Student survives serious car accident to succeed

After suffering an automobile accident that left her with skull fractures and a serious brain injury, Cassandra Westgate spent time in a wheelchair before going to work as a medical aid and caregiver.

Westgate is a student in MHCC’s nursing program and is also Rho Theta’s vice president of scholarship. When she’s not studying or fulfilling her duties for Rho Theta, the campus honor society chapter, she works for Public Safety answering phone calls and dispatching Public
Safety officers.

She has been a student at Mt. Hood since fall 2011. She knew she wanted to pursue nursing after she quit her job as a med aid and caregiver. “I got in the nursing program, that’s why I’m here still, or else I wouldn’t be here,” she said.

Westgate graduated from high school in Woodburn, near Salem. “I graduated in 2008. Didn’t start again for a few years. It was really hard at first. I’ve become more focused,” she said.

At age 19, on Oct. 15, 2009, she got into a car accident that put her in the hospital. “I was ejected from the vehicle in a rollover crash and hit my face on the pavement,” she said. “I had three skull fractures and a traumatic brain injury, as well as road rash, a lacerated spleen, pulmonary lung contusion and a hematoma in my hip, (and) broken front teeth.

“Most people don’t remember when they get into that kind of thing, but I was awake the whole time, so it was kind of like a horror movie,” she said.

Westgate was told she was going to spend a month in the hospital, but she got out in six days.

“I was in a wheelchair for a little while, but I didn’t go out much until I could walk again. My mom took me to a physical therapist that did acupuncture and helped with PTSD. I have a CSF (cerebrospinal fluid) leak from the accident that still affects me and I have no feeling in parts of my head,” she said.

During her hospital stay, Westgate noticed the treatment she got from her caregivers. “I saw a bunch of nurses that were really good, and some that were not so good,” she said. “I think that nurses and doctors in general should give you confidence and tell you that you are going to heal.

“When I first got there, they told me that I wasn’t going to be able to walk, and that I was going to be stuck there for over 30 days. This one nurse came in and she was gonna administer fentanyl, or morphine, I don’t remember what it was. I asked her to mix it with saline, and she said ‘I thought this was the adult ward.’ She didn’t mix it with saline and she put it in my arm, and my whole arm turned bright red.”

Westgate remembers the treatment she received from a nurse named Emily. “They wouldn’t let me go home unless I could do five things. She got off work, came back and stayed another shift, and helped me do those five things that I needed to do to go home,” she said.

“Out of all those people that helped take care of me when I went through that, she was the only one that I remember because it really made a difference.”

Westgate was supposed to spend up to two years in therapy relearning how to walk and talk. “I actually got a job eight months after my car accident and I worked as a caregiver and med aid for a year. One of the nurses told me, ‘Why aren’t you in nursing school yet Cassy? You need to go to nursing school right now, quit working here.’  And so that month, I quit my job and I moved out here to Gresham, and I enrolled in school.”

Westgate’s path towards a nursing career and position in Rho Theta are a result of her persistence.

“I think that usually if I plan to do something, and I hold myself to it, and say that I’m gonna do it, then I pretty much end up doing it,” she said. “I don’t want to give up, or give myself any reason not to think I can do something.”