“My children call me the terminator. You just can’t break me. It would take a lot more than an automobile accident to get me out,” GOP congressional candidate Katie Arrington told Fox News on Wednesday about her South Carolina election race.
Arrington suffered terrible injuries in a car accident on June 22 as she was driving to Hilton Head. Another driver — who was drunk — was traveling in the wrong direction on the highway and plowed into her. That driver died; Arrington was hospitalized with serious injuries.
Arrington was wearing a seat belt, but the head-on collision broke both her feet and several of her ribs, damaged her small intestine and right colon, crushed her second vertebrae — and ruptured her aorta.
“I was bleeding to death from my aorta. I have no neurological damage, and not a scratch on my face,” Arrington also told Fox News Wednesday.
“We both have a lot of things wrong with us,” she said, referring to her friend Jacquie Goff, who was with her in the car and is still in the hospital. “But we’re both going to be able to walk. We both have no neurological damage. The woman [who] hit us died on impact,” she added. “There is no reason why we didn’t. Other than God. Other than God.”
The deceased driver, Helen White, had a blood alcohol reading of 0.153 percent, according to The Post and Courier — that’s nearly twice the legal limit.
“When we braced for impact, we braced to hold onto each other,” Arrington, 47, said in a statement to the media when she was released from Medical University Hospital last Friday. “I owe Jackie Goff my life, and I don’t for a moment discount that God and Jackie are my saviors.”
“There are no words other than, ‘Thank you, God,'” Arrington added. She was accompanied at that press conference by her husband, Rob Arrington, as well as by Dr. Avery Buchholz, her attending physician and a surgeon at Medical University of South Carolina.
“I can’t explain why I lived. If anyone does not believe in God, look at me,” Arrington added. “I think Washington is my calling.”
“This campaign has never stopped for me. This is hard work and perseverance to get to Washington to represent this community, this district and this nation, and it hasn’t stopped,” the Trump-backed candidate also said.
Arrington is facing Democratic congressional candidate Joe Cunningham in South Carolina’s first congressional district. She handed incumbent Mark Sanford an upset loss in the Republican primary in June.
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“We’re ready to go, and we haven’t stopped,” Arrington told Fox News on Wednesday. “We’re organizing a bunch of different fundraisers starting next week, and I’ll be back at that GOP meeting — but this time I’ll be wheeled in. I won’t be walking.”
She added, “I can’t explain why I lived. If anyone does not believe in God, look at me. I think Washington is my calling.”
She also said last week to those assembled, “The fact that you opened your hearts and your prayers to me — I’m just somebody who wants to serve. I don’t deserve it. There are a thousand people that get hurt every day.” She also thanked the hospital staff for “doing miracles.”
Kyle Becker is a content writer and producer with LifeZette. Follow him on Twitter.
(photo credit, article image: Youtube)
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