Episode 37: Conversation with Alana McGuire (Crash Survivor’s Perspective)

Alana McGuire: I think that’s what survivors of crashes really need. You need a community of people who understand exactly what you’re feeling, not only on a personal level, but even on a legal level. I’ve never been involved in the legal system before, so it was all a very scary, overwhelming process, and to know that there’s so many other people all around the world that are in the same situation and being able to hear their stories, their experiences, it actually can really calm you, make it less scary, and kind of prepare you for what’s about to come and what you need to know.

David Craig – Host: I’m attorney Dave Craig, managing partner and one of the founders of the law firm of Craig, Kelley & Faultless. I’ve represented people who have been seriously injured or who have had a family member killed in a semi or other big truck wreck for over 30 years. Following the wreck, their lives are chaos. Often, they don’t even know enough about the process to ask the right questions. It is my goal to empower you by providing you with the information you need to protect yourself and your family. In each and every episode, I will interview top experts and professionals that are involved in truck wreck cases. This is After the Crash.

Today, we’re doing something a little special. We do this every now and then, where we talk to a victim of a horrible accident, and the reason we do that is that there are a lot of folks out there that are watching this or listening to this that are also victims and they’ve been in a bad wreck, and they’re just starting the process. I think it’s important for people to know that there’s light at the end of the tunnel, but that is not easy, and I think the best way to do it, rather than me talk about it, somebody who’s never been through it, is talking to people who have been through it.

So, that’s what we’re going to do today. We have Dawne McKay on here, who has written the book, Talk Crash to Me. She’s the founder of Crash Support Network. Dawne is a victim of a bad wreck herself, and she has been a guest on this podcast before and she runs a wonderful group, and I would encourage anybody out there who is a victim of a car crash who has serious injuries, emotional or and or physical, to join her group, participate. We also have Alana McGuire as a guest today, and unfortunately, Alana had the bad experience of going through a bad wreck and really, really tough injuries. We’re going to talk to her about those today. So, Alana and Dawne, welcome to the podcast.

Alana McGuire: Thank you.

David Craig – Host: So Dawne, why don’t we first start off. Just briefly, just tell us about your group and how it’s kind of grown over the years, and then we’ll get right in and talk to Alana.

Dawne McKay: Sure. So once again, David, thanks very much for including me on this podcast and allowing us another platform to speak with another survivor of a crash because I find it extremely important. You’re doing a wonderful job on your podcast, and it’s highly informative, but to look at the survivor’s aspect of what they go through is equally as important. So again, I thank you for allowing us this platform. So, yes, I’m the founder of the Crash Support Network. After surviving a horrific motor vehicle crash myself, I created the Crash Support Network, which started off as an online support group for other victims to join on Facebook.

So, it’s now turned into more of a peer support group where people can join and discuss anything that might be on their mind, get advice from other survivors. Maybe they’re going for an insurance exam, and they’re not sure what to expect. So, they would reach out to other survivors in the group to ask their opinion and share experiences. I also have a wonderful website, crashsupportnetwork.com, which you mentioned that is a highly resourceful website. For anybody that has survived a motor vehicle crash or maybe a loved one is in recovery, I would highly recommend that you check out the crashsupportnetwork.com.

David Craig – Host: Fantastic. I know it’s grown. I know your organization’s grown over the years and I’m really proud of you.

Dawne McKay: Thank you.

David Craig – Host: And again, it also shows that even though you’ve been in a horrible wreck, there is a purpose beyond, and you have to find it and you’ve done that, and you’ve been very successful since the wreck.

Dawne McKay: Yeah.

David Craig – Host: Well, Alana, welcome. I know back in April 27th, I think, of 2012 was the day that your life changed, and that was obviously a very dramatic event, and maybe you can just tell me a little about kind of what was your life like before that?

Alana McGuire: So before April 27th, 2012, I was 17 years old at the time, grade 11 high school student, very active. I played lots of sports, played soccer outside of school, and then inside school I played badminton. I played field hockey and other sports like that. Outside of school, I snowboarded. I did a lot of water sports in the summertime, enjoyed walking with family, friends, going out to big outings and events. Then, yeah, ever since that date, it’s dramatically changed. So, all of the things that I enjoyed, I can’t do like I used to.

David Craig – Host: I mean, I know you go around and you speak, and you’ve written to try to help people, especially young people, avoid going through what you went through. I think it’s important that when you’re 17 years old, my guess is you probably never thought in your wildest imagination that your life would change dramatically. I think that’s one of the challenges is that most kids that are in high school have no idea that one decision could change their life forever.

Alana McGuire: Exactly. I mean, I wasn’t the one driving the vehicle, but still the one decision of me trying to enjoy my lunchtime at school with some friends, that was a life-changing decision that I made, thinking that it was a harmless idea, something that was just going to be fun, didn’t put much thought into it, and, yeah, everything changed in the snap of my fingers.

David Craig – Host: I think as a parent and a grandparent and a lawyer who has been doing this for over 35 years, I see that happen all too often where typically the driver of the vehicles, they’re not doing something intentionally to hurt somebody or to kill somebody, most of the time. Most of the time, they’re just not even thinking. They’re just not thinking at all, and they don’t have a clue what the consequences of a stupid mistake can be.

I see kids that are going too fast. I mean, that happens way too often. Young people driving too fast, not even thinking. In your mind, when you’re 17 years old, you think you’re invincible, and so, talk a little bit about how one mistake, this kid, as I understand it, the driver of your vehicle, was going too fast. Talk a little bit about that.

Alana McGuire: Yeah, so the driver of the vehicle also was 17 at the time. There was actually about six of us in a van, and the driver just decided that she wanted to go joyriding and didn’t really think anything other than, oh, she was going to create that roller coaster feel in the pit of your stomach, thought it would be fun, thought we would all enjoy it, but never actually put that information out there to the rest of us.

The simple decision just to travel at high speed. She was approximately going three times the posted speed limit in the area, and yeah, she ended up losing control of the vehicle because it was traveling at such high speeds. We went up an embankment and nicked a tree and took out a fence post, and then we ended up rolling end over end 300 meters into a farmer’s field. Those are the consequences of traveling at high speeds, thinking that you’re just going to do something that’s going to be fun, and then everything will be fine afterwards.

David Craig – Host: Yeah. Well that’s that’s unfortunate because you have a whole combination of things. You’ve got somebody who’s 17, so you’re not that experienced driving a vehicle, number one. You’re not making all the right decisions. You’re not making adult decisions yet, and you think you’re invincible and nothing bad’s going to happen.

And unfortunately, we see, day in, day out, people go through the same thing that you go through, and so I know this wreck was horrible. I know that you had major injuries, including a brain injury and spinal injuries, but talk about the aftermath, immediate aftermath. Do you remember the wreck? Do you remember waking up? What do you remember?

Alana McGuire: So, the first thing that I remember was waking up in the dirt. I remember being at school and us all deciding that we were going to go to McDonald’s for lunch, and I remember the person who stated that she had a vehicle, just got her license. She was able to take us because she was borrowing her parents’ vehicle for the day. So, I remember that portion, and then, yeah, I remember waking up in the dirt in a field and not knowing how I got there, didn’t know what happened. It was approximated that I lost about 45 minutes of my memory. So I have no recollection of the actual accident itself. All of that information has been passed to me from my spouse, who was actually in the accident at the time as well, and other passengers who were in the vehicle.

Also, I remember after waking up in the dirt, I did call my mom. I don’t really have much of a memory on what I had said to her, but she had told me that I called her and just repeatedly told her that my neck was hurting and that I didn’t know where I was. I didn’t know who else was really around. There was some police officers, but at that moment, I was just kind of in complete shock and not really processing anything that was going on around me, and then after that, they put me in the back of an ambulance from my memory, and I just told them that I didn’t want them to take me anywhere until my then boyfriend, now husband, was in the ambulance with me. So yeah, after that, that was the immediate aftermath. Then, my next memories were in the hospital.

David Craig – Host: Why don’t you tell us a little bit about the injuries? I know the neck injury was by far the most significant, and it could have been, gosh, if the fracture was a little bit of a different placement, it would’ve been horrific, even worse than what it was. Tell me a little bit about what injuries you sustained in this wreck.

Alana McGuire: Yeah, so I sustained a broken neck at the C5 vertebrae, so about three millimeters away from becoming a quadriplegic or potentially even dead. So, if you hold up a nickel, it’s really not that much of a difference in what was, I was hanging on by a threat essentially. So, that was the major injury. I do have spinal injuries as well. I have bulging discs at my L4, L5, and S1, and as a result of that, between my L5-S1 joint, there is a pinched nerve, which causes a lot of nerve pain that shoots down my side into my leg, and then, on top of that, I’ve had chronic migraines.
I’ve had a lot of developments of different mental health issues, challenges like depression, anxiety. I’ve got severe passenger anxiety as a result. I’ve noticed a lot of issues as a result of the brain injury as well. My way of processing what I’m about to say, trying to find the right words, it’s trickier for me. I find I think a little bit slower than I used to. My short-term memory is not the way it used to be. I have a little bit of short-term memory loss issues, which I have been doing a lot to work on improving, and then I have chronic pain throughout my entire body.

David Craig – Host: And what I think is important, I mean, this has been over 10 years ago, and I know you’re still suffering and still dealing with some of these issues and, in all likelihood, will be for the rest of your life, but I think that somebody who’s now in the very beginning, someone who just went through a wreck and they’re just starting this process, they don’t know what to expect. Just like you, I mean, you don’t know, just listening to the doctors, just not knowing.

Talk a little bit about your journey from when you woke up in the hospital and you found out you had a fractured neck. Tell me a little bit about it because I don’t want to minimize it because it’s been 10 years. I mean, you look wonderful. I mean, if I looked at you today, I wouldn’t know there’s anything wrong with you. If I would’ve looked at you back then, you would’ve had a halo, and so I don’t want to minimize what you’ve been through. So, let’s talk a little bit about that journey from when you wake up at the hospital for that first year or so.

Alana McGuire: Okay. When I woke up in the hospital, I started out in a hospital closer to where I live, and when I woke up there, at that point, they didn’t really know what was wrong with me. They actually just told me they’re just going to kind of run some tests, see what was going on. I don’t have a ton of memory from that. I do remember once all of those tests were completed, that they told me that I was the only person who was not going to go home that day, which is extremely upsetting and overwhelming. The thoughts were just racing through my mind at the time. They told me that the hospital I was currently placed in, they were not able to actually take care of me.

They didn’t have the resources or the expertise to deal with a broken neck. So I was notified, in that moment, that I was being transported to St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto. So, that’s a trauma hospital. They specialize in all kinds of breaks and injuries. I know they work on a lot of hockey players. So, it was a little bit reassuring just to know that the staff who was at least very experienced, but the travel there was overwhelming. Nobody was allowed to travel with me, so I had no support system at the time, and when you’re in a really vulnerable state, all you want is somebody to help comfort you and calm you down in that moment. I didn’t have that option.

When I got to the hospital in St. Mike’s, they pushed me into the trauma emergency room, and in that moment, still completely alone, I was swarmed by all kinds of surgeons that they all knew my neck was broken, and they knew that they needed to remove all of my clothes in case I was going to go for an emergency surgery. So, I have a very traumatic memory of just being completely alone, and then, all of these people are just starting to take their scissors and cut everything off of me and then robe me, or you know, the hospital gowns, they put one of those over top of me, and then they just transferred me from that table onto a stretcher. Then, I was just pushed into a hallway to wait, and I waited for days, days, and days in the hallway before they even had a spot for me.

David Craig – Host: Oh gosh.

Alana McGuire: Yeah, the hospital’s very… it’s very busy. So, it was super upsetting. It was upsetting for me. It was upsetting for my parents. I didn’t know what was going to happen. I just knew that I was severely injured, and they didn’t, at that point, know what they were going to do. It took a while.

They also did not feed me or give me any water for about four days until they had made a decision on whether or not I had to go into an emergency surgery. Once that was ruled that I didn’t need the emergency surgery, my parents were actually given three options that were about to change the rest of my life. They said that I could go into a collar, just an aspen collar.

David Craig – Host: Mm-hmm.

Alana McGuire: A halo device, or I could go for the surgery, but the surgery would’ve had to been done every 10 years, and they actually would’ve had to make an incision in the front of my throat to access the back, and what they would’ve done is they would’ve taken a piece of bone from somewhere else in my body and put it in my neck just to restabilize everything. Because I was 17, I did not have the opportunity to make decisions for myself.

David Craig – Host: Yeah.

Alana McGuire: So, all of that pressure was put on my parents, which again is super overwhelming just because I was left in the dark. I didn’t know what was going on. People were always just in and out of my room. My parents and the surgeons were always in the hallway talking away from me, just so I wouldn’t worry. They did. They chose the halo device, which I’m incredibly thankful for. That was extremely painful, a really long procedure that they did in the middle of the night where they actually take four screws and they screw one in  above the eyebrow and one behind each ear.

Then, there’s a ring that goes around to connect them with rods that come down, and then that’s attached to a very furry vest that you have to wear all the time. It couldn’t get wet. And the purpose of it was to hold my neck in perfect alignment, and it prevented my body from moving. So, it was from head to waist, did not move. They put that halo on when I was completely wide awake, and I was not given any painkillers. So, I heard every single turn of the screwdriver. I heard the bone-crunching. I felt the screws going in, and it was absolutely traumatizing.

So, these are just some of the things that a lot of people don’t think about. I know I never thought about it. I never, ever imagined myself having to go through something like this, and I’m just lucky because there’s very few halo devices that are actually around our area, in the Toronto area. So, I was just very lucky that that was an option for me, and that one was actually available, which I actually do have it with me if you wanted to see it-

David Craig – Host: Yeah, sure. So I’ve had a lot of clients who have had to wear that, and it’s a huge device, and it is something people don’t realize. I mean, you wear it, I mean, it’s on all the time, right?

Alana McGuire: Right.

David Craig – Host: And so it doesn’t come off, and you don’t take-

Alana McGuire: No.

David Craig – Host: … it off at night. It’s something that’s on all the time, fixed and screwed into your skull, and that holds and allows the healing to take place because with that fracture you have, if you jar it or you do something, then you could be paralyzed because it’s such a fragile area, and so, they have to, like you said, either do surgery and or use this device. I’ve had a lot of clients who’ve had fantastic results by using the halo, but it is not something that is easy to deal with, right.

Alana McGuire: Yeah, it was a very tricky device to be in for such a long time. I was in it about, I want to say, between four and six months. My memory’s a little bit fuzzy on that, but yeah, you’re in it 24 hours a day. When you’re sleeping, your head doesn’t touch a pillow. It’s actually suspended between all of the bars. So you can imagine if your head’s not resting on a pillow, all of the weight of your head and neck is actually suspended by the screws that are sticking into your skull. So it’s not comfortable. And it was really difficult to find clothing.

We actually had to make a lot of special clothing, or my parents did anyways, things that you could slide up underneath the vest or oversized clothing that you could pull over top of the halo just because it was such an odd shape and it was so large and bulky, it was really hard to find anything to wear, and the fact that it couldn’t get wet. So, daily hygiene was very tricky for me, again, because I wasn’t able to do a whole lot. So, when it came to doing the daily hygiene like showers, washing my hair, and stuff like that, that was something that my mom actually had to do for me. So, she made a contraption that my head would hang into the shower, and she very carefully washed my hair around all of the incision sites and in between all of the bars the best that she could.

She could only do so much that way. It wasn’t easy for her to do. And then, yeah, on top of that, I was in a wheelchair for a good portion of the time that I was in the halo too, just because it’s such a heavy device, and it makes it almost draining, physically draining to wear that for so long. Just a couple of steps or standing for a minute, I was completely out of breath. I couldn’t stand, I needed to lean on something or hold onto somebody, or I needed to be sitting in my wheelchair.

David Craig – Host: How about pain? Initially, did you have a lot of pain? How long did it take for the pain to go away, or has it ever gone away?

Alana McGuire: So, the pain has never gone away. I was told that I would have to live with the pain for the rest of my life. I’ve been trying a variety of different things to help me manage the pain, but the pain is always there. Some days are better than others, but yeah, it’s more of just learning how to manage the chronic pain. When I ended up in the hospital, they pretty much gave me morphine right off the bat, and then they switched me to Hydromorphine, and I was on that for about a year. So for the first year, I didn’t feel a whole lot. I felt maybe pain when I was coming down from my medication, but while I was on it, I didn’t feel a whole lot.

Afterwards, when I did get off of the medication is when the severity started to be more noticeable, which is what I deal with now. It’s almost indescribable how it makes you feel. My chronic pain is, it’s part of chronic migraines. I have pain down my neck, my shoulders into my whole back into my glutes and my knees, hips, all of that. So, imagine those areas of your body just hurting 24/7, seven days a week. It just doesn’t stop. It’s just a constant sharp shooting, achy pain that just doesn’t go away. Regular painkillers like Advil, they don’t cut it. You do start to build up a little bit of pain tolerance, but it’s very difficult.

David Craig – Host: Yeah. Well, and I know how the scary process is when you’re going through something like this, you basically are not in any control of it. I mean, the doctors are the ones just telling you what you got to do, or the nurses, and you just kind of on autopilot. This is like for a certain period of your life it’s just you go to the doctor, the doctors tell you the bits and pieces they want to tell you, and then you just do what they tell you to do or your family does, and you just keep going like that. Where it’s just day in and day out, you’re just basically living your life based upon what people are doing. You have no control over it. That’s got to be tough, especially for a 17-year-old.

Alana McGuire: Mm-hmm. One thing I do remember, which it was highly traumatic, when they did send me home with my parents, the hospital did send nursing staff to come check on me, help clean the pin sites that were becoming infected. The nursing staff that did show up at my house, they took one look at me, and they turned around, and they left, and said that they aren’t trained to deal with halos, and they just walked away. So, it just seems like it was like a never ending struggle.

David Craig – Host: So, obviously, you went for a long period of time with the halo.

Alana McGuire: Mm-hmm.

David Craig – Host: Eventually, they were able to remove the halo, and sounds like you did not have to have the surgery.

Alana McGuire: No.

David Craig – Host: Obviously you were not paralyzed, so you made some progress. So, walk me through how that’s been.

Alana McGuire: So I’ve done a lot of therapies. I’ve tried a variety of different ones. Started out initially with physiotherapy and massages, and then after that, I want to say for the first couple of years, I was doing physio and massages twice a week every week until I was, my parents were no longer able to afford that, and then getting therapy just became a lot more difficult because the prices are very high, and the constant need for me to have different forms of therapy, it just never ended. I wasn’t getting a full relief. I tried acupuncture, magnetic therapy, and then I have endless, endless forms of counseling.

So, mental health counseling on top of that. I would say the mental health counseling is probably what helped me the most with just learning how to deal with what happened and how I kind of went from where I was to where I am today. Without that, honestly, I don’t think that I would be where I am because it was almost just trying to understand that, yes, something terrible happened to me, but I can either let that control my life and ruin it and let it win, or I can do something great with it. So, I ended up choosing to do public speaking around it. I’m actually in school currently to be a social worker because I’ve had so much success myself.

And yeah, I’ve been really working hard to try and adjust my mindset and develop a more positive mindset. One of the things that one of my counselors told me right at the very beginning is that for every negative, there will be a positive. You just have to find it, and that was something. It doesn’t come easy, and it was very hard for me to figure out. It’s one of those things that can make me, or probably anybody else, quite angry and frustrated because you look at, “I broke my neck. What’s good about that,” but if you really focus on the things that you’re doing, you will find something good to focus on, to focus your attention on.
So, focusing on the fact that I’ve been doing public speaking, that’s taking something that was really tragic that happened to me, and I’m trying to educate youth to try and have them not make the same decisions as the driver of that day. I’ve met really great people in school. I wouldn’t be in a School of Social Work right now if it wasn’t for what had happened. So, I think if you just focus on the positives, the strengths, how you handle situations, different things like that, you will find something positive that you can focus your energy on, and I do think that really does help.

David Craig – Host: I think that’s extraordinary, Alana. I’m really proud of you, and certainly, I think the fact that you’re doing what you’re doing is extraordinarily helpful, and why I wanted to have you on the podcast because I have, for 35 years, I’ve represented a lot of people who’ve been through horrific accidents, some who are paralyzed, some who aren’t, some who have soft tissue injuries, but it affects them. Some people who have changed their occupation, some folks who have brain injuries who never get to go back and do what they did before.

The one thing that’s consistent in horrific accidents is they are no longer the person they were before the wreck. They become a new person, and they have limitations. They have pain. They have problems, but the ones that I have seen in my career that are doing better are often the ones that are helping others because there’s something about helping people that keeps us going, and it empowers us and encourages us. It’s like, “My God, if I can help somebody else not go through what I’ve been through, then I have accomplished something. So, maybe this is not the path that I chose. It’s not the path that I thought I was going to go down, but my God, it could be even a more powerful path than what I would’ve done without the wreck.” Nobody would ever wish a wreck or the injuries you’ve had on anybody, and what you’ve been through and what you’re going through and what you will continue to go through is horrible, but the fact that you’ve taken it and made a decision to help others is really a good thing. I commend you on that.

Alana McGuire: Thank you.

David Craig – Host: So tell me, what do you want people to know? I mean, what message do you want to send to young people out there that might listen to this, or maybe their parents will make them listen to it like I would if I had a kid that was just getting ready to start driving because I want them to learn from your experiences.

Alana McGuire: My biggest message to youth, but not only just youth but anybody out there, is that you’re not invincible even if you think you are. You might think that you’re doing something cool, or it might be fun, but anything can happen to you at any given moment, and your life can change forever in the snap of your fingers. You can go from living your life carefree to being stuck in a wheelchair, living in chronic pain.

Yeah, it hits you hard when things like that happen. So, if I could say anything, it’s really trying to educate youth that you’re not invincible and that we need to make smarter decisions. That riding or driving is not a right. It’s a privilege, and if you make poor decisions, you’re… you just… I guess you’re not… Sorry. This is where I was talking about the fact that my thinking is slowed.

David Craig – Host: And that’s fine. I think and… I mean, driving is a privilege not a right.

Alana McGuire: Mm-hmm.

David Craig – Host: It’s something we take for granted. I mean, I would think that if you could go back, and I know, in this case, some people in the van tried to get the driver to stop, and the person didn’t. So I mean, I think that if we can get kids that are 16, 17, 18, 19 years old, first of all, if your friends or people in your vehicle ask you to stop, please stop. If they ask you to slow down, please slow down. You don’t have a right to do something that makes other people uncomfortable, and you’re not a friend if you do.

And again, I understand that young people don’t think that anything bad’s going to happen, but it does happen, just like you were saying. If that person had slowed down and respected other people’s wishes, then life would’ve gone on for you, and you wouldn’t have to take this, go through all this tragedy, and so I would hope that maybe young people just will stop and listen.

Then the other thing is, oftentimes, as a young person, we know when something doesn’t feel right, we know in our gut, it’s like, “Oh, I don’t know if I should do this or not.” I think listening to our gut and not being afraid to say, “No, thank you. I’m going to pass today. I’m not going to go for that joyride tonight. I told my parents I was going to be at a party, or I was going to be at a house for homecoming, or whatever it is. Instead of going out and for that joyride, I’m going to stay here. Sorry.”

Because you don’t know that decision, that gut feeling that you have may be a powerful way inside that’s keeping you from getting hurt or getting killed, but it’s hard. It’s just so hard when you’re under your peer pressure, you have all your friends, people are doing things, you don’t think anything bad’s going to happen, but if you’re a young person and you’re listening to this, for God’s sakes, trust your gut, tell your friends, and then if someone tells you not to do something, then don’t do it. Would you agree?

Alana McGuire: 100%. I think that’s the biggest thing is people don’t think about it. They don’t think it’s going to happen to them, but it absolutely can. I know I never thought it would happen to me, but in the blink of an eye, everything changed.

David Craig – Host: So Alana, what’s the future for you? I mean, what do you want to do? I know you’re in school, so you’re in college. So, talk to me a little bit about if I got to run into you 10 years from now, what does the future hold?

Alana McGuire: So I mean, right now, I’m actually in university. I’m getting my Bachelor’s of Social Work. So I mean, down the road, my goal is to be with my Master’s, and I want to help counsel not even just youth but pretty much anyone. I’m not really stuck on an age group, but I want to work with people that are experiencing severe trauma. So I kind of gravitated towards that. After my accident, I really was heavily focused on I wanted to specifically work with accident victims, but I know it’s a very small population of people in comparison to other things. So, I realized that I can’t just focus on car accident victims alone.

So, I kind of just thought more about the broader things that car accident victims experience. Like I’ve developed post-traumatic stress disorder. I deal with depression. I had flashbacks. I’ve got all kinds of other mental health challenges, brain injury, things like that. A lot of these things can happen to other people who’ve experienced severe traumatic events. So, right now, my goal, 10 years down the road, is to be working with people who’ve experienced these severe traumatic events. I want to be able to make that difference.

I want to be able to help individuals learn how to cope with what happened to them, develop proper coping strategies, and talk them through it. Right now, I’m currently in a placement with my university, and I’m actually doing corrections as a social worker. Very different switch from what I ever imagined that I would be doing, but it’s interesting too, just because it’s youth corrections and a lot of the youth that are there have had something severely traumatic happen to them, or they’re in environmental situations that are causing trauma that has caused them to do something against the law that has put them in this position.

So right now, what I’m doing is actually trying to help rehabilitate youth and reintegrate them into society as better individuals, trying to get them excited about their education again, teach them life skills, and yeah, most importantly, help them deal with the things that have happened to them as they’ve been growing up, but yeah, I feel like, future-wise, I might even want to add on a private practice just for trauma counseling.

David Craig – Host: Well, I know that you’re already making a positive difference in the lives of folks that you talk to, and there’s no doubt in my mind that you’ll continue to make a positive difference in the lives of those people you touch through your experience, and I think it’s a lot easier to listen to somebody who’s been through it than it is for somebody who’s never been through it, who’s trying to tell you what to do. So, Dawne, anything you would like to add about Alana’s story that we haven’t chatted about?

Dawne McKay: Oh, I was very intrigued listening to Alana’s story, and you did fantastic, Alana. I know you’re a little bit nervous coming on the podcast, and I’m so grateful that we had this opportunity. I know it’s not easy to share everything that you just did with your recovery, but I know there’s somebody out there that’s going to be listening to the podcast, will have a lot of takeaways today from this episode.

I do appreciate you, Alana, and I know you’re doing a wonderful job. Keep up the great work with the public speaking, and I think it’s wonderful everything that you continue to do and what your future holds going forward, and I wish you all the best. I’m so glad we had this opportunity. Alana and I have tried to do a podcast like this for quite some time, and we kept hitting roadblocks. So, much appreciation to David Craig today for allowing us to have this conversation today. Yeah, very helpful.

David Craig – Host: Alana, anything else? I mean, this is your opportunity. If there’s anything else you would like to talk about or say, this is your opportunity to do that, and again, I appreciate having you on here and make sure that you have the last word.

Alana McGuire: Well, thank you very much for having me on the podcast. As final comments that I would like to include, I think if somebody listening to this has been involved in an accident, I think it’s really important for them to know that you can’t keep it to yourself. If you’re dealing with something, you need to reach out. You need to find a community, a support system. The healing process, I find, really does get better when you have a support system to back you up, and if you’re not getting it from your family or your friends, there’s other resources out there.

Like me personally, when my accident happened, I was looking everywhere for a support group, a support system that just I could relate to, and I couldn’t find anything, and it wasn’t until I was just randomly sitting at work one day that I just tried again, and I stumbled on Dawne’s group, the Crash Support Network, and I would say that that was absolutely life-changing for me just to see that there are so many other people all around the world that are dealing with the same sort of thing, feeling the same sort of way. I really, really liked what the community just shows and supports.

So, if you’re wondering what kind of therapy might be helpful for a certain issue that you’re dealing with, I found the community really, really amazing. Everybody seems to be very welcoming, friendly, and people aren’t afraid to tell you what they’ve tried, what works, what doesn’t. I think that’s what survivors of crashes really need. You need a community of people who understand exactly what you’re feeling, not only on a personal level, but even on a legal level.

For me, there was a lot of things that I just, I’d never experienced before. I’ve never been involved in the legal system before. So, it was all a very scary, overwhelming process. And to know that there’s so many other people all around the world that are in the same situation and being able to hear their stories, their experiences, it actually can really calm you, make it less scary, and kind of prepare you for what’s about to come and what you need to know.

David Craig – Host: I think that’s great advice, and I would say, as an attorney who’s been doing all this for 35 years, that I do believe that people find support from a lot of different things, a lot of different people, and Dawne’s group is an excellent group. Some people have the church to go to, some people have their family, some people have other folks, but, oftentimes, it’s not the medical healthcare providers that are providing the support because they’re just doing their job, and they’re not really helping you with the coping part of it.

My dad was a psychologist, and so I believe that talking to people, getting counseling is something that can be extraordinarily helpful to people. A lot of times, people are resistant to it, but having grown up as the son of a psychologist, I saw my dad help a lot of people, and then I think the law firms you pick. You know, when you have a horrible wreck, the doctors you pick, the lawyers you pick, the counselors you pick are extraordinarily important decisions. Your success, your future success, it really hinges on picking the right team.

I really believe that there’s a lot of good lawyers out there that care about people and who will spend the time talking to people and being there for the people and getting them connected with the right places. Unfortunately, there are also some that don’t, and I would encourage anybody out there before you pick a lawyer that you interview them or your family interviews them because you’re going to spend a lot of time with them. They need to be available. They need to talk to you. They need to explain things. You shouldn’t be sitting at home wondering about stuff. You’ve got to get better.

So, the last thing you need to wonder about or worry about is your lawsuit or your claims. So you need people who will talk to you, who’ll spend time with you, who will make themselves available on the weekends and the evenings and just talk. That, to me, is one of the reasons why I went in is I want to make a positive difference in people’s lives. That’s why we do this podcast, is why we treat our clients as important people as they are and treat them the way we’d want to be treated, and so I appreciate it, and I wish you both the best, and that’ll conclude our podcast of After the Crash.

This is David Craig, and you’ve been listening to After the Crash. If you’d like more information about me or my law firm, please go to our website, ckflaw.com, or if you’d like to talk to me, you can call 1-800-Ask-David. If you would like a guide on what to do after a truck wreck, then pick up my book, Semitruck Wreck: A Guide for Victims and Their Families, which is available on Amazon, or you can download it for free on our website, ckflaw.com.