Sarah Ruggiere

“At the time of the crash, the emergency surgery that was performed on me had a zero percent success rate.”

My name is Sarah Ruggiere. In Dec 2019, I was walking down the sidewalk when a drunk driver came up onto the sidewalk and hit me after she hit a city pole. 

It happened in a busy part of downtown Portland, OR, so there were a lot of witnesses, and some of them stayed with me until the paramedics showed up. 

The paramedics did everything they could to keep me alive before they got me to the hospital, but I was dying. 

They had to perform an emergency cricothyrotomy surgery to create an airway.

At the time of my crash, this surgery had zero success rate in Portland. 

Still, the paramedic, Nolan Gerety, performed it flawlessly and saved my life because of his work. 

Months later, he would receive a Star Of Life award because of this surgery that saved me. Only 40 paramedics received this award out of 40,000. He would also use my case and his experience to train other paramedics to increase the survival rate of the surgery. 

Upon arrival at the hospital, my face was “destroyed,” I had a broken knee, and my skull was cracked. 

When I think back, my focus was on every other injury. It wasn’t until I was home from the hospital that my focus was on my eye. 

I remember the doctors told me that I had a cut in my eye. 

In the first few days in the hospital, the doctors were monitoring my eye in hopes of saving it, but it wasn’t possible. My eye removal surgery was able to happen at the same time as the surgery to fix all the broken bones in my face and jaw. 

I believe I was extremely lucky here - one round of anesthesia and only one surgery to be worried about. 

Because so much of society is focused on appearance, I remember worrying about what my elementary students and colleagues would think of me or what they would notice. 

I didn’t feel confident or beautiful until 1 year later. 

Finding the one-eyed community on Instagram and especially seeing Christina King, my ocularist in Portland, was extremely helpful in being confident in my one-eyed self. 

Hand-eye coordination and depth perception are challenging with monocular vision, but I’m overcoming all odds and taking it one day at a time.

It took a year to recover from the physical injuries, but this trauma will be with me forever. 

My scars are permanent reminders of what happened. 

In the end, all I would like to say is that this was a crash and NOT an accident. 

Many intentional decisions were made that night that led to specific outcomes. No part of that night was an “accident.” 

Instead of saying “accident,” let’s use the appropriate term and name it what it really is: a “crash.”

If you or someone you know is going to be drinking alcohol, make sure that there is a sober designated driver so that this doesn’t happen to someone else.