(NECN) - Jennifer Lyons nearly died in a crash when she and some friends were hit by a drunk driver, and her doctor says one of the secrets to her survival was pilates.
In the crash, Lyons ended up being dragged by the truck the drunk driver was operating and was impaled between it and the foundation of a building the crash had taken out.
"Dr. Velmahos actually said pilates is something that because my abdominal core was so strong, and the way that I was dragged by the truck, he was like, 'Someone else could have been ripped in half.' He was like, 'You are so lucky you had been so strong,'" she says.
Massachusetts General Hospital surgeon Dr. George Velmahos says Lyons was in dreadful condition when she came to the hospital.
"She was very critically injured. She had a tube in her throat because she couldn't breathe and as graphic as it may sound, her guts were hanging out free from her body," he recalls.
Dr. Velmahos says it was Lyons' strength and personality that helped her succeed on the operating table.
"Jennifer clearly is a winner and I as her surgeon participated only in a very tiny bit of her recovery," he says.
