Kissimmee’s Anna Henry says she’s living her best life.
The mother of four is working her way through nursing school — in a way that may not be possible without a lifesaving crew from Kissimmee Fire Department and the HCA Florida Osceola trauma crew on a night three years ago.
Monday afternoon, she was finally able to reunite with many of the people who gave her a second chance at that best life.
Henry was in a gruesome crash around midnight on Oct. 16, 2020, while she was headed home from work at AdventHealth, east on Neptune Road. A box truck ran a red light at Lawrence Silas Boulevard, pinning her Hyundai between the truck and another car in the intersection. Inside her car, Henry was pinned between the door and center console.
The rescue crew from KFD Station 11 worked feverishly but instinctively to extricate Henry from her vehicle. Despite multiple injuries — broken ribs, lacerated spleen and kidney, a pelvis fracture — she was taken to the hospital. After weeks of rehab, she made a full recovery.
Henry and her family thanked the rescue and trauma crews with lunch and snacks at a “mostly surprise” gathering at Station 11 Monday. And, even though the fateful night was nearly three years ago, dispatchers, the crew that worked the accident, hospital staff and even Henry, remembered most of the details “They saved the patient and got a good outcome, so it’s special for us to share this,” Kissimmee Fire Chief Jim Walls said. “When I speak about trauma victims, there’s a chain of care.”
While first responders are largely a fraternity of those who serve without thanks, the KFD crew — Walls ran off a list of 10 KPD personnel across Stations 11 and 14 involved in Henry’s rescue — appreciated Monday’s event, saying, “This doesn’t happen that often.”
HCA Osceola Trauma Medical Director Dr. Dustin Huynh also attended Monday with members of his staff.
”The reason why we do our work is for moments like these,” he said. “We can’t do those things ourselves without crews like (KFD). They did an amazing job taking care of her. All the credit goes to them, it’s part of what I call the ‘hundred hands of trauma.’” Now that Henry has recovered, the pandemic is past and her whole family is together in town — her oldest daughter Anjellica Beyner was stationed in the Navy in Japan when the crash happened, and news was slow getting to her — she wanted to show appreciation to those who saved her life with a lunch, and a collage of photos, including what the mangled car looked like in the crash.
“When you wake up and find out that you live another day after seeing the pictures, you’re here for a purpose,” Henry said. “When the nurses were helping me, I knew at that moment it was my calling.”
Now in the clinical side of medicine to help others like she was helped, she’s completed her Associate’s nursing degree and is looking for a program to enter to start work on her Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree. And her two sons, Bryce and J.J., are interested in entering the fire service and EMT training as a result of what their mother went through.
“What you do doesn’t go unnoticed or unappreciated,” she told the rescue crew.
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