Accident victim loses sight, gains hope
RENTON, Wash. – One of Maria Federici’s eyes was pulverized when a piece of an entertainment center flew off a trailer and crashed through her windshield. The other was rendered useless by a severed nerve.
The muscles that move her eyelids no longer work, so her eyes are perpetually shut.
Staples that held her teeth in her gums have been removed. So has the feeding tube in her stomach.
She’s had three surgeries – the longest a 15 1/2 -hour operation to reconstruct her face. Doctors took bone from the back of her skull and hip, and placed pins and plates in her head.
There will be more surgeries before doctors are done with the 24-year-old woman who looks nothing like she did before the crash on Interstate 405 nearly killed her Feb. 22.
Robin Abel, Federici’s mother, remembers making arrangements to donate her daughter’s organs the day of the crash. “They told me her face was obliterated. They said it was hopeless,” Abel told the King County Journal.
She was planning her daughter’s funeral, then four hours later the phone rang. Staff at Harborview Medical Center told her to come back. Her daughter had moved.
Doctors told Abel it was unlikely Federici would ever see, hear or speak again. They were right about her sight, but wrong about the rest.
“Five to 10 years from now, I’m pretty darn sure I’ll have my master’s and probably my Ph.D.,” said Federici, who has a degree in speech communications. “Dr. Federici sounds OK to me.”
Doctors say they don’t know whether the brain damage Federici suffered is permanent.
“My speech is back but my short-term memory comes and goes,” Federici said in an interview at her mother’s home near this south Seattle suburb.
She spent more than a month at Harborview, then moved to Good Samaritan Hospital in Puyallup for rehab until May 28, when she returned to her mother’s small cottage on the shore of Lake Kathleen, east of Renton. “It’s healing,” she said, as a breeze blew in off the water.
Two big, friendly golden retrievers – Georgie and Beau – roam around the house. A 5-month-old Cavalier King Charles spaniel named Sam I Am likes to snuggle with Federici.
Sam sleeps curled up against Federici’s belly. Even with that comfort, sleep doesn’t always come easy. A steady barrage of therapy and doctor’s appointments keep Federici exhausted. She battles depression, headaches and sleeplessness.
Dreams of having a family have faded.
“No children,” she said, “because I wouldn’t be able to see them.”
Federici and her mother say they don’t understand why the driver who caused the accident never stopped and never willingly came forward to admit responsibility.
Investigators tracked down a 29-year-old Newcastle man weeks later after finding one of his thumb prints on the debris, but prosecutors said they lacked enough evidence to charge him with felony hit-and-run. Instead, he’ll be fined for failing to secure a load – a civil infraction that carries a penalty ranging from $81 to $170.