A CRNA’s Full-Circle Story of Survival and Purpose

Images via Kellie Kunkel

Ten years ago, with her nursing school finals looming, Kellie Kunkel decided to accept her friend’s invitation to spend the weekend at their lakehouse in northern Michigan. The prospect of studying for finals by the water sounded very appealing to the college sophomore, so she packed up, and after arriving late, the friends decided to venture out for something to eat.

Around the back, winding dirt roads that surrounded the cabin, tragedy struck. The friend who was driving lost control of the car, which ended up flipping upside down through the air. Upon impact, Kunkel immediately lost all feeling from the neck down.

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Somewhat ironically, Kunkel had spent her previous semester in nursing school working the neurological unit at the University of Michigan, where one of her last patients had become quadriplegic from a motorcycle accident.

“This was fresh in my head as I’m trying to move and my friends are coming by me and telling me to get up, and I couldn’t,” Kunkel remembers. “I couldn’t feel him even touching my shoulder.”

The aspiring nurse immediately recognized that she was paralyzed and the possible severity of the damage. In those moments, as she lay on the ground wondering if she would soon lose her ability to breathe, 21-year-old Kunkel could not predict the road that lay ahead of her—or how her life and future as a nurse would all come back to this very moment.

After her friends removed her from the car as carefully as they could, with Kunkel instructed them to try to minimize impact to her spine, a neighbor called for help. Kunkel was Life-Flighted to a hospital and discovered that she had a C4-C5 subluxation, meaning her cervical spine at the top of her neck had been dislocated. A C4-C5 subluxation is one of the most severe types of spinal cord injuries and can lead to breathing being affected, paralysis, and lifelong complications.

The medical treatment that followed quickly became a blur to the young nursing student, but as she was prepped for her first surgery, one young woman, who happened to be a CRNA student, stood out to Kunkel. The student was close to her age and took extra time to reassure Kunkel and explain the procedure that she would be undergoing from an anesthesia perspective. Because of the extent of Kunkel’s injuries, a breathing tube could not be placed the traditional way, and the young CRNA student was a source of comfort to Kunkel as she explained how she would be intubated.

“As a student, she was very close to my age at the time, and she put herself into my position and really took time to try to calm my nerves and ease me through that,” Kunkel remembers.

The surgery to fuse her spine was successful (Kunkel relates that at one point, midway during surgery when she had to be rotated from front to back, the surgeon gave her family an update in the waiting room, which looked like a movie because so many family and friends had filled the room waiting for her), but the road ahead was a long one.

Kunkel’s spinal cord had, incredibly, remained intact, so her recovery was centered around having incomplete paraplegia or incomplete quadriplegia with central cord syndrome. She begged the doctors to let her recover at home and dedicated herself to “working her butt off” with therapies.

“I was highly motivated,” Kunkel says. “Lying on the ground out there paralyzed, the things that started to go through my head were, ‘I’m not going to get married, I’m not going to be able to finish nursing school, no one is going to marry me, I’m not going to have children.'”

The fears that she had were redirected into her recovery, and she decided she wanted to graduate with her class. The accident occurred in April, but by fall, Kunkel was back in school.

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More determined than ever to graduate, Kunkel set her sights on finishing nursing school, enduring pain, symptoms like numbness and tingling, and even a second spinal fusion while she was still in school. But through it all, Kunkel also says she gained a new appreciation for the impact that nurses can have on patients.

“What I remember is the first nurse who volunteered to wash my hair in the ICU,” Kunkel recalls. It might sound simple, but washing her hair at the time, immediately after the accident, was no easy feat—her hair was literally full of glass from the car accident, and because of her injuries, the entire bed had to be put upside down to keep her immobilized.

Still, the nurse took the time to wash Kunkel’s hair. “And as a 21-year-old girl, I just felt like a new person,” she remembers.

Kunkel went on to achieve her goal of graduating as a nurse and eventually became a CRNA and later, CRNA supervisor at Henry Ford Jackson in Michigan. While at work one day, Kunkel casually mentioned her accident to her coworkers when she realized one of the CRNAs, Rachel Estrada, was giving her a funny look.

“She was like, ‘I swear I was a student in your case,'” Kunkel remembers.

The two laughed it off, chalking it up to the fact that the coincidence would be too great for Rachel to have actually been the student on Kunkel’s case. About once a year, Kunkel says the two would make a comment and laugh about it, but nothing more came of it.

It wasn’t until several years later, when Kunkel decided to finally request her records, that she realized something amazing: Rachel had been the CRNA student who calmed and reassured her before her initial surgery.

Between tears, the two women, now both CRNAs and coworkers, shared what they remembered from that day.

“Rachel told me, ‘I started your case, and I ended your case,” Kunkel describes. “She said, ‘I did the whole thing. I was with you the whole time. I prayed over you. And I always wondered what happened to that 21-year-old girl?'”

“I truly did not believe that it was possible that she was that person,” Kunkel says.

As she realized the incredible connection they had, Kunkel’s mind also flashed back to what her friends had found at the scene of the accident: a perfectly preserved rosary still hanging amongst the shattered and busted glass.

“I think that no matter what, whether you’re a believer or not, in those moments, you start hoping and praying that there’s, you know, somebody that can help you in this moment,” Kunkel says of that moment. “But I’ve always been a believer, and I truly believe that, you know, I was being looked out for sure that day.”

Coincidence, guardian angel, or fate, Kunkel believes that her experience as a patient profoundly impacted by a nurse has shaped how she approaches her care today. For instance, just like Rachel took the time to explain to a terrified 21-year-old girl what to expect out of a surgery, Kunkel ensures she takes extra time to explain things to her patients.

“I was that person in a trauma, and everyone kind of comes at you, and it’s terrifying,” Kunkel notes. “So I’m always cautious to try to explain to the patients what we’re doing, or close a curtain if I can, and realize that this might be someone’s worst day.”

Kunkel’s road to recovery and achieving her goal of becoming a nurse, later CRNA, and becoming a mother three times over, may have been a success, but her challenges did not necessarily end with her physical healing.

For instance, just a few months before she graduated from CRNA school, her father died, and shortly after graduation, her brother passed away from addiction. She also went on to lose her mother-in-law and is now watching her mother battle stage 3 breast cancer.

“Through every heartbreak, every loss, and every moment that could have broken me, I learned something powerful: life can hold both unimaginable pain and incredible purpose at the same time,” Kunkel says. “I could have let grief define my story. Instead, I chose to keep moving forward.”

Kunkel tells Nurse.org that her strength to keep moving forward did not arise because she wasn’t afraid or because the pain or grief lessened in any way. Instead, it was because she believes that somewhere in every dark season, she could still see God’s hand carrying her through what she never could have survived alone.

“My story is not one of perfection; it is one of perseverance,” Kunkel summarizes. “And if there is one thing I know for certain now, it is this: even the most broken roads can still lead to something beautiful. Sometimes the greatest blessings are not found in avoiding hardship, but in discovering the strength, faith, and compassion that hardship leaves behind.”