Keltie Knight Opens Up About Her 'Near Death Experience' After a Terrible Car Accident
TV host Keltie Knight revealed she was in a horrible car accident that she calls a “near death experience.”
The Entertainment Tonight host, 36, shared a photo of herself lying in a hospital bed with her arm in a sling on Instagram Thursday.
“Been a little MIA the last two days, but a near death experience will do that to you,” she wrote in the caption. “Thank you to the first responders and incredible surgeons and staff at Saint Joseph Hospital for putting me back together. Bye bye lil’ Mini Cooper. BUT…the big question is…to BLING or not to BLING.”
Along with the photo of herself, Knight also shared a photo of her white mini cooper resting against a black car in a photo of the crash that occurred on Tuesday night.
Knight tells PEOPLE she was driving home after a late night at work when her vehicle and another car collided.
The TV veteran says the experience left her shaken and with a broken arm.
“I just thought, This is it, this is how I go.’ The airbag went off. We hit really hard. I went unconscious, I hit my head on the airbag,” Knight says. “My right hand basically crumpled into my ribs and became slush. When I came to… my arm was literally hanging out of my shoulder socket. I couldn’t lift it, couldn’t move it, it was just dead weight.”
Knight recalls she got herself out of the car and was helped onto the sidewalk by witnesses from nearby restaurants who had seen and heard the crash.
Despite being in tremendous amounts of pain, Knight says she worried about the other driver.
“I didn’t see anyone come out of the car. I was concerned someone was dead,” she says, before adding that a woman later stepped out of the passenger side of the car that she had collided with.
From there, the rest is slightly a blur, as Knight says she was in excruciating pain. She does remember her husband, Chris Knight, drove from their nearby home to the site of the crash to be with her until she was transported to Providence St. Josephs Hospital in Burbank, California.
She underwent surgery and had her arm placed in a cast, although police told her she was “lucky to be alive.”
“I drive a Mini Cooper,” says Knight. “If I’d driven even a foot more, the windshield would have decapitated me.”
Knight says she’s often thought about the possibility of facing a terrible car accident, even though she’s been driving the same streets home from work for eight years without anything going awry before this week.
“I had a premonition that I was going to get into a horrible accident and visualized it in my head,” she reveals. “When I was running into the girl, I thought, ‘This is it.’ And now it’s happening. Essentially, I was in the back of the ambulance, hyperventilating, and my arm is complete mush, soup in my hands. I got rushed to the emergency room, got in the cat scan and I just thought, ‘This is it, I’m done.'”
Knight returned home on Thursday and was treated to bouquets of flowers by several of her friends including Sharon Osbourne, who stepped in for her for ET cohosting duties, and Robin Thicke and April Love Geary.
While Knight is resting, she won’t be sitting still for long. She will be in attendance at Beautycon in New York City on Friday and is facing up to six months in rehab for her arm.
“I need to be busy because every time I stop it’s like a flashback,” Knight says. “I haven’t slept in two days because I keep replaying the crash in my head. I’m not going to be driving in a bit.”
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As for keeping her spirits up, Knight says she’s looking forward to working tomorrow as she already has plans to makeover her new arm sling.
“I’m having my sling bedazzled by the same woman who bedazzles Beyoncé’s shimmer tights,” she says. “The show must go on.”
