When fierce winds whipped across Metro Vancouver in August, Bobbi Gillcash stopped to help.
She was clearing debris from the road, trying to make it easier for people to get out of the storm snapped trees around the Lower Mainland, when one of those trees came down on her.
“I heard a crack, looked up and this massive tree -- this huge tree is just coming down right on us,” Andrea Gillcash, Bobbi’s daughter, told CTV News at the time of the incident.
She was rushed to hospital in critical condition, her spine broken in more than one place. Doctors gave her a 15 per cent chance of survival.
But today, Gillcash has not only survived, she has recovered far more quickly than expected.
“I’m motivated,” the woman who was still unable to speak a week after her injury told CTV News on Sunday. “I’m like go, go, go.”
Her plan is to leave G.F. Strong Rehabilitation Centre in Vancouver at the end of January and live on her own.
It’s an ambitious schedule, but one she’s confident she can make.
“The hospital figured I’d be there six months to a year and I was only there two months,” she said. “I totally blew the doctors away.”
The injuries she sustained in the accident will permanently alter Gillcash’s life. She suffered a brain injury in addition to the spinal cord injuries that will prevent her from ever walking again.
But for all the trauma it caused, the accident has also become a new start for Gillcash, who had recently become homeless and was living in a tent when the tree fell on her.
“I’m very grateful to be alive, and I think I’ve very, very lucky,” she said.
Now, a fund has been set up at TD Canada Trust to help her in her recovery. She’s even had an offer from a company to build ramps in the home where she will live when she gets out of rehab.
Gillcash doesn’t remember the accident that changed her body forever, but she says it hasn’t changed the person she is inside.
“Just because i'm in a chair, doesn't mean i'm not going to help people,” she told CTV News. “It's the way i was prior and i'm still going to stay like that.”
With files from CTV Vancouver’s Michele Brunoro
