An Illinois woman tells INSIDE EDITION about a horrific accident which left her impaled by a tree in her Smart car.
"I had a tree literally in my stomach," says Helen Miller, talking about the moment she was impaled by a 75-foot tree limb inside her car.
"The light turned green. I went forward. Bam! The loudest crash hit my car," describes Miller.
It happened as the entire Midwest was engulfed in raging storms and tornados in late October.
The 41-year-old was behind the wheel of her tiny Smart car when a tree smashed through the roof and windshield.
The injury she suffered was almost beyond belief:
"This [branch] was in my stomach like this and it was coming out and there was probably another inch or so that was poking out and it was coming out of a little hole over here," Miller says, gesturing to her abdomen.
Paramedics said they had never seen anything like it.
"I've been doing this for 17 years and I haven't seen a tree branch in anybody's abdomen," said one.
"They were very scared. Yeah. I could tell on their face they looked really stressed out," Miller says of the paramedics.
Incredibly, Miller sang a Vanilla Ice song to keep everyone's spirits up!
INSIDE EDITION was with Miller for her emotional reunion with the paramedics who saved her.
And there was another emotional moment when Miller saw the damage to her car.
There are still chips of wood lodged in the shattered windshield and a huge hole made where the tree limb burst through.
Miller knows she's one of the luckiest women alive.
