She Saved Her Girls' Lives; It Left Her Paralyzed

A Canadian mother is paralyzed and her life upended after she threw herself in harm's way to save her children, CBC reports. Jessica Dicks was camping July 3 when a 30-foot tree started falling toward the tent that held her daughters—ages 6, 4, and 10 months. "I remember running for the tent and then that's it—blank," Dicks says. Three weeks later, she woke up from a medically induced coma. The tree had fallen on her, leaving Dicks with broken teeth, a collapsed lung, a broken rib, 20 staples in her head, and rods and screws in her back. She was also paralyzed from the chest down. Doctors tell her she'll never walk again.

Dicks' uncle credits her with saving her children's lives. "I would rather be paralyzed than one of them be dead, or them be paralyzed," Dicks says. But now she worries about the kind of life she'll have with her daughters. It's unclear how Dicks, who worked as a roofer, will be able to afford the life she and her husband had planned or the medical costs she'll now face. "Life is a whole lot of work now," she says. Her uncle has set up a fundraising page in the hopes of raising $50,000 to help Dicks' family. (More Canada stories.)