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18 ARCHBOLD
MEDICAL CENTER
The next thing the Valdosta State
University graduate remembers is wak-
ing up as a patient at the Level 2 Trauma
Center she typically reported to for work.
The accident was a bad one. The femur
in Williams’ left leg had been broken. Her
right leg had to be amputated.
‘Will I still have my job?’
“They told me that when I was in the ER
the first thing I asked was, ‘Will I still have
my job?’” Williams recalls. “I knew I was
going to go back to work, and I knew I
was going to race.”
More than two years later, Williams
does still have her job. It’s a job where
she says she more easily connects with
patients now, and especially patients’
families. That empathy, she says, came
as a result of hearing her own family’s
experience after her accident.
“Now I have a deeper understanding
for what the families are going through,”
Williams said. “Before my accident, I
could only imagine how the families felt.”
Beginning with a single step
The journey back to work in the emer-
gency department was not easy for
Williams, who has wanted to work in
medicine since she was a small child. But
it was one that she never doubted she’d
eventually be able to complete.
After her accident, Williams was
admitted to the intensive care unit at
Archbold Medical Center. As the only
Level 2 Trauma Center in South Georgia,
Archbold offers patients 24-hour imme-
diate coverage by general surgeons, as
well as coverage by providers specializ-
ing in orthopedic surgery, neurosurgery,
anesthesiology, emergency medicine,
radiology and critical care.
During this time, Williams says she
realized how important the little things
her nurses did to help make her more
comfortable were to her healing pro-
cess. She remembers one nurse, Shelli
ARCHBOLD MEMORIAL HOSPITAL TRAUMA
NURSE OVERCOMES HER OWN TRAUMA
IT HAD BEEN RAINING
all week. Morgan Williams,
a 24-year-old registered nurse at Archbold Memorial
Hospital, was heading home in the 1999 Jeep Cherokee
she had been driving as a loaner vehicle while she waited
for her new car to come in.
An avid dirt track racer, Williams is no driving novice,
but the water on the road had pooled, and the Jeep
hydroplaned, spun several times and hit the guardrail.
At least that’s what witnesses later told her.
Whennormal
isn’t normal
anymore