A North Texas teenager says she's thankful for the life she has after surviving a more than 3,000-foot fall last year in an Oklahoma skydiving accident.
Sunday marked the one-year anniversary of 17-year-old Makenzie Wethington's skydiving mishap in which her parachute became tangled and she said she blacked out during the descent.
Wethington told KXAS-TV Monday that she's working hard on her recovery, but still suffers from frequent migraines and some short-term memory loss.
Wethington, a junior at Joshua High School, survived falling approximately 3,000 feet to the ground when her parachute ropes became tangled and she reportedly blacked out. The teen and her father had traveled to Chickasha, Okla., for the skydiving trip that was her 16th birthday present. Paramedics rushed Wethington to an Oklahoma City trauma center where she spent nearly a week under the constant care of trauma doctors and nurses. The teen suffered fractures to her spine, hip, pelvis and ribs in addition to internal injuries, including a traumatic brain injury.
Wethington traveled back to Oklahoma this weekend to thank the paramedics who helped save her life.
“I just really wanted to see who helped save my life,” Wethington said. “And I just wanted to see who did it so I could emotionally relate to them and thank them.” A photograph Wethington shared via Facebook shows her and one of the paramedics – the one who intubated her en route to the medical helicopter – embracing one another in a hug. “Meeting them was just the best day of my life. He was very, very kind,” Wethington said about the encounter.
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