TRHS student inspires fellow grads with her life-changing story

Kalika Webb was 17 years old when a car accident that never should have occurred changed her life for good.
Self-described as an average teenager and a 60s-range student at Tantramar Regional High School, in Sackville, Kalika was visiting a friend in Ontario during the March break in 2005. On the fateful date of March 11, Kalika, her friend and two others set off on a country road in a 2004 Toyota model, a car that claimed to be the safest vehicle on the market. The speed limit was 60 km/h. The driver was running the car at 124 km/h.
In a split-second, the group went from sailing through Cambridge at 64 kilometers over the speed limit to uncontrollably careening off the road, ending upside down curb-side.
The safety-conscious vehicle's seatbelts malfunctioned, doing more harm than good. They were later recalled because of this.
Kalika had survived the crash, but barely. The accident had left her dangling upside down, unconscious, dangerously injured and in threat of drowning in her own blood.
Her close friend, though she had suffered a broken arm, was able to unbuckle Kalika and drag her out of the wreckage, something Kalika will always be grateful for: "In a way, she saved my life." To this day, she says, they still keep in touch.
But the true heroics came after the accident, in everything that Kalika and her family had to endure and all that they continue to experience on her ongoing road to recovery and to her end goal of real independence.
To Kalika, a big realization was the importance of family, "You don't realize how much support your family will give you when no one else will," she says, noting her mother among the most important people in her rehabilitation. Kalika's family knew from then on she would need constant support and they were ready to give it. Kalika had suffered, among other things, a closed head injury, resulting in paralysis on both sides of the body, a broken neck and back, multiple small inner-skull fractures and her stomach had been torn from her small intestine.
She had to be put in a coma in a state of induced hypothermia for the first three weeks, at the cost of $700 a day, and the treatments, operations and rehab did not get any less expensive from that point on. To date, her medical bills have totaled more than a million and a half dollars, over and above what was covered by medicare.
The prognosis early on was not a happy one for Kalika. Her doctors stated that she would not be able to ever plan or organize something again, much less go back to high school and receive a diploma.
But though she remains mostly confined to a wheelchair and finds it hard to manipulate her fingers and speak clearly, Kalika managed to accomplish the exact things they said she could not and more.
This year, at the age of 21, Kalika is graduating high school with honors, and as for planning and organizing? She organized the majority of her mother Marita Webb's birthday party by herself this year.
Each and every one of Kalika's accomplishments are momentous because, as she puts it, her life was essentially put on re-set after the accident.
"Physically, I went back to the state of a baby; it would take 45 minutes to put on one sock, and the rest of my family would want to help me but they had to restrain themselves because I had to learn how to do it by myself"
Patience was a hard thing to learn, says her mother Marita, "Not only for Kalika, but also for the rest of the family."
But their caring patience has paid off. Kalika has re-learned reading, writing and basic math skills and gone on to do high-school level work. She has been able to take short walks, stand and even squat. She has coached volleyball at Marshview Middle School for the past few years -- and she has big plans for the future.
Her plans include a school project she began this year at school, focusing on her accident and what she has learned from it. She recently presented the power point project, which chronicles her story from pre-accident to the present day, to many of her classmates and peers at TRHS.
She speaks easily and looks comfortable on stage, a skill set she plans to use in the future as an inspirational speaker, touring high schools with her story across New Brunswick and, as she modestly says, wherever they will hear her.
The message that she's trying to convey? "I want people to know that speeding is such a serious thing; poor judgment can cause a huge impact on other people's lives, not just your own."
"Think about your actions," chips in Kalika's father David, to which Kalika agrees.
However, there is another lesson to be learned from Kalika, inspired in everyone that meets and talks to her, and that is that with perseverance, resolve and determination, you can achieve a goal that you were never expected to.