(although I was 29 at the time!)
by Byron Brewer
A pregnant 31-year-old Scott County woman was flown to the University of Kentucky Medical Center in critical condition Tuesday after she and her two children were involved in a one-vehicle accident, sheriff's deputies said.
Kristin Hinkle was traveling eastbound on U.S. 62 West Tuesday afternoon when she lost control of her 1996 Ford Taurus near the road's intersection with Moore's Mill Road, Deputy Michael Fortney said. The vehicle ran off the north side of a roadway, struck a culvert and overturned, Deputy John Farris said.
"It was probably because of the wet weather and slick roads," Fortney said of the road conditions during the time of Hinkle's accident.
Hinkle was flown by helicopter to UK Medical Center where at press time both she and her unborn baby were reported in critical condition, according to hospital spokesperson Kristi Lopez.
The two children- Blake, 4, and Kalin, 1 - were transported by ambulance to Georgetown Community Hospital, Fortney said.
Georgetown Community spokesman Amy Spaulding confirmed the two children were at the facility, but said she could not release their conditions. Fortney said the children "looked to be OK."
Farris said the two children were in safety seats, while Fortney said their mother was wearing a safety belt.
Emergency crews did not have to use hydraulic equipment to free the Hinkles from the vehicle, Farris said.
by Jason Dooley
Taylor’s mother, Kristin Hinkle, was 28 weeks pregnant with her when she had a car accident driving home on U.S. 62 last April 27.
“I don’t know exactly what happened,” Kristin Hinkle said. “I just lost control somehow.”
Hinkle’s car slid into a concrete culvert and flipped, trapping the mother and her unborn baby, along with two other children, Blake, 4, and Kalin, 1, inside.
A passing neighbor, Georgetown realtor Mark Campbell, noticed the crash and realized he knew the passengers.
Campbell called 911 from his cellular phone, an act that probably saved the lives of both Kristin and Taylor Hinkle, she said.
“If Mark hadn’t come by and called for help, we would be dead. It was a matter of seconds between life and death,” she said.
When paramedics arrived at the scene, the two children were fine other than assorted cuts and bruises, but Kristin was unconscious and not breathing, she said.
The unborn baby had abrupted, pulling its placenta free from the mother’s uterine wall, and was cutting off the circulation of blood through the mother’s aorta, medical personnel said.
Kristin was immediately airlifted to the University of Kentucky Medical Center, where an emergency Caesarean section was performed to save the baby’s life, she said.
“The code of ethics for doctors in situations like this is to save the mother first, at all costs,” Kristin said. “They either save her or give up hope of saving her before they begin working on the baby. In my case, they had given up. I was dead.”
To the doctor’s surprise, Kristin miraculously regained her vital signs after the emergency birth, she said.
Doctors then did emergency surgery and other tests, determining that the mother had sustained a closed head injury but no other wounds, she said.
She spent the next four days in a coma, she said, before making a full recovery.
While Kristin’s recovery was quick and fairly easy, her newborn daughter’s was anything but.
Born three months premature, Taylor Hinkle weighed only 2.8 pounds and was 15 inches long, her mother said.
The baby required entubation to keep her breathing and suffered a seizure minutes after birth, forcing an emergency blood transfusion, Kristin said.
The infant’s APGAR score, which measures the overall health of a newborn on a scale from 1 to 10, was 4.
However, over the next week, the baby appeared to be growing more and more healthy.
“We are so lucky,” Kristin said she told her husband on the 11th day after Taylor’s birth. “The other babies are sick. Ours is just small; she just needs time to grow.”
The next day, which was Mother’s Day, disaster struck.
We got a call at like three that morning, telling us we had to come to the hospital immediately, there was no time to lose,” said Kristin.
The baby had suffered an attack of necrotizing entercolitis, a deterioration of the intestinal tract which can lead to perforation of the bowels and death, the mother said.
“When we got to the hospital, they as much as told us it was only a matter of hours before Taylor’s bowel perforated and she would die,” Kristin said.
However, the night brought the latest in a long line of miracles to the Hinkle family.
The infant’s condition worsened minute by minute, but her bowel never perforated, her mother said.
“Eventually, the X-rays started to show signs of improvement,” she said. Taylor’s health continued to improve, and finally, on her 62nd day, she was allowed to go home.
Now, eight months later, both mother and baby are largely recovered from their ordeals.
“It’s amazing,” said Kristin. “She’s doing so well, and so am I. It’s hard to believe how close to death we both were and how far we’ve come back.”
The Hinkles are very grateful to the people who helped them survive the accident and its aftermath, she added.
“There’s so many people who did so many wonderful things for us,” Kristin said. “The doctors were wonderful; the people of the community helped us out any way they could. It was just amazing.”
The events of the past year have given the mother a new perspective on her faith, as well, she said.
“I’m fairly religious, but not extremely so,” Kristin said. “But the way everything happened that day, it’s as if it were choreographed. From Mark coming by to the paramedics to the doctors, it was like someone was pulling the strings.”
When Kristin awoke from her coma, she noticed that someone had written “God loves you” on the dry erase message board in her hospital room.
“We asked everyone, but we never could find out who wrote it,” she said. “But I think it may have been a sign. If God didn’t take us that day, He must have some reason for wanting us to be here.”
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