A bride who was in a car crash right before her wedding has made a heartbreaking admission about her big day.
Kirsten Parker, a 34-year-old from Vancouver, Canada, had just completed the final fitting for her wedding dress when the unthinkable happened.
While driving home, another car spun out on the highway and crashed into hers.
“She doesn’t know it yet but after her final wedding dress fitting, a car will spin out on the highway, erasing her wedding day memories in an instant,” Kirsten captioned a TikTok video she shared on her account @tandkaythespectrumway.
In an interview with Newsweek, Kirsten recounted the disorienting moment. “I remember thinking we missed the car and that everything is fine,” she said. “But I looked over and the whole right side of my car was busted up and mangled.”
Although she was taken to the hospital, she says her injuries weren’t taken seriously.
“The emergency doctor saw me and didn’t take it seriously,” Kirsten explained. “They asked if I hit my head, and I said I didn’t remember.”
“So they didn’t check my brain,” she added.
Cleared by medical staff and still processing the trauma, Kirsten continued on with her bachelorette party the next day and then proceeded with the $50,000 wedding and honeymoon she and her partner Troy had spent months – and a fortune – planning.
But Kirsten quickly began to realize that something wasn’t right. Her memory was patchy, and she felt confused and disoriented.
“I’ve been gaslit by my medical team for almost a year and a half,” she claimed. She suspects her concerns were brushed off in part because of her diagnosis of autism.
Eventually, her instincts were validated. Kirsten was diagnosed with a concussion, stroke, and brain atrophy – damage that had gone undetected for far too long. To make matters worse, she also lost the ability to sing due to throat blockages caused by the accident.
Planning a wedding is stressful for anyone, but Kirsten’s injuries made it nearly impossible.
She admits that she didn’t even remember to coordinate the wedding setup. “The morning of, there was literally no one setting up the wedding,” she said.
Thanks to the quick action of her bridesmaids, who jumped in to get everything ready, the ceremony went on.
Kirsten, heartbreakingly, remembers almost none of it.
“Everything’s kind of a blur,” she confessed. “I just knew I was marrying my man that day, and that was it.”
Fortunately, their videographer had captured raw footage of the entire day – clips Kirsten now treasures as her primary connection to the memory of her wedding.
“It was the first time seeing it,” she said. “I don’t remember my wedding, and that’s why I post videos — just so I can try to look back on it.”
We wish Kirsten the very best in her ongoing recovery journey, and hope her story continues to raise awareness about the hidden dangers of undiagnosed head injuries — and the importance of listening to patients when they say something doesn’t feel right.