Konnie Brewer, Cox Branson
Konnie Brewer already loved working for the Branson hospital long before a terrible motorcycle accident took her from being an employee to a patient.
“My husband said one minute I was right behind him and the next I wasn’t,” she said referring to the day in 2011.
In the accident, Brewer’s face was broken in eight places, she suffered three ruptured discs in her neck, a spinal cord contusion and a traumatic brain injury. Brewer was life-flighted from Omaha, Ark., to Mercy in Springfield.
“My family wanted me here,” Brewer said.
After three weeks in Springfield, Brewer was transferred to Branson where she spent the next month in rehab. In Springfield, she had been given the devastating news that she might not walk again.
“Here, they helped me walk again,” Brewer said. “They gave me so much and I want to give them something back.”
In rehab, she was constantly encouraged.
“I was often told, ‘You can do it. You just have to realize you can do it,’” she said.
Throughout her year-long recovery, she said many of her colleagues frequently visited, even helping Brewer’s husband with paperwork that had to be taken care of due to the accident.
When Brewer was put on permanent disability, she wasn’t ready for her career to end.
After talking to her doctor, she took the opportunity to try working again.
“And, I’m still here,” Brewer said from her office at Clinic Administration at Cox Medical Center Branson. “What better place to work than the place that helped you at your lowest.”
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