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In addition to MADD Victim Services’ Facebook page, Nancy Ryan LaPoint (bottom left) found healing by participating in the annual Walk Like MADD® .
From Victim to Survivor
When Nancy Ryan LaPoint woke up in a Hartford, Connecticut hospital on May 19, 2014, she had no memory of the 39 days she had spent there. Nancy suffered a traumatic brain injury after a car crash caused by a drunk driver on April 11. The crash also left her with serious injuries throughout her body.
“I had pieces of metal in me,” Nancy says. “So when I left the hospital, I left with 16 different medications.”
When a MADD staff member suggested she join MADD’s private Victim Services Facebook page, she agreed. There she found the support and understanding she needed from others who had lived through similar experiences. “They understood the pain I was experiencing. They understand about all of the medications I was taking that were making me forget things.”
After some serious discussion with her new MADD Facebook friends, Nancy began to think that she might not need the medications. “The MADD group encouraged me to go ahead and do what I thought was right.”
After consulting with her doctors at the brain injury clinic and her primary physician, who agreed, over time, Nancy stopped taking the medications.
“The MADD Facebook group encouraged me to trust myself.”
Providing Victim Services
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