i could go get familiarized with the car. Everything was going absolutely beautifully it was going to be such a good video I even said that to Bjorn we were having a famously great time together feeding off each other's energy and enthusiasm for this amazing machine and eveyrthing was going well until the final mile when we were reminded of the gruesome reality that anyone can do anything at any time. I was in the left lane where quickly moving traffic belongs there was a car in the right lane moving at a much slower pace where more slowly moving traffic belongs and all we had to do was stay in our respective lanes. I did my part but unfortunately the other driver did at all do his. I would say that he cut our line but that would say he was driving in an acceptable speed to overtake us or nearly overtake us. That was not at all the case. Instead at the last possible moment and traveling at maybe a third our speed he careened out into our lane essentially turning his car into a brick wall we could not avoid. I remember Bjorn shouting or screaming something don't think it's words just some gutteral fearful expression and I hard brake like our lives depended on it because they did. Okay this is where it gets rough. So the moment of impact, oh hang on. Ok the moment of impact was in nightmarish explosion and that i relive more times than I can count and I am still pretty deeply haunted by this. sounds and smells and the inertia despite the impact we did not roll tho the other car certainly but we coasted for what felt like a very long time and before we even came to a stop our car was already on fire. I knew I was seriously injured there was pain radiating from my leg in a way I will not even try to describe I immediately began saying oh my god oh my god oh my god. Bjorn shouted we're on fire and our engine was engulfed in flames I can hear and smell and feel but I was so focused on my leg i'd tried to move it I saw it fall im so many different directions and worse than that several bones had broken out through the skin because we were on fire tho we needed to get the hell outta the car. So we both just began unbuckling our belts and reaching for our doors and thank God for that incredible roll cage because each have our doors open within seconds. Without hesitation I threw myself out of the car and the moment I hit the ground I started crawling with my elbows and never stopped for even a second until a woman appeared and picked me up and started running. When we reached a safe distance from the car she lay me down on the road where I began praying to the universe. I could hear people shouting in German and felt more free than i've ever been in my life I didn't know if they can fix my leg and I was terrified by the thought of losing it. When the Medivac arrived the paramedics put needles in both arms began administering morphine and cut off my right shoe and cut my pant leg and secured a tourniquet to stop the bleeding made a splint then for my leg one began treating an injuring in my neck one was pressing my internal organs and that was really the first time it occurred to me that I very likely had more than one serious injury. Then they loaded me into the medivac and after what felt like a very long time we landed at the hospital. I was rushing to 100 fluorescently let operating room and quickly surrounded by strangers in surgical masks. There were two doctors on my feet who at the same time begin cutting off my clothes both legs at a time which I never knew it happened like that and I remember thinking in this deeply serious way that this was total *** but if you end up in this room in this scenario you're not supposed to be awake and I had just never so desperately wish that I wasn't. In addition to having trouble speaking I was also up against the big language barrier because although I'd learn some German words and phrases prior to my trip do not cut off my leg was not one of them so I gestured and begged a best I could I would not wake without it. Because I was conscious the law required that I sign forms before my surgery but I had no fine motor skills like couldn't hold the pen let alone write my name. The last thing I remember before being anaestetized was surgeon holding my hand around the pen and dragging my arm across the page. I have no idea how many hours or days later I woke up in the intensive care unit when I woke up I was my chest was covered electrodes and my arms and my hands were covered in needles and i felt pain everywhere. My tibia had been broken in half and both parts had broken through the skin and I had a compound fracture of the fibula. So the German surgeons implanted a titanium rod through my tibia and secured it with three screws and did what they could to line up the pieces of fibula. I also damage my patella and meniscus had a severe concussion, rib contusions, whiplash, and lacerations. I was bleeding internally and I damaged quite a few major organs but the most serious injury I sustained was a traumatic dissection of my left internal carotid artery. One of the the only arteries to transport blood to the brain in which is responsible for the pulse you feel on the side of the neck. Severing this artery can kill you or cause life-threatening blood clots and it's the most common cause of stroke in young adults. I stayed in intensive care for I think three days and was moved to a hospital room just in time for my family's arrival. I really don't wanna talk much about the hellish week so I spent in hospital but suffice it to say they were among the worst weeks of my life. I was attached to a morphine pump and half a dozen IV's I spent each day undergoing countless tests and scans and medical procedures and I was in more pain than I knew how to process. When I got back to the states at the end of September my life became an endless succession of doctors appointments and every day revolved around pain management. I woke up crying every day because even the *** meds didn't bring me much relief. I've never experienced pain of that magnitude that lasted for so long. Much like September, October through December were pretty horrifying I was bedridden unable to do anything for myself and my pain didn't let up at all. The worst part was I still needed another major reconstructive surgery on my fibula on December 30th I learned I'd be having surgery on New Year's Eve but by this time the broken pieces of fibular had improperly fused together and the surgeon would rebreak them before realigning them and secure them with a second titanium rod. Everyone told me it would be nothing like the first thing you went through its gonna be a lot easier. When I awoke in the recovery room the pain I felt it kinda paralleled the pain I felt in my leg after the accident occurred and i felt like I was back at the starting line of my recovery despite that I was four months in. So January and February were a lot like September through December constant pain, lots of crying, wheelchair-bound, bed bound, and alone. In mid-march they took off my final cast put me in a boot, granting permission to weight bear which I was ecstatic about. But after seven months of the immobility I had severe atrophy and I couldn't even move let alone lift my leg. I couldn't wiggle my toes everything I asked it to do it would not respond. Physical therapy was incredibly frustrating I cried at many sessions I will be going physical therapy for years to come and I still cry sometimes. Because it's painful and also because it's incredible frustrating. I have always been an incredibly active person I played pretty much every sport I was an equestrian til I was 6 or 7 was on the swim team, I was a barrel racer, have played softball, basketball, baseball, volleyball, mountain climbing, practice Jiu-Jitsu, Muay Tai, I love mixed martial arts, hapkido, kickboxing you name it and I don't really know how many of those physical skill sets I'll be able to regain but I'm going to do my damnedest to get each and every one back. At the same time there's some sincere limitations that I will not be able to fight and I'm learning to accept after two surgeries seven incisions, 100 stitches, two rods, three screws and a knew that now faces west it's quite possible I might not ever be able to heal for a rev match or at least I won't be able to without a custom pedal. I've been practicing on my I-racing peddles since my cast was removed and it's just a constant struggle to build up the muscle to push through the pain to regain use of my leg to walk again. I've only been back at work and driving for a couple months and it is great to be back but in a couple weeks I have to have a third surgery on my leg and while that breaks my heart a bit I'm really glad I got to spend half a dozen weeks doing what I truly love again like driving this 1969 Camaro Z28 from the original Trans Am Series. Despite how awful this whole ordeal has been my job allows me not only to drive incredible supercars but to be myself indulge my passions and share it all with you. People ask me how I broke my leg I tell them in one of the best ways possible.