On a spring evening in 2015, Geralyn Ritter sprinted through Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station to catch her train bound for New York. Next thing she knew, she was on a ventilator at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center and fighting for her life.
“I remember a moment of realization that we were falling over and I remember screaming,” Ritter, 57, of Whitehouse Station, New Jersey, told The Post. “That was the last memory I had.”
That infamous Amtrak train wreck On May 12, 2015, eight were killed and more than 200 passengers were injured. Ritter was among 11 passengers who were seriously wounded and the pharmaceutical exec is recounting her traumatic experiences and agonizing recovery in new memoir. “Bone by Bone: A Memoir of Trauma and Healing,“(Core Media Group) will be published on Tuesday.
“What always strikes me is how ordinary the day was. On that morning seven years ago, my life was normal,” Ritter told the Post. “I was healthy and I will never be so healthy again.”
On the evening of the fateful crash, Ritter was in business class, which was seated in the first carriage of the train. Her husband wrote that one of their three sons, Steven, then eight years old, had done well at baseball practice earlier that evening. Then she got up to get something out of her briefcase and realized something was wrong.
“I noticed that we seemed to be going faster. The train usually leaves [of Philadelphia] really slow, and I’m always impatient,” she said.
Her instinct was right. The Northeast Regional Service entered the Frankford Junction curve in North Philadelphia at 106 mph — more than double the 50-mph limit for the infamous 90-degree turn. The engineer pulled the emergency brake and loud seconds later Accident report from the National Transportation Safety Board,, the train jumped off the tracks.
“I remember feeling like the train was tipping and thinking that was impossible because trains don’t tip. I realized that we – “said Ritter, and fell silent.
Life derails
Ritter’s body was thrown off the train with such force that her abdominal organs pushed through her diaphragm and into her chest. Or what’s left of it. On impact, most of her ribs were fractured and her lungs collapsed. She fractured her pelvis and several vertebrae in her neck and back. She ruptured her diaphragm and bladder, injured her spleen and intestines. She suffered a great loss of blood and could not breathe.
“My belly was over my heart. My colon was under my armpit,” Ritter said.
To make matters worse, she didn’t have her wallet with her and it was separate from her briefcase, so no one knew who she was.
“I was a Jane Doe,” she said.
Doctors were not optimistic about their prognosis.
“They weren’t sure at the time if I was going to be paralyzed,” she said. “My surgeon later told me, ‘I have no explanation for how your body absorbed so much force, and you don’t have a brain injury. “That’s one of the reasons I can tell my story, because I remember it.”
Meanwhile, Ritter’s husband Jonathan finally found her after searching one hospital after another. He didn’t initially recognize his wife, who had taped her eyes closed and was standing on a fan. But when he saw a watch he had given her that had miraculously survived the crash, he knew it was her.
We found herhe wrote to their eldest son Austin. She lives.
Still, doctors feared she might not survive.
“They told my family it was unlikely that I would make it,” Ritter said. Her brother flew in from Fort Worth, Texas. He packed a dark suit.
After a month — and multiple surgeries to fix her intestines, screw her pelvis back together and flatten her broken ribs — Ritter was discharged from the hospital and wheeled home. She was able to walk short distances by September, but her long recovery was just beginning.
path to recovery
In pain and struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder, Ritter became increasingly depressed and dependent on narcotics.
“I was on massive doses of fentanyl and Oxycontin,” she recalled. “I was lying on my back in bed and couldn’t even reach the pill bottle next to me.”
The lack of mobility and independence would be difficult for any recovering patient; For Knight, who lived a fast-paced life that included stepping off a flight home from China and rushing to the local baseball field to cheer on her boys, the life transformation has been hell — for both her and her marriage.
“My husband has had to transition from focusing on his career to being a full-time caregiver to me and our sons,” Ritter said. “We both reacted differently to the stress. He was very angry about the accident and I was just now. There were many times when we just couldn’t give each other what the other needed.”
Over time, she became dependent on opioids.
“In the beginning it was just about gratitude. We were just so grateful that I survived and didn’t have a brain injury,” she said. “But you can only be grateful for massive pain for so long,”
Six months after the accident, she decided to try to come off the medication under medical supervision. She turned to holistic methods of pain control – meditation, breathing, exercise and gentle yoga.
She has been successful and now relies on over-the-counter medication to manage her pain.
“Just Advil and Tylenol,” she said proudly. “But I take a lot of Advil and Tylenol.”
She and Jonathan eventually got professional counseling that helped them adjust to their new reality. They will soon be celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary.
In 2017, Ritter was finally able to return to the office. She now works as an external affairs director for a healthcare company, Organon in Jersey City. She’s riding trains again, including Amtrak, which she admits was nerve-wracking at first.
“The journey back [was] a long one,” said Ritter.
In the seven years since the crash, she has had over 30 surgeries, including major emergency abdominal surgery related to scar tissue. She is due to have hernia surgery in August.
“Everyone faces big setbacks. At some point we all go through something,” said Ritter. “This metaphor of the light at the end of the tunnel – you don’t come out of the tunnel the same way you went in. It’s not about going back to normal, it changes you and that’s okay.”
