She was hit by a drunk driver on I-83, got out to help, was hit by a car & lost both legs

On April 16, 2022, a Saturday, Oni Slacum was driving home to York from her job as a catering manager in Maryland when her life changed.

After finishing with work, she picked up her sister, who had spent the evening in Baltimore, and was driving home on Interstate 83 near Timonium when it happened. It was about 1 a.m.

“I was just driving when the next thing I knew, my car was spinning,” she recalled. “I told my sister, ‘We got hit.’”

A Honda Civic slammed into the rear of her Kia Sportage. The impact was so violent that her SUV was propelled half-a-mile down the highway before coming to a rest. She learned later that the driver of the Honda was doing 99 mph when he hit her car.

When she emerged from the car and checked on her sister, she looked at her Sportage. “It looked like a truck hit me,” she said. “The damage was that bad.”

She was OK, though, a miracle considering that her car was reduced to twisted metal and shattered plastic and glass. She thinks now it was the copious amounts of adrenaline coursing through her bloodstream that kept her alert and feeling well.

She encountered the driver of the Civic, who told her, “I’m drunk.” He also told her that he was worried about his girlfriend, who was trapped in the wreckage of the Civic, pinned under the passenger-side dashboard.

Oni went to help the girl, and perhaps switch on the Civic’s hazard lights to alert other drivers. Four other cars became entwined in the crash, hitting her car or one another trying to avoid the obstacle created by the wreck.

As she stood by the Civic, another car, driven by a man distracted by his phone, hit her, pinning her to the Honda. She was trapped. She was screaming. She yelled to her sister that she couldn’t feel her legs. Her sister told her, “You don’t want to see your legs now.”

A moment later, she fell to the pavement.

She lost consciousness briefly. When she came to, lying on the pavement, she saw a tractor-trailer careening toward her. She yelled to her sister to help her. Her sister dragged her to the shoulder and under the guardrail. At the last moment, the truck driver turned and stopped, blocking the highway so other traffic could not compound the vehicular mayhem that had occurred.

Within minutes, she was surrounded by EMTs. She said, “Don’t let me die.”

Then she passed out.

'Keep fighting'

Oni, a 32-year-old mother of an 8-year-old daughter, told the story Tuesday afternoon in the spacious gym on the second floor of WellSpan’s Surgery & Rehabilitation Hospital, south of York, adjacent to the Apple Hill Medical Center.

She had returned to the hospital to speak to the team that helped her survive and continue living after the crash. The staff of physical therapist and doctors and others gathered around and listened to her story, part of a program to commemorate Limb Loss Awareness Month.

While she spoke, the room was silent as she told her story, describing what happened to her that early morning on the interstate and her journey from lying on the shoulder and asking the EMTs to save her life to where she is now.

As she spoke, seated in her wheelchair, a flat-screen television mounted on the wall above her displayed a quote from her: “Some advice to others that are going through the same situation is to keep fighting. It does get easier. Sometimes you just have to do it.

“This experience is my new lifestyle.”

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'Easy sailing'

Two weeks after the crash, Oni woke in the University of Maryland Medical Center’s R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore to learn that, in addition to having a fractured spine, she lost both legs above the knees. “I found out I didn’t die,” she said, “but I lost my legs.”

She said, “I don’t know that I processed it. There were some long days. It was just unreal.”

Before working as a catering manager, she had worked for eight years for an orthotics and prosthetics company. She knew that she had options, that she’d be able to walk again.

“Emotionally,” she said, “once I accepted it, it was easy sailing from there.”

Except when it wasn’t.

'How do I get up?'

She immediately began physical therapy, learning how to live without her legs. It was hard. Just sitting up was difficult; her center of gravity had changed, she said. With practice, she said she learned how to sit up. “Look what I can do,” she told herself.

The toughest part, she said, was the phantom pain, caused when her brain believes that the limbs she lost still exist and “it felt like bugs were on me.” She has had no phantom pains for about eight months, she said. She considers herself lucky in that regard. Others still feel the pain for years.

She dove into physical therapy, seven hours a day. One of her therapists, Erin Long, who also serves as coordinator for WellSpan’s acute rehab program, described Oni as “an ideal patient from day one” and “a rock star.”

The road back was long, Oni said. But she was motivated. She wanted to be there for her daughter and live the life she wanted to live. She likes being independent. She even bristles when family members try to do light housekeeping around her house. And while she appreciates the help she gets, she prefers to be able to do things on her own.

It was a tough lesson, though. She recalled that her first day home she fell and couldn’t get up. “How do I get up?” she asked herself. “It was something I didn’t work on. I had to think how to get myself up off the ground.”

She did.

'Just do it'

Oni is back to work as a catering manager, arranging staffing and organizing events. She drives herself, having learned to drive a car equipped with hand controls. She goes to the gym several times a week and swims. She took up boxing, which she loves. “Just getting back to life” is how she describes it.

It’s been an emotional journey, she said.

She recalled her second day at WellSpan’s rehab hospital. She was in the bathroom and just began crying. She felt defeated.

Then, she said, she looked at herself in the mirror.

“Just do it,” she told herself. “I just have to do it. Just don’t give up.”

Columnist/reporter Mike Argento has been a York Daily Record staffer since 1982. Reach him at mike@ydr.com. 

This article originally appeared on York Daily Record: Oni Stacum lost 2 legs in a crash; 'Just do it. Just don't give up.'