‘Excruciatingly painful’: Winnipeg artist shares long journey of recovery after being hit by vehicle

Manitoba is reporting a rise in pedestrians being hit by vehicles, with the most recent being a 28-year-old man who died from his injuries earlier this month.

Now, Luna Zuniga, a Winnipeg artist, is sharing her story five months after being hit by a speeding car at a crosswalk on Grant Avenue and Lanark Street.

“I had my clavicle shattered,” Zuniga told CityNews. “The ligaments were torn right off the bone. All the bones in my legs were broken, with all the ligaments torn out with bone attached. Fractured ribs.”

“That car was going really fast.”

Zuniga, 50, says she doesn’t remember much from the accident. Lingering brain damage has meant short-term memory loss.

“I remember pressing the button and everything went dark,” she recounted. “I was almost eye to eye with the licence plate and I just remember thinking, ‘why am I looking at a licence plate?’ And then the split second where you’re thinking, ‘OK, I’ve just been hit by a car.’ And then my second thought is, ‘I’m not gonna make it home tonight.’”

Zuniga says she was “scared to death” as she was being transported to Winnipeg’s Health Sciences Centre in an ambulance. “I was afraid. I didn’t know why I was in the ambulance. I didn’t feel anything.”

She credits a Mexican paramedic who spoke to her in Spanish and kept her calm and laughing until she was settled in the hospital.

The Winnipeg woman’s memories of that first day after the accident are a little hazy as well.

“I was on a lot of painkillers,” she said. “They keep you as comfortable as possible. But I do remember I had a really bad headache. And I think I found out a few days after that, I had suffered a brain injury.

“I was immobile for a really long time, which is really difficult. You’re basically staring at a wall for hours and then they move you, and you’re staring at that other wall for hours.”

Zuniga is about 180 days into her physical rehabilitation. There’s therapy in the mornings, which she needs help getting to as she can’t get into a car on her own. Then she goes home and continues physical therapy.

She still can’t do simple things like putting on socks or using the bathroom as she used to, as she is in constant physical pain and fatigue.

“Even though I do consider myself very, very lucky to have survived and my family is very grateful and my friends, it has been excruciatingly painful. It is painful.”

—Winnipeg artist Luna Zuniga

It’s still unknown when she’ll be able to return to a life similar to the one she had before her accident.

“I was an artist. I did a lot of work. Good work,” said Zuniga, who is also a teacher. “I helped children and I haven’t been able to do any of that and I miss it.”

Emotional injuries, depression

But the most painful scars for her aren’t physical: it’s the emotional injuries that come from the accident, and from the depression that comes with lingering brain damage. She’s undergoing psychological therapy.

Zuniga, who says she relies a lot on family to help her, especially her sister, hopes she will be able to go back to the person she was before the accident. “I really miss that person,” the artist said of herself.

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Clinical psychologist Jay Greenfeld says it’s important for people who suffer serious injuries to try and reconnect with the person they were before their accidents.

“Because otherwise if you don’t, what you’ll end up doing is perseverating on what you can’t do,” Greenfeld said. “The more you avoid something that makes you anxious, the greater the anxiety is going to be.

“You don’t want that to define your life. You don’t want that to have to dictate every single thing you do after that. So, whatever degree you’re able to get back to that activity, one of the most important things is to return to it if you can.

“It might not look exactly the same. Even though if it looks different, it doesn’t mean you can’t.”

But the emotional damage that comes along with, Greenfeld acknowledges, can take years to heal.

“And that’s why it’s important to address it,” he said.

Zuniga is doing everything right, from using a crosswalk to now rehabilitating her body and her mind. She’s gearing up for another surgery on her leg happening next week.

But she’s left in limbo, waiting for news of her condition improving, and for news of a criminal trial for the driver of the vehicle that hit her.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen to that person,” she said. “But I know that it happened during a time when lots of kids are going to school. So if it hadn’t been me, it could have been a six-year-old, and a six-year-old would not have survived.”