Bruns happy to be back on the court

Blooming Prairie three-sport varsity athlete Bobbie Bruns was preparing to meet her friends at Applebee’s last May after a softball game when her life changed “in the blink of an eye.”
Just a quarter-mile from her house, she turned onto US 218 where a service truck was stationary in the middle of the road.
“I turned and didn’t see that it was stopped right away, so I didn’t really have time to stop. I ended up rear-ending the truck and I totaled my car. There was no damage to the truck or its drivers, but right on the scene I could see that my leg was completely snapped in half… and that was hard. I knew right then that softball was over, AAU [basketball] was over, and that school basketball might be over,” said Bruns.
According to Bruns’ father, John Bruns, it took EMTs around 20 to 30 minutes to get his daughter out of the vehicle to transport her to the Mayo Clinic in Austin.
In Austin, Bruns said she received a “stabilizer” that kept her leg in the proper position to withstand a second ambulance ride – this time to Mayo Clinic’s St. Marys campus in Rochester.
At St. Marys, Bruns received the news that she had indeed broken the femur in her right leg and would undergo surgery to repair the break the next day.
Bruns said doctors put her recovery time at six months and recommended she use a wheelchair and eventually crutches to get around.
“I didn’t start physical therapy until the middle of July because I just wanted it to heal first. I was in a wheelchair first. They told me I could put weight on it whenever I could tolerate it… I was probably on crutches for two months and the wheelchair for probably just the first few days to a week to get around the house and stuff,” said Bruns.
Bruns said that her family was her biggest motivator to keep working hard every day to get better.
Bruns eventually managed to get rid of the wheelchair, crutches and physical therapy and began to look at a comeback to the court.
While softball and summer basketball seasons had come and gone, Bruns now had hopes that she could make it back in time for the team’s opening game, which she ultimately started in to kick off her senior season.
“There were a lot of nerves. Nerves about my 1,000th point, nerves about my leg holding up, and even just nerves that I hadn’t played basketball in six months. It really was nerve-racking, and it took me a little bit to get back into it. I mean it took me like 10 minutes to score my 1,000th and I needed one point. But it felt really good to get back out there,” said Bruns.
Bruns said that she’s not only happy to be back on the court and able to resume her normal activiites, but that the accident and recovery had given her a new outlook on life.
“I definitely think I’ve grown in understanding the value of life and how things can happen in the blink of an eye. Just how lucky I was and how thankful I am to be here… how thankful to God I am to be here,” said Bruns.