It’s not everyone who sees a badly broken leg as a gift from God. Especially not when it was shattered by an oversized pickup truck driven by a drunk driver who ran a stop sign, T-boned your car and bulldozed you into a ravine.

Because of the quick and excellent work of John C. Lincoln’s Level I Trauma Center team, Ronica Mayer is able to enjoy her beautiful, happy baby, Seth Jr.

And most especially not when the crash interrupted your much-anticipated trip to meet your husband for your first official “date” after your baby’s birth.

Most folks would consider that sequence really bad luck, especially after a day that had begun so well.

Ronica Mayer’s beautiful, cooing, happy baby, Seth Jr., was three weeks old that day in December. She had just dropped him off with mother-in-law Diann Mayer, where he joined older sisters Annie, 12, and Elise, 11, for a party at grandma’s house, six-miles down New River Road from their own rural home. That gave Ronica, 34, and husband Seth, 32, time for their first post-baby dinner date.

“I was really happy,” Ronica said. “My husband was finishing church band practice, and I was driving the speed limit, about 45 mph, down the road. I was just a mile from home when this huge pickup truck blew a stop sign and hit me broadside. There was nothing I could do. He knocked my little car into the boulders at the bottom of the ravine.

“At first I thought I could get out,” she said, “but I couldn’t move my leg. So I just waited for help.”

Ronica has no doubt that her injured leg was God’s grace. “If my leg hadn’t been broken,” she explained, “I would have crawled out of the car, because I didn’t know my neck was also broken. And if I’d done that, I might be paralyzed or dead right now.”

Because her leg injury kept her from moving, she stayed inside her crumpled little car until the paramedics from Daisy Mountain Fire Department stabilized her neck, extricated her ever so carefully and carried her gently out of the New River Road ravine into their waiting ambulance.