ASU Student in Crash Sinks Into Medical Expense Despair

Sarah Whiddon has no memory of the car crash that dramatically changed her life on Aug. 6 in Runnels County.

“It looked like blowout,” she was told by her boyfriend, Zac Coit, who witnessed the crash in his rearview mirror on F.M. 3115 at mile marker 337. But for nearly a month after the crash, the cause remained a mystery.

Now the ASU student has had to put her life on hold as she fights to recover from numerous incapacitating injuries sustained in the crash.

“It happened around noon,” Whiddon’s mother, Laurie Whiddon said. “She’s not sure what happened. She lost control, and knows that the truck flipped at least twice and then she was evidently unconscious. She was actually following her boyfriend…he came back to her because he saw her in his rearview mirror.”

When Coit rushed back to Whiddon’s Ranger, he immediately dialed 911 and an ambulance was sent to the crash site. Due to the location out in the county, it was nearly an hour before the medical team arrived, Whiddon said, and Sarah Whiddon was then immediately rushed to a local hospital, where she received treatment for the next several hours.

Once in the hospital, doctors determined that Whiddon’s lungs had been punctured, her pelvis was broken, she had a broken shoulder, a dislocated knee and several broken bones in her left leg, her mother said.

Due to the severity of the break in her pelvis, Whiddon had to be flown to Parkland Hospital in Dallas, where a team of doctors was better equipped to work on her injuries. Four units of blood had to be given to the teenager before she landed in Dallas, and because the helicopter was out for repair, she was put on an airplane to Parkland.

“She spent 15 days in Parkland between emergency room and ICU and then rehab,” Laurie Whiddon said. “She went through rehab the last week of her stay in the hospital…just learning how to do, with occupational therapy and physical therapy, learning how to get out of her bed and into a wheelchair, how to get out of the wheelchair and into a potty chair and into the bath with a bath bench.”

While in the hospital, news from the Texas Department of Public Safety arrived at Whiddon’s mother’s house: the crash investigation had been completed. As a result, Whiddon was ticketed for failure to stay in a single lane, a citation that costs $152 in Runnels County.

Efforts to obtain the crash report had been fruitless until recently, and when the family received the traffic ticket they responded with shock and disbelief. Up until then, they had still considered that the crash might have resulted from a blowout.

“It was an insult to her injuries,” Laurie Whiddon sighed. “I know you’re supposed to keep control of your vehicle at all times, but no one had contacted us and told us about the investigation in detail as to what happened. We still don’t know if it was a blowout.”

On Aug. 29, LIVE! was able to obtain a synopsis of the crash report, which describes Whiddon leaving the road on a turn, then jerking back to return to her lane, causing her to cross both lanes of traffic and enter a ditch, where she overcorrected again, rolling the vehicle. 

In the interim of uncertainty, Whiddon and her family sought to plead ‘not guilty’ for the traffic offense, but were promptly told it would not be an option, as a not guilty plea requires one to show up for court, which is currently not possible given Whiddon’s physical condition.

Whiddon has received an extension on the ticket, and the family hopes to pursue deferred adjudication.

"Everything just comes at once," Laurie Whiddon said.

On Aug. 21, Whiddon was discharged from Parkland Hospital and returned to her mother’s house in Fort Worth. “It took 45 minutes to get home from the hospital on the 21st and she was in tears by the time we got home, just the bumps in the road hurt so badly,” her mother explained.

Back at home, Whiddon’s life has been put on hold. Relegated to a wheelchair and reliant on the help of her mother and family, she is unable to work and will have to take a break from her studies at ASU, likely for two semesters.

“She has to depend on people,” her mother explained. “She can’t just get up and go to the bathroom herself, we have to help her. She can’t shower by herself. She really can’t do anything by herself. I guess, same here. I have to make sure I’m here or someone is here to help her every minute if she needs something.”

In three to four months, Whiddon will have to have a complete knee reconstruction. Currently, she’s doing therapy at home for her broken leg, and waiting for her injuries to heal so that she can once again undergo surgery.

“Three of her ligaments are messed up in her left knee,” Laurie Whiddon said. “They’re waiting for a bone to heal that broke because that’s where the ligaments attach to. So they said probably in about three to four months they’ll be able to do a complete knee reconstruction.”

Unable to work, the medical bills are mounting for the former Texas Roadhouse waitress and her parents, who are helping her through the recovery. At least another year of therapy, surgeries, x-rays and follow-ups is to come as her bones heal and she becomes more self-sufficient.

So far, the family hasn’t received many of the invoices for medical expenses, however the cost of the flight alone was enough to stress the young student and her family to the point of despair.

“I’m overwhelmed,” Laurie Whiddon said. “We got our first bill in and that’s just from the air flight from San Angelo to [Dallas] and it was $47,000.  Sarah doesn’t have insurance. She’s 19. She was on Medicaid and she tried to apply for Obamacare and she was denied because she didn’t make enough money. At that point we called to find out what we could do about not having insurance or Medicaid and they said, ‘well, you just don’t have to pay a penalty for not having insurance’. So that’s where we are. We have no insurance, we have no—nothing. And in the hospital in Dallas, because we’re not a Dallas resident, we have no funding available for us.”

In order to help raise funds to support Sarah, her uncle, Ray Whiddon, set up a fundme account titled “Sarah is Strong”. So far, 21 supporters have raised some $710, however the sum falls greatly short of what the family will need to make a dent in the expenses.

“Anything and everything will help, nothing is to small....please help…” Ray Whiddon posted in the comments section of the site on Aug. 8. Since then, family members have posted two updates on her condition and continue to seek support and prayers.

Thursday, Whiddon went to her most recent follow-up and had her stitches removed, her mother said. Over the next several months she’ll have to pay the doctor a monthly visit to have x-rays done to make sure everything’s healing correctly.

To contribute to Sarah's recovery, follow the link here.