Norma Sierra enjoys taking care of everyone – her husband, children, grandchildren and parents. In June 2024 after several days of rainstorms, she was helping her husband do yard work while her grandkids played soccer.
While her husband mowed, she was walking through the yard and suddenly fell to the ground. She didn’t realize at the time that the lawn mower blade had hit a concrete chunk and flung it at her—hitting her left leg.
“I tried to get up, but couldn’t,” she recalls. “I remember my leg was bleeding and thought, ‘Oh, I’ll probably need stitches.’”
She tried to get up, but it was impossible. Her husband and son helped her to the car and drove her to Harris Health Lyndon B. Johnson Hospital. Still thinking she’d receive only stitches, or at most a cast, she was shocked when the emergency room nurses and doctors told her the concrete chunk had shattered her tibia and she’d need surgery.
“I was surprised when they told me they’d be putting a rod in my leg,” she says. “All I could think of was ‘How was I going to take care of my family if I couldn’t walk?’”
After surgery, physical therapy quickly got Sierra back on her feet.
“I was so nervous to walk,” she says. “I felt like my leg was going to break again. But my physical therapist encouraged me to take my first steps.”
Slowly, but surely, Sierra moved from wearing a compression boot to using a walker, then a cane, and finally walking without any assistance.
“The doctors told me this was a freak accident, and I was extremely lucky,” she says. “It would’ve been a very different outcome if it had hit me in the chest or head. Everyone
that cared for me—from the nurses, doctors and physical therapists—were amazing. I’m incredibly grateful for their care.”