Elizabeth Lindsay opened her eyes and saw her brother sitting at her hospital bedside.
She had been unconscious for about three weeks in August, recovering from a life-threatening motorcycle crash that month.
“I think I wanted to understand what had happened,” said Lindsay, 39, of Greensburg. “I didn’t want to look at pictures or videos at that time. I was a little too much in pain, and I think that pain would’ve probably shifted to my stomach.”
Lindsay doesn’t remember the crash. After hearing the accounts carefully delivered to her by family and doctors, she could not believe she survived.
The owner of C.S. Kim Karate in North Huntingdon, Lindsay has ridden motorcycles for about 12 years.
She loves exploring the Laurel Highlands and venturing into West Virginia, Ohio and New York to seek roadside attractions — from temples to mountain hiking trails to dinosaur statues and unique restaurants.
More often than not, she rides in full gear, including a kevlar shirt and pants, boots, a leather jacket and a helmet — choices that likely saved her life nearly four months ago.
The crash
Lindsay and a friend were riding motorcycles about 9 p.m. Aug. 10 on Route 30 in North Versailles when they collided with a car that had pulled out of a business’ parking lot.
Her friend hit the back of the car and suffered minor injuries. Lindsay slammed into the side of the car.
She was airlifted to Forbes Hospital in Monroeville, arriving at the trauma bay in critical condition 19 minutes after the 911 call was made.
Lindsay was in a coma, suffering from severe injuries, including bleeding around the brain. Doctors intubated her to protect her airways.
Lindsay spent about a month at Forbes, including three weeks in intensive care, as doctors addressed more than 20 injuries — a broken foot, ribs and vertebrae, two broken forearms, a dislocated elbow and fractures riddled across her face.
“It’s all over,” Lindsay said of her injuries. “It’s head to toe.”
Lindsay transferred in late August to Allegheny Valley Hospital in Harrison, where she was discharged at the end of October. She moved to her sister’s home in Florida to complete physical and occupational therapy free of the impending Pennsylvania winter’s snow and ice.
By the end of this week, she will have undergone 13 surgeries to repair the damage.
Recovery road
In her doctor’s eyes, Lindsay is a fighter — literally and figuratively.
“Getting through 20-plus injuries is not easy. It really takes a positive attitude, and that’s what she had,” said Alex Canales, trauma medical director and surgeon at Forbes. “I know she was frustrated at times. She definitely expressed that, but who wouldn’t be?
“I mean, she was somebody who was very physically active. To go from that to being completely dependent on the care of others — that’s striking for anybody to go through. And she did. And she made it through that journey.”
But Lindsay’s first thought after regaining consciousness was not about herself.
“I wanted to make sure (my friend) was OK,” she said.
Lindsay and her friend, who declined to have his name shared with TribLive, have ridden motorcycles together for three years. The crash has strengthened their bond even further.
“I’ve got all these physical things that I have to deal with and have to manage my way through and maneuver in a physically broken way,” Lindsay said. “Him and I spoke at length one day when I visited that he never lost consciousness.
“He has this emotional thing that he has to work through. He watched that happen,” she said. “He has to replay that in his mind, and I don’t know how many times he’s done that. (He) really is a strong person — physically and emotionally — to be able to handle all that.”
Seeking safety
Lindsay follows the same rule each time she mounts her motorcycle — “I’m invisible.”
She is careful to leave extra space between herself and the vehicles around her. Sometimes, Lindsay aligns her motorcycle on the roadway so it can be seen in the side mirror of the car in front of her.
“I can’t tell you how many times we go on rides and that is the thing — ‘Woah, if I hadn’t been pretending I was invisible to that car, it might’ve hit me,’” she said.
Forbes’ trauma team treats about 85 motorcycle crash patients per year, and they tend to suffer the most severe injuries, Canales said.
If it wasn’t for the helmet protecting Lindsay’s head, Aug. 10 would have been a different day.
“Helmets do save lives, and she is exactly that scenario,” he said. “I have no doubt in my mind she would not be with us if she did not have that helmet.”
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Lifelong karate student
Lindsay is confident her lifelong karate training has helped her in the recovery process — having taught her about her physical limitations, proper hip alignment and good posture.
From the way her mother tells the story, Lindsay has been interested in martial arts since she could talk. Not a day went by where she didn’t want to watch Bruce Lee videos, Chuck Norris movies or kung fu competitions on TV.
She enrolled in private lessons at C.S. Kim Karate in Natrona Heights at age 5, joining official classes months later when the school lowered the age requirement to 6.
“There weren’t even uniforms small enough for a little kid like me at the time,” Lindsay said with a laugh.
Lindsay stayed with the sport until her junior year of high school, when her academic load, a part-time movie theater job and commitments to her soccer and softball teams became too difficult to balance with an intense karate training schedule.
But within a month of enrolling in an education program at Mercyhurst University in Erie, the martial arts itch returned.
“I missed that discipline of someone saying, ‘Hey, you can do it,’” she said.
Lindsay joined nearly all of the university’s martial arts clubs — from boxing to muay thai to kickboxing to jiu jitsu — and took taekwondo classes off campus.
But there was still something Lindsay missed about karate.
“It wasn’t just the martial art,” she said. “It was the instruction. And it felt very important to me growing up with that. And then not having it — a karate family.”
Lindsay returned to her hometown karate studio where she worked as an instructor for a few years before taking ownership of the C.S. Kim Karate location in North Huntingdon in 2008.
Community support
Lindsay’s karate family has rallied around her since the accident, hosting spaghetti dinners, pancake breakfasts and a kick-a-thon tournament to support her recovery. On a return trip to Pittsburgh for her latest surgery, Lindsay visited her karate students for the first time since the crash, sitting in on two belt promotion ceremonies.
Local motorcyclists gathered on Mt. Washington in late August to raise money for Lindsay.
A GoFundMe has generated more than $87,000 for her medical expenses, loss of income and long-term care.
The support has been overwhelming, Lindsay said.
“I think if you had asked me four months ago: ‘How do you view yourself? What do you think you’re like?’ I would’ve been like, ‘Oh, I’m a solo person. I like doing things by myself. I have a couple close friends, and my family is what it is, and I work. And, maybe, I’ve made a really big dent in karate land,” Lindsay said.
“But this has genuinely made me realize what kind of effect having the type of personality I have has had on other people,” she said. “It has been emotionally resetting to realize what kind of impact … (my) positivity has had on other people.”
The road to recovery is not an easy one, Canales said. It could take years for Lindsay to heal.
“Anybody as extensively injured as Elizabeth is probably going to have not quite the same capacity that they used to before,” he said. “It’s a lot for the body to deal with, and nothing heals 100%. Nothing is as strong as it used to be. Broken bones don’t heal back stronger — that’s a myth. Everything’s actually at about 80%.”
But Forbes’ trauma team has high hopes Lindsay will return to a normal life through her consistent efforts with physical therapy and positive outlook on recovery.
“She’s an amazing trauma survivor,” Canales said, “and she exhibited all of the characteristics of somebody who would survive something like this.”
“I’m a wreck, but I’m alive,” Lindsay said. “This means something.”