The Joyful Flamingo
The Joyful Flamingo Podcast guides and empowers women to tune into themselves and zoom in on their own well-being through laughter, connection, knowledge, and celebration! We’re here to create a tsunami of self-discovered, self-loved, and self-understood women who show up in this world unapologetically and joyfully so that we can pass the torch for generations to come! Join us to start leading your most vibrant, aligned and joyful life.
The Joyful Flamingo
Resilient Spirits - The Courage to Heal (with Betty and Desirée Ford) - Part 1
WARNING: The content in this episode contains information about someone's serious mental health struggles. If you are struggling yourself, please visit the support links in the show notes below.
On today's show, Emily talks to Betty and Desirée Ford as they share their journey to healing after a catastrophic car accident on May 4, 2018 completely altered their life. 21 days in a coma, 210 days in hospital, 24 surgeries, and immeasurable amounts of post hospital recovery, these two women went through hell and back to get to where they are today. Listen in to this two part series that shows us a MIRACULOUS healing journey overcoming unbelievable mental and medical feats!
Time Stamps
0:45 - Intro
2:17 - Meet Betty and Desirée Ford
6:45 - Emily and her guests rewind all the way back to BEFORE the accident and they explain what their life looked like then, inclusive of Des' mental health struggles
12:10 - What happened the day of the accident
18:12 - The severity and magnitude of Des' injuries
23:56 - The power of positivity and how the Ford Army came to be
28:50 - Trusting in others with literal life and death decisions, and the personal growth journey Betty had to go on to let people in
32:50 - Recap of today's conversation and a glimpse into Part 2 of the series
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*DISCLAIMER*
Just a reminder, that I am not a medical or psychological professional. Each one of my episodes has been inspired by my own experience and journey through life and is brought to you through my own opinions and my own lens. Any suggestions or advice offered here do not substitute proper conversations with your own healthcare professionals for either your physical or mental wellbeing.
21 days in a coma, 210 days in hospital, 24 surgeries and immeasurable amounts of post -hospital healing. Our guests today went through hell and back to be where they are now.
This beautiful story shows us the epitome of resilience, determination, unwavering belief, and how the power of positivity, even through the darkest of times,
has brought this mother and daughter duo to where they are today. Listen in. in this week and next, as we hear about some unbelievable medical and mental feats, and learn more about the recovery and healing journeys taken after a catastrophic car accident that happened nearly six years ago.
Well, hey there, friend, and welcome to the joyful flamingo podcast. I'm your host, Emily Schreiber. And I am obsessed with... empowering women to tune into themselves,
to zoom in on their own well -being so in turn they can lead their most vibrant, aligned, and joyful lives. I want to create a tsunami of self -discovered,
self -loved, and self -understood women to show up in this world unapologetically and joyfully and to pass the torch on for generations to come. If any of that feels aligned with your vibe stick around,
I'm so glad you're here. Now, let's go find our joy. Hey hey hey joyful flamingo flock and welcome to the show today.
Today's a special one on the pod since it's the very first time that we've ever interviewed two guests at the same time on the show and they just happen to be be two women that I've known for nearly my entire life.
We've got a special two -part series up our sleeves for you this week and next that proves that miracles really do happen. I met these women decades ago through the kids theater company that my mom founded and that my parents ran for decades in Woodstock,
Ontario. And if you're a theater kid, you can attest to how close you get to your theater fam. I love these women. deeply and have so many fond memories with them, so it's such a gift to have them on the show today to share their stories.
Let me tell you a bit about them. This mother and daughter duo love to share how their lives were drastically altered as a result of a fatal car accident on the night of May 4th, 2018.
Desiree Ford demonstrates daily how determination, resilience, strength, hard work, work, they can make almost anything possible. Due to catastrophic injuries she suffered,
as her body healed and her brain rewired, Dez had to relearn nearly everything that we take for granted. Her miraculous recovery proves that she wasn't yet finished here on earth.
And then there's Betty, as a single parent and primary caregiver and advocate for her daughter, Betty Ford can attest to the fact that the power of positive can indeed work miracles.
During the past nearly six years, she's experienced deep personal growth through her daughter's recovery journey. Together, they love to take listeners along with them on this wild ride of resilience and recovery,
of experience and discovery, of courage and caregiving and the incredible bond that they share. So welcome, welcome ladies to the joyful flamingo. Thank you so much. for hanging out with the flock today.
I really like to start off always with guests by giving you a chance to talk about what makes you you. I feel like it helps our listeners connect to our guests right off the bat of a new episode.
So can each of you tell the flock just a little bit about yourselves? What lights you up? What are the most important parts of you? What makes you you? - I will start.
As you have said how we met in the theater community, that's always been a really big part of my life. Anything artistic, I love anything crafty as well.
Even as a 24, almost 25 year old, I still prefer to color than do adult things. - I love it. it. Coloring can be adult.
I love coloring, yeah. - My job that I've been at for three years now makes me light up.
I was scared that I wouldn't be able to find anything else that would light up the way that dance used to make me feel, but I definitely proved that wrong.
- Oh good. - With my job. most important parts of me my limbs my brain and my heart because now it loves me I love that what makes you you I've never been one to be afraid to speak truths and now that I have even less of a filter because of my brain injury it's a wild ride it's an absolutely wild ride even though that part of my brain shouldn't be in full active mode.
I'm grateful that I can empathize with others. I am a complete extrovert with a great sense of humor. She does have a spitfire sense of humor,
friends. She really does. And I am Betty, Desiree's mom, and I think what lights me up most is my family, my three kids and then my grandkids,
of which now I have six. And music has always slipped me up, but it takes backseat when I have to choose between music and family, usually. Unless there's a pay there,
then I got to say, "Okay, you know what?" But that's what lights me up. And the most important part of me, I think, is my heart because because I empathize with everything you know I feel a bug crawling on the ground and I wish his legs were longer and you know silly stuff and what makes me me I think is also my sense of humor and my connection with people whether it's either been through my decades of music or
theater thanks to your family and the music just continues and I I love to learn so I'm always signing up for new things I believe that if you don't stay green you will rot so I'm forever learning something new and my sons will say okay what are you doing now and right now I'm studying to be a death doula a death doula that might have to be another podcast episode oh yes I would love that okay so here's the
deal. I think in order now for people to experience your entire journey today at its fullest, I do think we need to start all the way back at the very beginning before accident.
You guys use that term together, right? B A before accident. Yeah. Okay. So before accident and share just a little bit about what life was like for you both of that.
And you know, does if you would wouldn't mind telling us a little bit about your mental health struggles pre -accident, and then maybe Betty can elaborate a little bit more on what it was like to support your daughter through all of that time.
I was about 14 when mental health started creeping in. I suffered from anxiety as well as depression. I was extremely judgmental about myself as a lot of teenagers are and my mental struggles became so prevalent that I stopped attending school.
I went to school very irregularly. The only thing that I could be counted on to attend was my dance studio where I was either in classes or I was teaching and so I would easily miss a day of school but then I would have to be in the hospital in order to miss dance.
So that was your everything. Yeah it was interesting to see how important either one of those were. I had suicidal thoughts all of the time and I would self harm regularly but I'll I had suicidal thoughts,
I never had an actual plan, which helped me continue to get through high school. One of my main solutions, along with alcohol abuse,
was self -harm. That was my escape, feeling something physical to allow all of the stuff going on in my head to get out.
dance became my only healthy and safe way to escape from my head and put my emotions into something. Thank you for sharing because I know that that's not an easy part of your journey to explain to other people and so we really just are here honoring space for you to share that vulnerability with us so thank you for doing that.
Betty as the mother of the forties. -year -old who was experiencing such severe mental health concerns, what was it like for you, for you to mother somebody through that?
It was hell. At the time when it began, I was working afternoon shift. So knowing that she was alone every night once she got home from the dance studio.
For the first time in my life, I actually had panic attacks and there wasn't anything I could do about it. Financially, I had to keep the job, which was a pain. It also meant I had to take a leave from the theater.
When I left that job and I was working full -time as a medical secretary during the day, I would get a call from the vice principal at school saying, "Desiree has left the school,
is your home safe?" And then I'd... have to do like a checklist, or all the knives put away is all the medication hidden. It was so stressful, but there wasn't really anything I could do about it.
Medically, they couldn't find a pill that could help Desiree because she was not really diagnosed as bipolar. She wasn't enough extreme anxious or enough extreme depressed to be deemed bipolar.
She did. She did spend a week in the mental health unit. She actually admitted herself and appreciated that break from life because there was just too much for her to handle.
She couldn't figure out how she fit into the world. I also knew that Desiree had the will and the power within to overcome anything. So in a way,
it didn't stop our lives. It was just that. you know what, at some point she's going to figure this out. I also believe in my heart that if someone is told something,
it doesn't sit. But if they live it themselves, the only mistakes are the ones that we don't learn from. So, I put a lot of faith in that, that Desiree would eventually figure it out herself.
And she was going to some counseling, but again, we financially... we just had to use the counselors at the hospital there provided by OHIP and that wasn't helping.
We were on a, what do you call it, hamster wheel. It was no way to get off. The day of Des's accident was May 4th in 2018.
And so your mental health struggles were right up until there. Was it getting better? Was it getting worse? Was it getting worse? of stagnant at that point? - I had graduated,
went to prom in 2017, although I didn't have nearly all of my credits. I think, yeah, from 2017 up until the accident,
I was still just struggling a lot, even though I wasn't attending school. - Still lots of internal struggle. - Very. - Yeah. So that's a little bit of a lead up for our flock members to listen to about what it was like for these two extraordinary women leading up to the accident.
So then Dez's accident happened, like I said, May 4th, 2018. I'm sure in some ways it feels like a lifetime ago for both of you while exactly at the same time feeling like it was just yesterday that it happened,
right? And I know that for you, Dez, your memory was based basically wiped clean. How many days leading up to the accent do you not remember anything from? This is a really tricky part because there are many pictures of the days leading up to it.
And over the past almost six years, you know, I've heard mom talk a lot about the days leading up to it. And so I don't know if I can decipher what.
I actually remember, right, compared to what I've just heard over and over again. Absolutely. Okay, that makes sense. I can't answer that question. That's okay. That's a brilliant description.
So we'll let Betty take over here and maybe describe to us what happened that night, what happened the night of the accident. If it's okay, I'm going to start that morning. So that morning,
7 30, we were at a large large conference, and it was all music teachers, and I hadn't been teaching at that point for about 10 years.
It was like a big homecoming, and I was very involved in the conference, as was Desiree, and people hadn't seen her since she was like seven or eight, and here she was now 18,
right? It was incredible. The warmth and the love just embraced this like a great big blanket. blanket and I remember the only bad part about that day was the wind it was just an ominous day I had this feeling in the pit of my stomach that's something dark and just dangerous was out there at the same time we were in production week it was a friday night and I was directing the intermediate kids on a brand new
first time ever produced in Canada play called hoody all about teen angst. Desiree at the same time was choreographer for the youngsters.
I think it was Aladdin, which takes us back to Mike. Yeah. For those of you don't know, my husband played Aladdin 20 something years ago. And I was music director then.
Yes. Yeah. So isn't it all wonderful how it all comes around? around. And so we finished the conference that day. Desray went home to take a quick shower, but our hydro at home had been out since early afternoon.
When you live in the country, basically, if a bird farts on the wire, you'll lose your power. So she had gone home, and then I went directly to the theater. Her play was first,
and normally she would stay and watch my play as well, but she was anxious to get home because she was going to miss me. up with a friend, so she left. So at the end of my play, I get home and of course there's this complete darkness and I texted Desiree.
So this was at 9 .50. I said, "Where are you at?" And I started lighting candles. I thought, "Oh, we're going to have a fun night." And she said, "Mo," and that was her puppy, Moca. Mo and I are on our way home.
We're like four minutes away. I continued to lie candles and I got changed into my nightie and I got comfy in my recliner. And then I fell asleep because at one o 'clock I woke up.
I'm like, okay, she's not home. And we're still in the dark with all these candles going. And my phone is dead. So I can't even text her and say, did you get lost? So I had to go to my car.
I'm sure she did. up my phone. Since our hydro is still out. Hydro's still out. It's that thing. Every parent's worst nightmare. So I'm in the car.
It's now 1 .15 in the morning. And I noticed out of my peripheral that there's a vehicle coming down the road. And it's all got those high headlights. So I'm like, "Oh, okay. Somebody's borrowed his dad's truck.
So, okay, they're finally coming home." And eventually, I looked in my side mirror and that's when I saw police hmm he does the normal thing do you live here well first of all he goes what are you doing and I said well we haven't had hydro for over 12 hours now and I'm trying to charge up my phone he asked if I live here yes who else lives here I told him my parents where are they and then he said where's
Desiree? So I didn't say Desiree, he said it. So then I said, well, that's why I'm charging up my phone. She was supposed to be home three and a half hours ago.
He just said, there's been a terrible accident and you need to come with me now. I'm going to take you to London to Vic hospital where your daughter is right now as we speak in the OR.
[BLANK _AUDIO] And so I got out of the car and I'm and I'm going towards the house and I look down and he goes, Yes, you can change, but please hurry. And then I had to remember where I had lit 47 candles.
Right. Des took an orange helicopter, right? Is that how she got to London? Yes. And it was three hours later because at the scene of the accident,
they found a. driver's license so they went to this person's home in Hamilton, same thing, the parents come to the door, we're sorry but there's been a tragic accident and they're like no,
our daughter's asleep, she works in the morning. Okay, if that's not this person then who is that person? So they go back to the scene of the accident, in the car they find her phone and her wallet.
She was even admitted to Vic and Woodstock as that person on the fake ID. Oh, it was a fake ID. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So that's why it took so long.
You went to London, you met up with Desiree and her medical team. Can you explain to us now the magnitude and the severity of Desiree's injuries?
Yes. And I just want to also mention that as soon as I got in the car, he said, "Do you have anybody that you can call?" So right away, I called my sons. They're both firefighters.
One was already at work asleep. One was asleep, ready to go to work the next morning. They met us there, and I was so grateful for their medical training, because being professional firefighters,
they've witnessed a lot of trauma. So they were with us, and we had to wait six and a half hours before we had any word so the charge nurse kept coming to us and at the critical care trauma center at Vic saying you know what no news is good news they're still in the OR so we spent those hours like talking laughing crying I was so glad that my boys were with me they were my rocks when the head surgeon dr.
Neal Perry came in after he hugged us, the three of us, it wasn't just a handshake, it was a hug, this brilliant smile on his face and this calmness.
He made sure we were all seated before he started and his opening line was she is very broken, which is true. She suffered polytrauma,
11 fractures. So I'll start with those. those. Her left femur and these were compound, which means they burst out of both ends of her leg,
so her knee and her thigh. Her right timphib, again compound, it burst out of both ends, her knee and down at her ankle. Her left arm was basically missing.
All she had left was an inch here, so everything was gone up to her elbow. She had two and and three ribs broken on either side. She had a broken C2, which never ever interfered with her central nervous system.
We didn't have to worry about that. And punctured lungs, and her liver was shredded. So when she was bleeding out, they thought right away it's her heart.
So they automatically did the open heart, and the surgeon held her heart in his hand, and it was was pumping furiously. They actually had to clamp off one of the main aorta so that she wouldn't keep bleeding out.
And then they did her open midline from her chest to her groin and that's when they discovered the liver was shredded. And she had embolism in her spleen,
so blood clot in her upper intestine. Both her lungs, she developed embolism. embolisms in them because of the being punctured by the ribs. Then on top of all this,
she was already in a medically induced coma. Right. Then we discovered her brain started swelling. So then they had to drain the fluid from her brain and she was deemed traumatic brain damage.
What were they saying Desiree's recovery was going to be? Were they hopeful? Were they not? not hopeful? What were those first couple of weeks like? - I signed so many surgical consents because she had 24 surgeries in total.
And in the first 11 days, she had 11 surgeries and procedures. So the problem with that is that they just go ahead and do stuff because I don't walk into there with initials after my name.
I'm not a surgeon. surgeon. I'm not in the medical world, so they just go and do stuff and hand you the clipboard. We need your consent. And so it's in a way that I can touch on later,
which involves my trust issues, but it was scary. Our wonderful head surgeon, he emits hope. He emits positivity just in his brilliance.
And he gives you that hope. sense of comfort. There were other people on Desiree's medical team because she had such a huge team. So many things were involved. Neural because of her brain,
ortho because of her 11 fractures, internal because of her internal wounds, pulmonary, right? Because of her lungs, infectious disease control because of her compounded fractures.
And the car rolled in a field that was ready to be planted. She was filled with dirt and corn and car parts. It was 21 days before we knew that she was going to live and she was going to have a quality of life,
21 days. During that time, I had asked several medical team members to leave her room. I'm like, if you need to discuss your opinion,
you need to take that out because there's nothing but positivity in this room. Okay, I was called to a meeting twice to make that decision to pull the plug.
Yeah. And I left. I said, there is no space for that kind of energy in this environment. This is all positive.
You don't know her. She's got the will I call her. This is my son will power and she's a fighter and I never doubted for one second that she wasn't in there fully active.
Trying to make her way back out again. Yes, regardless of what the monitor said and all those things all pasted all over her brain and her body. I knew she was in there.
I knew that she was not giving up and I was not giving up. I hope that my positivity alone was enough. I feel like this is a great time now to talk about the power of positivity and the realization you had that you really just needed all of the positive energy in the world sent your way from as many people as possible.
Can you tell us a little bit about the decision that you had at first to complete stay off of social media and why, and then how that decision shifted into posting publicly daily updates and creating what you called the Ford Army that was made up of hundreds,
if not thousands of people who were sending Dez positive thoughts every single day? So that first night, we decided the three of us and I was really emphatic about this.
that I didn't want anything out there until we had good news. I was on Facebook I think I had 150 friends but I you know I might have checked in once a week maybe and it was mainly just for theater stuff and music stuff so the third day they said mom you're going to have to post something because you would not believe the rumors that are going around like people just not knowing the facts and suddenly that story
is out of hand what really made me say fine was one of Desiree's close friends was so distraught people were saying that she had died because they didn't know so I'm like okay you know what I have to post something but I'm not going to post anything negative I think my first post was she's still alive lie." Basically,
stop your rumors and stop your talking when you don't know what you're talking about. And in the beginning, I wanted this little tiny world. I wanted just my boys and myself,
and I wanted all that energy just poured right into Desiree. I didn't want company. I didn't want other family there. I opened up an invitation to my close family, my brothers and my parents and my sons.
significant others, but nobody else. I finally got it through my head that I needed external forces. That's when I started posting every night between 10 and 11.
Sometimes it was later, and the Ford Army grew. Before I knew it, I had 3 ,500 followers, people that didn't even know us, but they wanted to be included.
And I had asked them. for three things, prayer, positivity, and picturing Desiree dancing again. Just by sending positivity, it was incredible.
I know we had the best of medical, we had the best of surgeons, we had the best team that you could even dream of. But I know that all that positive energy that was sent in tsunamis,
that was the key pillar. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Desiree, I want to ask you about the Ford Army because even in the very beginning stages of your mom posting daily updates,
you weren't necessarily aware of that happening in the very beginning, but eventually when you did start to regain memories and start to come back to us,
you were experiencing that as well. So what did that Ford Army? Army mean to you? What did it become for you? Because it would have developed with you as you were redeveloping and relearning yourself.
Right. So I don't think that I really accepted or figured out what was going on that I had a Ford Army until obviously my brain had woken up.
And by that point, my self positivity and self love was down the drain so hard.
At the time of how I looked at myself, whenever the forward army was brought up, I didn't think anything of it. They were also a lot of my mom's friends,
which have now become a lot of my friends as well. But at the time, I didn't know the majority of the people that were there supporting me in the Ford Army.
So it didn't really hit me until years after. - Did you post all the way until you left the hospital? - No, we were only in four different hospitals for 210 days.
I posted for an entire year, 365 days. In the last 10 days, I posted for an entire year. pictures and a lot of time Facebook took them down because they were too graphic.
But I wanted those people in the army to know what they accomplished, the miraculous healing they accomplished by shooting all that energy after I would post and keep it positive,
positive, positive. Then I would journal. Yes. That was my outlet and I was always here. in my home. Yeah, and that's before they made me leave and go to Ronald McDonald's,
so I could sleep. I didn't sleep. I just went there and wrote. Trusting others with your daughter's life is, I mean, probably the hardest thing any parent can ever do,
because trusting others could be, you know, hard for all of us in the very best scenario and the best circumstances, it's a really difficult thing for people to do. What was it like,
Betty, to put your trust in others for the life of your daughter? Like it just is, it's an extremely difficult thing to do. So what did it feel like?
Was it really difficult? Was there a moment where you felt like, okay, I feel like I'm letting my guard down now? Like these people I do trust now, did it take a really long time for that to happen? And not only medical professionals?
professionals, but then also allowing other specific like handpicked friends and family who could give you a little bit of respite and come in and be with Desiree so that you could take a little bit of space away from the room.
What did that look like for you? It wasn't easy. I feel like I've lived my entire adult life. Well, even my childhood, I was the only daughter on a farm and I had two brothers,
one older, one younger, and I felt like I wasn't involved. My job was cooking and doing the dishes. So they would go out and have lots of fun and I was stuck in the house.
So even when I got older, it was very difficult for me to trust and feel like that I could be involved. I've always come across as this really effervescent bubbly person because I love directing and my music life,
right? Like, uh. was always in bands. People say you're not an introvert. Yeah, I'm seriously an introvert. When I go to parties, I skirt through saying hello to the hostess and head out the back door,
you know, and so it was really difficult for me to be in this atmosphere with people needing to be there and I didn't want them there. And it took a while for me to understand that they needed to be there.
Thank you. needed to be involved just as much as I needed them not to be there and it was actually your mom who helped me one day outside while Desiree was once again on the table.
We were sitting on a picnic table and she made me see from other people's side how badly they needed to be involved and how together we could make a stronger team than just me doing my solitary thing and going to battle all by myself.
It was a lesson in allowing that pride to take backseat, let other people in, let other people own part of this journey,
which I was also really reluctant to give up because, you know, you like to hold everything in a tight fist, right? Because then you have control and I had to learn.
how to let that go. I had to learn how to let people into our lives without fear of anything bad coming out of it. I had to believe that it was only going to be positive,
and it was only going to help desert a hill. That was our main objective here. Through that, I learned how many things I have wrong with my own thinking.
The fact that I don't like to to let people in. And maybe a hard look at myself. Maybe that's why I have had two failed marriages under my belt.
I have a really hard time sharing myself deep on the surface. Yeah, all the time, right? Yeah, people think I'm this bubbly outgoing person, but I'm not. I hold things so close to my heart.
And I think this whole experience of having to share Desiree it's helped miraculously which ultimately in the end helped miraculously with Desiree's heat because it allowed so many more people to send their energy.
What a chat so far today's conversation has focused on life prior to Des's accident the details of what happened that night may May 4th,
2018, the severity of Dez's injuries and the magnitude of what they endured in those first few weeks post -accident. We also talked to Betty about the power of positivity and the shift she had to make in letting people into their lives and into Dez's recovery so that she could feel the healing energy from the masses.
Since much of what we talked about today was either part of Dez's memory that's been lost or part of Dez's memory that's been lost. clean or she was in a coma for we didn't actually hear Desiree speak as much today but that will change when we come back next week with part two of the series.
So the next episode airs next Wednesday and that's when we'll be diving into the particulars about Deza's recovery journey over the past six years. We'll get a glimpse into the resilience and the determination involved in needing to relearn almost everything we do on a daily basis.
that we all just take for granted. We'll also talk about the personal healing journeys that have taken place for both of them and what life looks like for them now. You're not gonna want to miss it,
so be sure to come back to us next week to listen in. In the meantime, know that I'm so grateful for each and every one of you. Thank you for being part of the joyful Flamingo flock.
Until next time. time. Just a reminder, Flamingo Flock, that I am not a medical or psychological professional.
Each one of my episodes has been inspired by my own experience and journey through life and has brought to you through my own opinions and lens. Any suggestions or advice offered here do not substitute proper conversations with your own healthcare professionals for either your physical or mental well -being.
-being.