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Lincoln woman recovering after dirt bike accident

Bailey Grantier returned home to Lincoln Friday night, Aug. 3 after several days at the University of Utah Hospital, where she had surgery to repair three fractures to her jaw following a July 29 dirt bike accident at Pipestone Pass.

Kevin Grantier, Bailey’s father, described the accident was kind of a “freak deal.” He said she was riding in an area not far from where they’d unloaded when she hit a rock or a rut hidden by grass that caused her to pitch over the front of her bike. When she came down, she landed on another rock in such a way that a protrusion on it went right under the face guard of the helmet she was wearing.

“She wasn’t going very fast, but the flip got her up in the air and all that weight come down right there. It just looked like there was fist sitting there, just waiting for her,” he said.

Bailey’s boyfriend Klint Menard looked back in time to see the back end of her bike go over, and he raced down and found her.

“She knew right from the instant her jaw was broken,” Kevin said.

The impact split the front of her jaw in two at her chin and broke her jaw bone on each side of her face. The impact also left her with broken teeth, four skull fractures that are affecting the hearing in on ear, a broken collar bone and a broken shoulder.

Kevin said the death of their friend Heather Terman, who died after a fall off her ATV in a parking lot in 2014, wasn’t far from his mind or the mind of his wife Lauri.

“We know how these freak things go sometimes,” he said.

Doctors at St. James Hospital in Butte did the CAT scans and x-rays and sent them to some of the best orthopedic surgeons in Montana before getting in touch with hospitals in Seattle, Salt Lake and Denver.

“One of the doctors, a professor at the University of Utah, agreed to do it,” Kevin said.

In a strange coincident, Kevin said Baileys jaw and head injuries were almost identical to those he sustained in a motorcycle accident in Oklahoma years ago.

Bailey and Lauri flew to Salt Lake on a mercy flight, while Kevin and Menard drove down. Bailey had surgery July 30 to expose the bones of her jaw so they could be pinned and wired back together in a procedure that Kevin said lasted four and a half hours.

“Now it’s just kind of a waiting game” he said. “Four to six weeks on the jaw, four to six weeks on the shoulder.”

In a lengthy Facebook post Aug. 3, Bailey detailed the status of her injuries and thanked her friends, family and the community for their thoughts and prayers after the accident.

“All in all, I am happy to be here and be healthy and healing quickly! I am beyond blessed with the people in my life,” she wrote.

Despite her injuries, Kevin doesn’t think she’ll give up her dirt bike.

“She’s a pretty tough gal. She’ll get back on the horse,” he said.

 

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