Patient Story: Hollye Lord
“I’m a lifelong Washington County girl,” Hollye Lord said during a recent visit to LifeFlight of Maine’s Bangor hangar. She lives in Meddybemps, a small community between Calais and Machias. She has worked as a nurse at Down East Community Hospital in Machias for the past five years, and prior to that at Calais Community Hospital. Hollye also has a horse, Willow, which she boards in Jonesboro, and that horse is why she drove from Washington County to Bangor one spring morning to meet a LifeFlight pilot and flight nurse.
“I was probably three years old when I first fell in love with being on the back of a horse,” Hollye said. “I started taking lessons at ten.” Hollye is an experienced equestrian, but riding a one-thousand-pound animal always carries some risk, and on May 24, 2024, the Friday of Memorial Day Weekend, she almost died.
“It was day two of a four-day clinic over in Jonesboro,” Hollye recalled. The class decided to go for a trail ride. In addition to Hollye and Willow, there were six other horses and riders. As they were starting out, for no apparent reason, or at least not one Hollye can recollect, Willow reared up on her hind legs. Hollye was thrown to the ground. Willow fell back and landed on top of Hollye. “I remember laying on the ground and all I could see was brown,” Hollye said. “One thousand pounds fell on me. It happened so fast I didn’t even realize what was going on or have time to react.”
The other riders saw Hollye and Willow fall and called 911. Most of what happened next remains fuzzy in Hollye’s memory. An ambulance arrived at some point, but she doesn’t really remember it. She remembers hearing voices around her, and then she remembers hearing a helicopter.
An ambulance from Machias had responded to the call. The first responders had quickly triaged Hollye and could see the trauma her body had sustained. They had requested a LifeFlight transport.
The LifeFlight 1 crew, which is LifeFlight’s helicopter team based in Bangor, responded. Rotor Wing Captain Mike Bonenfant landed the aircraft in a field close enough to where Hollye had fallen that flight nurse Barrett Strout and flight paramedic Jillian Sheltra, with the help of the Machias Ambulance team, were able to roll her to the aircraft on a stretcher. The LifeFlight crew flew Hollye to Northern Light Eastern Maine Medical Center (EMMC) in Bangor. “I remember the ear protection being put on me, and I remember the hum of the helicopter going up,” Hollye recalled. “And I remember someone saying it was going to get bumpy.”
Hollye had suffered significant internal injuries. She had substantial internal bleeding, major lacerations to her liver, and two punctured lungs. She underwent two surgeries. “The trauma team [at EMMC] said that ‘people don’t come through these injuries like you have,’” Hollye said. “I didn’t realize until I got home and obtained my medical records that what they meant was people don’t survive.”
The incredible part of Hollye’s story is not so much her accident as it is her recovery. She spent seven days at Eastern Maine before being discharged, and then she was out of work convalescing for nine weeks. “I led my own rehab. Two walks every day. A little bit farther every time,” Hollye said. “As a nurse, I knew what I had to do to get better.”
“When I was in the hospital, I was going to get back on a horse on October 1. That was my goal. Horseback riding has always been my release. What hurts you is also what’s going to heal you.” She had been discharged from the hospital on May 31, and getting back on a horse in four months seemed ambitious. But it also felt to Hollye like a long time to wait. On August 22, she thought: “Today’s the day, I’m getting back on my horse.” And she did.
Hollye considers herself fortunate for the care she received. On her first day back at work, she met one of the first responders who had arrived at the scene of her accident, a paramedic named Ryan. A few months later, she reached out to LifeFlight and asked if she could meet the crew who transported her. She drove to Bangor in April 2025 to thank them personally for the care they had provided. Seeing her standing in the hangar, it would have been impossible to guess without knowing her story that nine months prior she had been laying unconscious in the back of the aircraft she was now smiling for a photo beside. “For me, it was the difference between living and dying,” Hollye said. “I was bleeding internally. I needed an OR. I needed a trauma team. I was in shock, so I needed the ICU level of care as well.”
Her recovery has been remarkable. “I shot an eight-point buck in November,” Hollye said proudly and with a chuckle. “Not many people are on a ventilator in May and then shoot an eight-point buck in November.”
Hollye now has new ambitions for Summer 2025. She plans to participate in the 2025 Cross for LifeFlight as a way to support the LifeFlight team that showed up when she needed them. The event, which takes place during the month of August, is LifeFlight’s largest fundraising event of the year and gives former patients, their family and friends, and supporters of LifeFlight across the state an opportunity to raise critically needed funds for LifeFlight to ensure the service is available for the next patient in need.
Learn more, register, or support a participant like Hollye at CrossforLifeFlight.org.
Cover photo: flight nurse Barrett Strout (left), Hollye Lord (center), and rotor wing captain and safety coordinator Mike Bonenfant (right).
