Krissi Dyer CARRABASSETT VALLEY — Krissi Dyer knows she’s lucky, so lucky that she calls it a miracle that the 13-inch stick that impaled her torso during a Jan. 11 ski accident on Sugarloaf’s Tote Road didn’t kill her or cause extensive internal injuries.

While painful and unbelievable, Dyer has been recovering at home, healing inside out, and hoped to return to work as a waitress at Tufulio’s and bartend at the Carrabassett Inn today (Wednesday, Feb. 1).

She had taken “three really nice runs” that day before she met up with friend Chris Proulx. It was the first time they’d had a chance to take a run together in a couple of years. “Little did we know that we wouldn’t be doing much skiing.”

“I’m a pretty competent skier... but haven’t gotten out much over the last couple years after a knee surgery. I’ve really enjoyed getting out there this year,” Dyer said.

The 13-inch stick that was pulled from Krissi Dyer’s torso following a Jan. 11 ski accident at Sugarloaf. (Photo courtesy Krissi Dyer) She was skiing along the edge of the right side of Tote Road, and it all happened so quickly. “I just remember flying off the trail after hitting a deep divot on the side of the trail and then smashing off of trees.”

Her friend Proulx remembers more details. She hit a dip in the trail. It spun her around backwards, and she lost her skis and helmet, and went airborne for about 20 feet and landed on her back on top of a birch tree, lying down just off the side of the trail. She sat up, and moaned/screamed and the branch broke off.

“I stopped, hiked back uphill, called ski patrol,” Proulx said. “Two other skiers stopped and assisted me holding her head and keeping her still. We saw the end of the blood stained branch, but had no idea so much was left inside. The main concern was internal bleeding and I thought maybe she had ruptured her spleen.”

Ski Patrol was on scene in under a minute “although it seemed like an eternity,” Proulx said. “He assessed her, back boarded and away she went.”

Dyer said she never lost consciousness through the whole ordeal, and credits the ski patrol and ambulance crew for doing a great job.

“Nobody knew that I had a 13-inch stick still inside of me, not the ski patrol, ambulance personnel, helicopter crew, or even the hospital crew until I got a CAT scan.”

Meanwhile, Proulx went in to tell Dyer’s boyfriend, Mike Carey, working at Sugarloaf that she’d been in accident. “He was there at the Sugarloaf First Aid clinic when I came in,” she said.

Ski patrol took her to first aid where the ambulance was waiting. “This whole time I was in intense pain. I thought I had ruptured my spleen or something because my left side of my body, abdomen hurt a lot. Once I got into the ambulance my breathing became very shallow and my heart rate was decreasing.” Because the pain was intense, the ambulance crew made the decision to call LifeFlight, which Dyer said “was a very good call on their part.”

Continuing she said, “They made me as comfortable as they could before bringing me to the airport to meet LifeFlight. The flight seemed almost like a dream since I was on morphine.”

Once she arrived at Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston, “the chaos began” and the CAT scan identified a huge stick that had entered below her shoulder blade and down into her abdomen, “missing my lungs, ribs, spleen and everything.”

The surgeon told her that having some extra muscle and “lovin” (weight) helped. “He said if I was a ‘little skinny girl’ I probably wouldn’t have made it.”

She was at CMMC for about eight hours. “I never lost consciousness. I remember thinking, I’ve hurt myself very badly, but I thought it was internal injuries. I didn’t know I was impaled. It was the longest day of my life!

“My surgery was only 15 minutes,” she said. She chose to go home that night instead of staying at the hospital because “I figured I might as well travel when I was still pretty high from the anesthesia, plus I really wanted to get home. My ride home was pretty painless, but the next few day after were pretty bad,” she said.

“It seems weird that it happened to me. I’ve never been in such an intense situation from a boarding or skiing accident where I felt so helpless and was entirely dependent on someone else to stay alive.”

The surgeons took the picture of the stick, one for the hospital and one for her. Carey asked if he could keep the stick, “but they said it was a biohazard so we couldn’t.”

Proulx stayed home and made phone calls. There were a number of people at the hospital, and everyone stayed in contact over the phone.

“The ski patrol and ambulance crew were great, very efficient and patient with me as I had some moments where I almost freaked out... The rumors were crazy. Some people thought I had died. Others thought I was about to die... When I came home, the love and support was overwhelming. This community is just unreal. I couldn’t ask to be a part of a better place that I call home.

“The first week of recovery was awful. I wouldn’t have made it without the help of my Mike, my friends and family. The wound is still healing, and I have to keep it open with packing so that it will heal from the inside out.” But she’s well on her road to recovery, singing the solo for the candlelight vigil at the Sugarloaf Charity Summit Ball Saturday. “It was great,” she said.

As for skiing, Dyer, 33, has no plans to hang up her skis, and hopes to get back out late this season. “I am especially bummed that I won’t be able to get back out any time soon.”