Manitoba mom who survived frigid crash learning to live on new legs
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A Manitoba mom is re-adjusting to life after losing her lower legs to frostbite.
Kristen Hiebert and her four-year-old daughter Avery survived a night in the freezing cold six months ago after their car rolled down a steep embankment near Dunrea, Man.
Hiebert suffered a broken arm, lost her shoes and her cellphone was nowhere to be found on the -20C night.
She managed to pull Avery out of the wreckage and tried to yell for help but no one could hear or see her as she and the little girl clung to each other in the snow.
At dawn, she managed to drag herself up the snowbank and wave down a motorist, but in the hospital, both her legs had to be amputated below her knees because of frostbite.
Hiebert says she now has a greater appreciation for spending quality time with her daughter after the life-changing crash.
“I had to get up that hill,” Hiebert says. “Either we were going to die down there, or I was going to get up and I didn’t want to be the reason why we died down there.”
She got prosthetics in June and spends about an hour each day learning how to use her new legs.
She says she’s just grateful she and her daughter are still alive and still together.
“Every day I just tell myself we’re both here,” she says. “She’s OK, I may not be all there but I’m here for her.”