Cache County woman recovering from taxi accident in Africa

SALT LAKE CITY — A woman is back in Utah after getting into an accident in Africa, where she lost both her legs.

Paula Gilsdorf, a 52-year-old Providence resident, entered a taxi on the evening of March 21. The exact details of what happened next are unclear, but the taxi was involved in an accident that left its driver in a coma and Gilsdorf, a nurse, with severe damage to her legs.

"I don't know if anybody really knows what happened," Gilsdorf said. "The only thing I remember was feeling like I was laying in sticks and rocks."

On her trip to Senegal, she planned to help with the local eye clinics hosted by Lion’s Club International, but the accident prevented her from doing so.

Local doctors determined that she needed to be medically evacuated, so they casted the back of her legs and wrapped the front — where wounds and bones were exposed — to keep her legs as stable as possible.

"I was concerned but also the doctor ... he was like 'We have got to get her out of her,'" Gilsdorf said.

Gilsdorf’s travel insurance company decided her best chance at success would be in Paris, so she was flown there. She recalls waking up from surgery.

"The doctor just said you know there was no chance of saving your legs, we had to amputate you legs from the knees down," Gilsdorf said.

Gilsdorf spent four weeks recovering in the French hospital. When she was well enough, she was then brought back to Utah where she is figuring out how to live without her legs.

As a nurse she said it’s difficult accepting her new reality.

"It's just hard for me because I don't want to be on this side of it," Gilsdorf said. "I want to be on the other side."

Gilsdorf said she will be in the hospital for another week. She will continue physical therapy and go through one more surgery before getting fitted for prosthetics.

Friends have set up a medical expense fund for her family.

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