After inpatient rehab at UChicago Medicine, motorcycle crash survivor works to inspire others
As she and her friends rode to dinner, Christina Evans lost control of her Yamaha R6 motorcycle exiting the Dan Ryan Expressway. Blaming a combination of speed, construction debris and a focus on getting tacos, Evans found herself twisted and broken underneath her bike.
“I remember lying on the ground,” said Evans, who was 32 when the accident occurred in August 2018. “My best friend ran up crying and kept telling me, ‘You’re going to be OK.’”
The young mother's injuries were devastating: a broken right femur that required a rod from her knee to her pelvis, a dislocated left hip that required a brace, three broken fingers and a broken right wrist, and a lacerated kidney.
Evans had four blood transfusions and suffered a pulmonary blood clot during her seven days in the ICU at the University of Chicago Medical Center in Hyde Park.
Expert care at UChicago Medicine Inpatient Rehabilitation
After four more days of recovery, Evans was transferred to the UChicago Medicine Inpatient Rehabilitation program located on the UChicago Medicine Ingalls Memorial Hospital campus in Harvey. There, she spent a month relearning basic tasks like walking and ways to care for herself and her young son, Charles.
Evans admitted being afraid she would not be able to do everything she'd done before the accident. But the rehabilitation program and its compassionate nurses provided the help she needed to reclaim her life. She even bought a new motorcycle before she was able to walk again.
“The care was great," Evans said. "The therapy department was awesome.”
In 2019, UChicago Medicine and the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab came together to form a partnership combining UChicago Medicine's world-class academic healthcare with the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab's nationally recognized rehabilitation care.
The care Evans received is the kind of outstanding treatment everyone can expect, said David Weiss, MD, Medical Director of Rehabilitation Services at the University of Chicago Medicine, adding that the approach is also holistic, positive and personalized.
"We want people to understand what's happened to them, and we help them to overcome it and also plan for the future," Weiss said.
Today, the 40-year-old Evans works as a certified nursing assistant at UChicago Medicine Inpatient Rehabilitation, telling her story as a way to help motivate patients on their own recovery journeys.
Life after inpatient rehab: 'Just don't give up'
In between juggling her full-time job and motherhood, Evans is studying to become a registered nurse — a longtime goal fueled by her recovery and the care she received. Her goal is to stay at Ingalls, giving back to the place that helped her reclaim her life.
Evans has a message to rehabilitation patients: “Even though you have a setback, you can always come back from it. Just don't give up."
Evans is still riding motorcycles, a pastime she says is one of the real joys in her life. But this summer might be her last; her son, now 13, has asked her to stop.
“Never in a million years would I have pictured myself having to be in rehab at that age, or me having a motorcycle accident and actually surviving,” she said. “I was just grateful that I made it through and came to Ingalls.”