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Benefit for Dacia Broester is Sunday
The 1998 Jackson County Central graduate was driving home from work on a gravel road near Dunnell when a semi truck approached. It roused a cloud of dust as it passed. She couldn’t see anything. She hit loose gravel.
“I lost control and the next thing I know, I’m laying in the dirt,” said Dacia Kaderabek Broesder, who has since struggled to regain the use of her arm. “I remember trying to crawl up out of the ditch.”
At that moment, she hadn’t realized her arm was broken or that her car had flown 150 to 200 feet and ejected her through the back window, according to estimates from her father-in-law, an emergency medical technician, she said.
But a pair of farmers found her, she added, and members of the Dunnell Fire Department and Sherburn Ambulance Service rushed her to Welcome to be airlifted to St. Marys Hospital in Rochester.
“I have no clue who they are,” she said of her rescuers, who had already called 911 when they found her asking them to do it.
From there, it was eight hours in the intensive care unit before anyone could see her. Then another three days there. And four more days in a hospital bed, with constant medication and IVs. The damage was more than a broken arm. It was a broken left shoulder, too, plus fractured vertebrae in her lower neck and back, cracked ribs, collapsed lung, punctured spleen and minor head injuries.
“It was pretty scary — yeah, really scary. I don’t wish to do that ever again,” she said.
That arm had been immobilized until just this week, more than two months after the Sept. 1 crash.
“It’s been a slow recovery,” she said. “At first, I thought I was recovering quite quickly. … The challenge is not being able to work and being homebound.”
She is just getting the hang of typing on her computer again, mopping and completing the folding of a load of laundry in about 45 minutes. She lives with her husband, Travis, and her parents Roger and Lynette Johnson live nearby in Jackson.
“Most days I have the use of my arm but my shoulder is still messed up,” she added.
Broesder was expected to start extensive physical therapy this week, and after a month another X-ray would provide more information for the future of her recovery.
“I’m hoping to be able to do some kind of work, but maybe not my normal job,” she said.
She had been employed by Christensen Farms, but not long enough to get on its health insurance plan. The medical bills are still coming.
“The helicopter ride alone was $20,000,” she said.
A benefit fundraiser Sunday hopes to raise money to help offset those medical bills and other personal expenses. A meal of brats, barbecue, chips, beans, bars, ice cream and beverages will be served from 10:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Jackson American Legion hall. Thrivent Financial for Lutherans is providing supplemental funds.
Donations to Thrivent Financial on behalf of the Broesder benefit can also be sent to Our Redeemer Lutheran Church, 101 Kimball Ave. Jackson, MN 56143.
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