Do not put your feet on the dashboard, car crash survivor whose skull shifted warns

Grainne Kealy, 35, broke every bone in her face during the accident after an airbag inflated and pushed her knees up towards her head. 

The car skidded on black ice and hit a wall in December 2007. Grainne kneed herself in the face at high speed. She suffered a leak to the brain, minor brain injury, and lost two teeth.

She had to have her entire forehead removed for two years, then replaced with a ceramic one.

Now she is speaking out to try to prevent others going through the same thing, after seeing celebrities post photos of themselves resting their feet on the dashboard.

My recovery has been very tough and because of the complications in May 2007 I am still recovering. It has been a long long road. I have no memory of the accident, the three months leading up to it or the month following it. One of my first memories is looking in the mirror for the first time. I didn’t recognize the face looking back at me.

She was fitted with an artificial forehead.

I do find it tough some days when I constantly lose words while in the middle of a conversation. This can happen to me twenty times a day. I get headaches when too many people are talking around/to me, when someone tries to talk to me over music and I sometimes find it difficult to stay focused. I still dislike looking in a mirror and I do not like my face but I can deal with it much better now.

Please listen to me and learn from my horrible experience. It breaks my heart that I can’t reach enough people to warn them before another person has to go through what I had to go through. Trust me when I say it is not worth it.