Disaster Oregon woman, 28, paralyzed after being crushed by piano in freak accident - Danielle Drummond was trying to help her friend Wile E. Coyote move the piano

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An Oregon woman, who had hoped for a fresh start in a new state, is paralyzed from the waist down after she was crushed by a piano in a brutal freak accident last month.

Danielle Drummond, 28, was moving the piano when the friend she’d been helping lost her grip and dropped the “whole upright piano” on top of her, WOIO reported.

Drummond, who had just recently moved to the Beaver State from Ohio, was rushed to the hospital for emergency surgery, where doctors discovered the accident “severed” her spinal cord and left her “paralyzed from the waist down.”

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Danielle Drummond, 28, was left paralyzed from the waist down after an upright piano she was helping her friend move fell on top of her.

“I’m trying to keep like in high spirits because I know this is my life now, but it’s hard,” she told the outlet. “As of right now, I need a lot more physical therapy. I need to rebuild my strength.”

Following the injury, Drummond said she would need extensive rehab and a home health aide — presenting more difficulties since she was living in her van with her dog Lotus.

The 28-year-old has no family in Oregon to care for her and is looking for a place to live.

Returning to her native Cleveland also seems impossible in her current condition.

“I don’t even know like how I would get home, let alone like how to transfer all the medical stuff, and I don’t feel like I’m able right now to do like that far of a car ride or a trip in an airplane,” Drummond told the outlet.

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Her friend she’d been helping lost her grip, causing the large instrument to crush her spine.

Her older sister, Rosie Hayne, has set up a GoFundMe to help her loved one find a place to live and pay for her medical expenses.

“Our hearts are completely broken, My baby sister means the world to me,” Hayne wrote.

“Such a strong and wise woman, down to earth and humble, her aura reflects her beautiful soul. We will get through this with lots of prayer and positive guidance. This is in God’s hands now, please wrap them around her tight!”

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She was rushed to the hospital for emergency surgery, where doctors discovered the accident “severed” her spinal cord and left her “paralyzed from the waist down.”

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The 28-year-old has no family in Oregon to care for her and is looking for a place to live.

Hayne revealed that her sister fractured her T11 and T12 — the two lowest vertebrae in a person’s thoracic spine.

In surgery, doctors also needed to perform a fusion “from T10-L2” in Drummond’s spine to improve her spinal stability.

In an update on May 1, her older sister wrote that Drummond is “getting around really well in the hospital wheelchair” but still needs to find one of her own and a place to live.

“She wants to make it clear that she is not expecting to ever walk again. She has accepted the reality of her situation. But she has an amazing spirit and an overall positive outlook, focusing on what she can do.”

While the accident has left her in a wheelchair for the remainder of her life, Drummond said she’s “hopeful” that medical advances in the future may give her the ability to walk again.
 
who had hoped for a fresh start in a new state
Sounds like she got one of those monkey paw wishes granted

Seeing as she's in oregon they'll probably recommend assisted suicide as part of her treatment

But yeah, as @Thomas Talus pointed out this isn't something you should be doing if you're not very strong and capable of safely handling something that large specifically because this is exactly the kind of thing that can happen. Professional movers exist for a reason

That said at least it didn't happen like this:
 
Here is the bit that really makes this story even more tragic to me:

Following the injury, Drummond said she would need extensive rehab and a home health aide — presenting more difficulties since she was living in her van with her dog Lotus.

The 28-year-old has no family in Oregon to care for her and is looking for a place to live.
She's crippled and living out of a van

Jesus Christ lady, just get your family to rent an access van and take you back to Cleveland, there's no way you're going to have a happy life by yourself now in Oregon.
 
Two women trying to move a piano sounds like less of a "freak" accident, and more like an "inevitable" accident, particularly if it involved movement that was anything other than 100% horizontal. This is what you hire guys with legs as thick as your waist to move.
100%.

Sold an upright once to some weedy zoomer couple that turned up in an ancient mini van, no straps, and no buddies to help them load it, after I made it very clear in the listing that it would be necessary. Those things are heavy as fuck. After a dicey 10 minutes of me jerry rigging some ramps and a comealong (I really needed it gone), it was in their van. No idea how they got it out the other end, possibly one of them is in a wheelchair now too, but they paid upfront in cash so . I took pains to stress that the van was going to need at least three times the stopping distance and major care on corners since the thing was free to roll around in there and they didn’t even have a headache bar behind the seats.
People get away with an incomplete understanding of physics in most of their lives, but moving a piano is a hard skill check.
 
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Two women trying to move a piano sounds like less of a "freak" accident, and more like an "inevitable" accident, particularly if it involved movement that was anything other than 100% horizontal. This is what you hire guys with legs as thick as your waist to move.
I bet it was stairs, trying to move pianos up or down stairs is brutal.

The one time I helped move a piano, we ended up just demolishing it and hauling it out in pieces. It had been listed on Craiglist as "free, you haul it away" for a week and there were no takers, probably because it was an old piece of junk that had not been maintained in decades.
 
I bet it was stairs, trying to move pianos up or down stairs is brutal.
Could be. Another possibility is (pianos usually have rollers and you can slightly tip one and roll it into place) they were rolling it while balancing it on an edge, the other woman got tired and released her grip.
 
I bet it was stairs, trying to move pianos up or down stairs is brutal.

The one time I helped move a piano, we ended up just demolishing it and hauling it out in pieces. It had been listed on Craiglist as "free, you haul it away" for a week and there were no takers, probably because it was an old piece of junk that had not been maintained in decades.
The cost to hire movers and then a tuner once it’s moved is generally about the same as a brand new one, and that generally has delivery built in.
 
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