Daughter is inspired by mom's injury

[manouli]

Daughter is inspired by mom's injury

By DEBBIE GILBERT
The Times
FLOWERY BRANCH

On hot summer night in 1994, Betty Uriegas' life changed forever.

For nine years, she had been a Hall County Sheriff's deputy and served as the first female member of the department's dive team. But in an instant, a violent car crash left her a quadriplegic, unable to control her body below the neck.

That fateful moment also changed the life of her daughter, Betsy Hughes, in ways that neither of them could have imagined.

Last month in Augusta, with her mother looking on proudly, Hughes walked across the stage at the Medical College of Georgia and accepted her diploma, having earned the right to put the initials "M.D." after her name.

On July 1, she begins a six-year residency at Duke University, with the goal of becoming a neurosurgeon who can help patients with spinal cord injuries.

"I feel I'll be able to relate to patients and their families and understand what they're going through," Hughes said.

At the time of her mother's accident, Hughes was just 14 years old, and her brother, Tony Uriegas, was only 5.

Until then, Hughes hadn't really considered becoming a doctor. But she never dreamed that her active, athletic mother could be incapacitated.

Neither did Uriegas. "I was 35 years old and in top shape. I had been a lifeguard and a body builder," she said. "And I loved my job as a deputy so much, I would have done it for free."

At 2:42 a.m. on August 17, 1994, she was responding to a call about a suspicious vehicle on Atlanta Highway when a suspect apparently shot at her patrol car. Though the bullet did not hit Uriegas, it caused her to swerve, sideswiping a tree in the Chicopee neighborhood.

The back axle got caught, wrapping the rest of the vehicle around the tree trunk. The roll bar caved inward, snapping Uriegas' neck at the C3-C4 vertebra.

"I was conscious, but nobody knew where I was because I couldn't move my hands to work the radio," she said.

Fortunately, another deputy was returning from a burglary call on Atlanta Highway. He drove by and saw the mangled patrol car with Uriegas trapped inside.

Rushed to Northeast Georgia Medical Center, Uriegas was confused about what had happened.

"I didn't immediately realize it was a spinal-cord injury," she said. "I kept thinking I had been shot, and my family kept saying, 'No, it was a car accident.'"

Hughes vividly recalls getting the bad news.

"Dr. (Nabil) Muhanna (a Gainesville neurosurgeon) got our family together and told us all she would never walk again," Hughes said. "We didn't want to believe it. We hoped she would be that one miracle case."

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