Hello, my name is Lynda Haines Schommer. You are about to read a true accounting titled “BY THE GRACE OF GOD…My Road to Recovery,” of a near-fatal accident I was involved in which changed and saved my life, both physically and spiritually. I invite you to come along with me as I travel back in time, to the memories of a smart, pretty, popular teenage girl who wakes up one day to find her life completely changed, with no recollection of how it happened. When I was 15 years old, I thought I was pretty special. In my Freshman year, I had been on Pom-pom and had a cute boyfriend. What more could I need, right? I had come from a very dysfunctional family and home life, but as far as I was concerned, I had risen above all of that. It never even occurred to me that I should be giving all of the glory to God, for what He had allowed me to become, and to overcome! In the middle of the summer, on July 24, 1986, while riding on the back of my boyfriend’s moped, we were involved in a collision with a car. I don’t remember the accident; God has an incredible way of instantaneously deleting memories of traumatic events from our minds. However, according to witnesses, I flew up and over my boyfriend, hit the car with my head, and hit the ground with my head. I landed on my left wrist, breaking it, and after vomiting, immediately went into a coma. We were rushed to St. Francis hospital in Wichita, KS. My boyfriend suffered a serious concussion, and was in the hospital for three weeks. Though I had internal bleeding, a closed double-head injury and a broken left wrist, I just looked as if I were asleep. I was immediately rushed into surgery, where an exploratory search was preformed on my abdomen, and my head was shaved for an operative inspection. After my brain began swelling, a pressure monitor was inserted to monitor the swelling. I had to be resuscitated twice, at which point a tracheotomy tube was inserted into my throat, as I was unable to breathe on my own. My diagnosis was
