Global Black Voices: News from around the World
While on a Bahamas cruise to celebrate finishing her degree with her best friend Brooklyn, Hannah Smith suffered life-threatening injuries, including partially severed legs, after falling from the side of a pontoon boat while it was docking and being dragged under its propellers.
Fortunately, two passengers caught her arm and dragged her back on board, but the 22-year-old’s life was in danger as she was taken to the hospital and then airlifted to the United States for the first of many surgeries.
Hannah, a CrossFit enthusiast who was a passionate cheerleader, football player, and track runner, has yet to be physically able to leave her hospital bed and is still mainly in the dark about the severity of her injuries, which include lower body wounds and the loss of both legs.
According to her siblings, Abigail, Rachel, and Joseph, as well as her parents Tracy and Marvin Smith, it is a “miracle” that she is still alive and they hope she will recover after the accident that happened about two weeks ago.
Her parents and Rachel went from their Tennessee home to be at her hospital bedside in Miami, where she recently had her ninth surgery to repair the damage. They also set up a GoFundMe page to raise money for her hospital bills.
“We’re trying to keep her spirits up,” her mother,Tracy, told the Mirror. “She’s in a lot of pain. We’re trying to practice techniques to distract her from it. Encourage her and just try to keep her pushing forward.”
She added, “With the sedations, medications, the trauma, everything, there were also hallucinations, which they tell us is part of coming off sedation. So we have not asked her anything related to [the accident]. We need her focusing on her healing and not trying to remember or trying to relive it.”
Her father added, “Right now we’re trying to keep her in today and moving forward and how bright her future can be. The whole focus is on Hannah…She’s going to have a long journey [to recovery]. It’s a lot of extenuating damages.”
Hannah recently received a top honors degree in arts from Miles College in Alabama. She was excited to travel and move out of her parents’ home into her own apartment. But until she is well enough to be released from the hospital, she will remain there for at least the next six months.
“We’re trying to help her with the emotions, we’re not telling her not to feel her emotion, but we can’t stay there questioning life, questioning God, questioning ‘why me’. We’re working on her emotional stability because we think that that’s the most important thing to help her recover,” said Marvin.
The family is now looking for the two Americans who were at the scene and provided Hannah with the crucial first aid, including putting tourniquets around her thighs to prevent serious blood loss.
“It was a nurse and a firefighter, they didn’t know each other but they were straight in there focusing on applying pressure. I just want to thank them. I would love to be able to talk to them, because they allowed Hannah to make it to the hospital,” Tracy said emotionally.
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Authorities recently speculated that Hannah may have been under the influence of alcohol when he leaped from the boat.
In response, her mother, Tracy, said that her daughter “was not intoxicated.”
“She fell from the boat. It’s hurtful to say she jumped because she did not,” she said, according to the Daily Mail.
Marvin also added that a doctor whom he spoke to ”suggested she was coherent when they first got to the hospital. Everything he said suggested she was not inebriated.”
Tracy remarked, “Do they have fun? Yes. Were they drunk? No. Did she jump? No. Are we completely aware of what happened? No.”
“But could there have been a safety mechanism that was off, was the boat rocking, we are not 100 percent sure of that,” she continued. “There are so many things that could have been happening. I want to know the truth. This was a young woman, happy, celebrating her life and now she’s fighting for it.”
As for her parents, they continue to strive to maintain their calm and provide the greatest assistance they can.
Tracy told the Mirror, “One of the things that she said, with all the things that have happened to her, and it just touched us, it was so prophetic, she said: ‘Mommy, we’re all spirits walking around here and God just loans us a body.’
“Now we’ve got to stay strong for her, so we just try to follow her lead and help her in any way we can, whether that’s emotionally, spiritually, physically helping her, whatever it is.”
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