Bobbi “Sue” Eady believes God must have had something in store for her to save her from the injuries she suffered in the April 27 tornado that killed her granddaughter and demolished her home, leaving her critically injured. This photo, taken after the storm, shows the destruction that befell Eady’s home on Chipmunk Way.

Editor’s note: This is part two of a two-part series marking the four-month anniversary of the tornado outbreak that killed four people in Limestone County and 247 statewide. Of the 62 tornadoes to hit Alabama that day, seven struck in Limestone County, including a 210-mph EF5 twister. More than 700 homes were damaged or destroyed.

Bobbi “Sue” Eady heard, through the grapevine, how she lost one leg, both legs and even her life in the tornado that tore through eastern Limestone County the afternoon of April 27.

In truth, she still has both legs and is recovering in an apartment community in Madison.

“The Lord must have put me together pretty good, because I’m still here,” the 76 year old said Thursday, nearly four months after the storm.

She was critically injured by debris when an EF5 twister leveled her home at 29850 Chipmunk Way in eastern Limestone County about 4 p.m. Her right leg was severely cut about 8 inches above the knee and bleeding heavily. Her left leg was also deeply cut below the knee. Because the storm had toppled full-grown trees and TVA power lines, it took rescuers and volunteers from the prison about seven hours to get her to a hospital.

Fast action by neighbors, including the application of a tourniquet by Todd Archer, may have saved her.

Although initial reports indicated Eady would likely lose one or both legs due to injury and infection, Dr. Mark Leberte, a trauma specialist at The Orthopaedic Center in Huntsville, was able to save them both.

“They are scarred up real bad and they look gross, but they had to take a lot of flesh out,” Eady said Thursday.

The seven-hour delay in getting to a hospital gave the dirt and debris in her wounds time to flourish, she said. During the 16 days she spent in the hospital, she had surgery seven times — every 48 hours — to remove dead tissue and infection.

“It was traumatic, and I didn’t know how serious it was, “ Eady said. “I kept questioning that, but when they put hemovacs in my legs (devices used to drain fluid), I knew they were trying to save my legs.”

She is glad to be alive but misses her granddaughter, Shannon Sampson, who was killed while trying to get out of the storm and into Eady’s house. Although she misses her home on Chipmunk Way, she doesn’t plan to rebuild.

“I moved here 26 years ago from Oklahoma,” she said. “I was a single mom with a 6-year-old boy. I worked at the Supervalue Minimart at Nick Davis and Railroad Bed and drove a school bus to make ends meet.  I loved my home. It’s a shame, and I get depressed and half the time I cry. I worked all my life and almost paid for it and it’s gone.”

She still has tornado nightmares.

“I see it all over again,” she said. “All the devastation and sitting in a pile of debris and looking up and not knowing what happened, and looking up and realizing, ‘Oh, my God, I don’t have a house — not even a 2-by-4 still standing.’ At the hospital they had to cut my clothes off of me. I lost everything but my life, and I’m grateful to have that.”

Aside from the injuries to her legs, Eady sustained a blow to the head during the storm that knocked her unconscious. She suffers periods of dizziness and hopes they will pass because they make her leery of doing things she used to do. Despite the medical problems, she enjoys her new apartment community, which is reserved for senior citizens age 62 and older. She plays bingo two nights a week.

For a month or so after the storm, Eady said she was bitter.

“I wasn’t angry at God; I don’t know who I was angry at,” she said. “I guess I wanted to know why this happened to me. I wanted answers and I wasn’t getting any.”

The anger gave way to other emotions.

Eady figures God must have saved her for some reason but she wonders what the reason is and when it will be revealed to her. While she waits, she sometimes thinks of the people who helped save her.

“I know I would never have made it without those people who helped me that day,” she said. “I’m grateful to all of them. I don’t know how to repay them.”

She has faith she is going to be OK, she said.

“My daughter (Cindy Mitchell) told me, ‘Momma, if you can survive an EF5 tornado with 225-mile-per-hour winds, you can live through anything.’”