Lauren Scruggs has revealed for the first time what actually happened in the horrific accident that robbed her of left arm and eye, and changed her life in an instant.
The 24-year-old, from Dallas, spoke on Today with her mother and father about the December 3 accident, where she walked into a still-spinning plane propeller
The 24-year-old, from Dallas, Texas, spoke on Today about the December 3 accident, where she walked into a still-spinning plane propeller, in the lead up to a Dateline interview that airs Friday November 16 at 10pm.
With little memory of the accident, she explained: ‘My dad actually went to look at the plane. I was always taught to get out in front of the wing, but when you do that [with this kind of plane] you’re basically on the propeller. So I think I basically just got out onto it.’
Lauren says she is off pain medication, doing rehab every day to strengthen her muscles, and is ‘feeling really well’ for the first time since the accident
She added: ‘I remember getting into the plane, and I was fearful for some reason. We landed, which I thought was interesting, because I thought we might crash. I remember my feet touching the ground, but that’s all I remember.’
Her mother, who was also on the Today show with her husband, Lauren’s father, explained how the pair had been to church, before going over to some friends’ for dinner, ‘like we always do.’
‘They live in an airport so we ate dinner, and then they decided they were going to do some recreational flying, look at some Christmas lights and everything,’ she said.
‘Then, she was out there laying on her stomach in a pool of blood and I wasn’t really sure if she was dead or alive.’
A long scar can be seen running down the left side of Lauren Scruggs’s face as she talks to Dateline’s Natalie Morales
Speaking about the bleak diagnosis given by the paramedics at the time, her father said: ‘They warned us there was a potential she wouldn’t have the same personality, that she may never form a sentence again, but as you can see today, that’s the case.’
Lauren admits the hardest thing about the accident was loosing her hand.
‘It changes your life,’ she said. ‘You appreciate life a lot more, my compassion for people has strengthened, I have compassion I couldn’t have had before. It was a dose of reality, and was hard to see.’
Speaking about living life with only one hand, the fashion blogger and former model said: ‘It’s amazing how your body just does what it needs to do – things that were hard in the beginning a lot easier now. I don’t really think about them now.’
The blonde beauty is also honest in how her injured looks deeply affected her in her interview with Dateline.
Lauren with NBC’s Natalie Morales plugging her memoir Still Lolo on Today – to be aired on November 16
‘[When I saw myself], I think I just saw the reality of what had happened. I had my eye patch on, I didn’t have my hand, half my head was shaved. I was just thinking, “Wow. How life can change in an instant and how that’s not the way I have looked in the past.”‘
The fashion blogger also spoke to People magazine this week about the future and learning to live with three different prosthetic limbs, hair extensions where her head was shaved and having to do everything with one hand.
A sometimes fashion model before the accident, Lauren revealed she has struggled to come to terms with her changing looks.
She said: ‘Sometimes it’s easy to dwell on the fact that I don’t look the same. I still struggle with that – I want to look nice. But every day I’m feeling better and better.’
Lauren Scruggs tweeted this picture of herself with her parents and a friend last week – it is the first picture in which her arm scars can be seen
‘When I got home from hospital I would cry a lot and it was hard to look in the mirror. Before the accident I would get a lot of attention for the way I looked, so I held a lot of my identity there.
‘But these things aren’t going to make you feel whole. They’re empty things.’
Wondering if any guy would ever like her because of her prosthetic arms, she reveals she now feels good about them.
Lauren has three different arms – her passive prosthetic which she can’t move but looks incredibly lifelike, her workout prosthetic which she uses for boxing and other exercises and another arm that come with attachments, including a paddle-like device for swimming.
Lauren Scruggs, right, posing with her prosthetic left on display while out and about in Memphis, Texas
She is in rehab for up to three hours a day to practice ordinary tasks without her left hand and can now tie her shoes, put her hair up and drive – which she does with the help of her knee.
Referring to losing her hand, she said: ‘Reality hit me when I got off my pain medication. I just wanted my hand back. I went through the process of grieving and still am today.
‘My doctor told me that losing your hand is like losing someone in your family. Because it’s a part of you.’
The MailOnline revealed last week ahead of her book launch that she screamed: ‘I am so ugly!’ in a fit of rage as she struggled to come to terms with the enormity of her horrific injuries after walking into the plane propeller.
Consumed with a ‘primal, uncontrollable anger, she yelled: ‘My life is ruined, no one will ever love me!’
The book also details the moment she looked at herself in the mirror naked for the first time since the accident and collapsed in a ‘storm of mourning’ after staring at the dent in her shaven skull with titanium plates in it, the scar down her face, her sagging lip, her missing left eye, her missing left hand and four cracked teeth.
The book is the first time the 24-year-old fashion blogger has spoken in depth of the moment she walked into a spinning airplane propeller in December last year – and her slow, agonizing recovery.
Read more: Lauren Scruggs: ‘I’ve grown deeper in my faith‘
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