{"id":30413,"date":"2017-10-04T09:58:31","date_gmt":"2017-10-04T13:58:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/?p=30413"},"modified":"2020-09-25T15:10:33","modified_gmt":"2020-09-25T19:10:33","slug":"ashley-ruelland-met-instant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/healthy-tomorrows\/ashley-ruelland-met-instant\/","title":{"rendered":"When Ashley Ruelland met her \u2018instant\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two-and-a-half years after a head-on collision, Ashley Ruelland is regaining her life.<\/em><\/p>\n

Life can change in an instant. Ashley Ruelland lived to tell the story of her \u2018instant.\u2019<\/p>\n

Ruelland, who recently shared her inspiring story at The Ottawa Hospital Foundation\u2019s President\u2019s Breakfast event, had been living in an apartment with her two cats. Then 27, she was busy working as a construction manager, working part-time as an office administrator, and had started a catering business. She had never really been sick, and had no idea where the Civic Campus of The Ottawa Hospital was located.<\/p>\n

All that changed on Friday, March 13, 2015.<\/p>\n

She was driving the bride-to-be and another friend to a bachelorette party in Mont Tremblant. It was a clear day and the three were brimming with excitement.<\/p>\n

About an hour from their destination, on Highway 323, a car crossed over the centre line, head on into their lane. That was Ruelland\u2019s \u2018instant.\u2019 The noise from the impact was horrific, with the earth-shattering sound of grinding metal and fragmenting glass.<\/p>\n

Miraculously, one of the first people on the scene was a resident from The Ottawa Hospital. She quickly assessed how serious Ruelland\u2019s injuries were. It took first responders over an hour to extricate her from the car. She was rushed to the Hull Hospital, but because of the severity of her injuries, she was transferred to the region\u2019s only trauma centre at The Ottawa Hospital Civic Campus.<\/p>\n

While her friends had relatively minor injuries, Ruelland had a grocery list of broken bones: from her right big toe to her ribs and just about everything in between. Most significant were an open compound femur fracture, an open left elbow fracture, right humerus fracture, crushed and broken left and right foot and ankle fractures, an open-book pelvis fracture, and multiple broken lumbar vertebrae.<\/p>\n

\"Ashley<\/p>\n

Ashley Ruelland spent nine months in The Ottawa Hospital recovering from her injuries, which included a long list of broken bones. Visitors included her mother, Cheryl Ruelland-Jackson (left); therapy cat Pecan, of Therapeutic Paws of Canada; and her brother, Robbie Ruelland.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThis lady\u2019s life changed forever that day,\u201d said Dr. Guy Hebert, Head of the Department of Emergency Medicine, when he looked at the hundreds of files related to Ruelland\u2019s surgeries and treatment.<\/p>\n

She remained in an induced coma in the Intensive Care Unit for two months. She endured numerous reconstructive surgeries, 100 hours of orthopaedic and internal surgery, and over 100 blood transfusions and infections.<\/p>\n

Four months after the crash, she began physiotherapy in her hospital bed and could finally eat solid food. She had lost all of her hair and had severe nerve damage, chronic illness myopathy and neuropathy.<\/p>\n

\u201cI couldn’t feed myself, brush my own teeth or move much at all,\u201d she said. \u201cThe first couple of weeks seemed like torture. The nurses would set little goals, like sitting up in my wheelchair for 20 minutes a day. The physiotherapist and occupational therapist didn\u2019t know if I\u2019d ever walk again. I was scared to think of the life that was waiting for me outside those hospital walls.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her first real sign of recovery came a few weeks later when she was able to feed herself.<\/p>\n

In August 2015, Ruelland moved to The Ottawa Hospital Rehabilitation Centre at the General Campus, where she began an intensive regime of physical, occupational and psychological therapy programs. Just before Christmas, nine months after the accident, she left the hospital.  Although she was in a wheelchair and hadn\u2019t made many functional gains, she felt stronger and healthier.<\/p>\n

\"Ashley<\/p>\n

A year-and-a-half after her \u2018instant,\u2019 Ashley Ruelland was able to walk with a walker.<\/em><\/p>\n

The young woman continued as an outpatient with rehabilitation, and had her last surgery in February 2016, which allowed her to transfer from her bed to chair, independently.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn May 2016, I stood independently for the first time,\u201d she said.  \u201cAnd after many more weeks of painful standing and walking in the hospital\u2019s therapy pool, I started to walk with the aid of a harness within the parallel bars. By the end of the summer, I was able to move with a walker.\u201d<\/p>\n

More than two years later, Ruelland is walking again. In fact, not only is she walking but she\u2019s also travelling, recently returning from Ireland. She\u2019s also in school and looking to buy a home.<\/p>\n

She often reflects on her life-altering \u2018instant\u2019 and is eternally grateful for the exceptional care she received at The Ottawa Hospital. \u201cWithout it, I wouldn\u2019t be here today.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ashley Ruelland was driving to a bachelorette party in Mont Tremblant in 2015 when another car crossed the centre line and hit her head on. Her road to recovery included nine months in The Ottawa Hospital\u2019s Intensive Care Unit, Trauma Unit and Rehabilitation Centre, and continues to this day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":30416,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[381,171,407],"class_list":["post-30413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-healthy-tomorrows","tag-patient-experience","tag-rehabilitation","tag-trauma-care"],"acf":[],"wps_subtitle":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30413"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30413\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}