Rachel Morgan is headed to Germany with a carry-on she didn’t think she’d need to take to Europe — a wheelchair.

Morgan, 18, a 2009 Placer High graduate, is among a group of 24 students and three adults about to embark on a three-week exchange tour to Germany.

Just a couple weeks ago, Morgan wasn’t sure if she’d be able to participate in last week’s graduation ceremony, let alone board a plane to Europe.

Morgan and two other friends, Victoria Winters and Katherine Worland, were in a car crash May 8.

“It seems like it was forever ago,” she said.

Morgan was riding in the back seat that night, and said she was falling asleep, when a motorist headed in the opposite direction on Meadow Vista Road crossed into their lane.

“I just heard my friends scream and I saw lights and a driver hit us head on,” she recalls.

Morgan sustained the worst of the injuries, and was taken by ambulance to Meadow Vista Park, where she was then airlifted to Sutter Roseville Medical Center.

Morgan suffered a fractured pelvis, a traumatic hernia and tore the right side of her groin. She spent a week in the intensive care unit, has had two surgeries to repair muscles and endured 42 staples.

“We didn’t think she was going to be able to graduate when this first happened,” Heather Morgan, Rachel’s mom, said.

Morgan has been told it will take three months from the time of the crash for her to get “back to normal” and not needing a wheelchair. That’s not to say her recovery has gone smoothly. Complications, in the form of blood clots, meant she had to go on blood thinners and was put on 23-hours-per-day bed rest around Memorial Day weekend.

“That was pretty much, ‘OK, I don’t get to go,’” she said of the trip to Germany. “My mom was having to give me a shot every day.”

Morgan said she convinced her doctor she was OK to go off the blood thinners, which she discontinued taking a little over a week ago.

‘’I wasn’t going to miss my own graduation,” she said.

Morgan didn’t miss graduation — Winters and Worland wheeled her up to receive her diploma at the ceremony.

Just as she was determined not to miss graduation, Winters has kept her heart set on the trip to Europe, something she’d been working for and dreaming about for quite some time.

“Basically, as soon as my friends got back from Germany last year, I was like, ‘Oh my God, I want to go,’” Morgan said of the Placer-sponsored annual exchange program.

By working at the Confluence Kitchen, Morgan was able to save the majority of the money for the trip, close to $2,000, on her own.

Morgan accepts she won’t be able to do everything with the group. For example, she heads to her host family’s home two days earlier than fellow tour mates because a hostel the group plans on staying in would be hard for her to access while in a wheelchair.

“Mine’s obviously going to be a little tailored,” Morgan said. “I can’t go on the hikes or on some of the castle tours. All my friends are going to be so helpful … Yeah, it’ll be difficult but I’m not going to not go just because it’s a pain.”

That said, Morgan is still delighted to be able to take the trip. She uses the wheelchair for longer distances but has been able to use a walker, and has entertained the thought of using a cane instead, for shorter distances. Morgan and exchange partner Daniella hit it off when the German exchange students visited Northern California this spring, so she’s excited to see her friend again.

“I don’t get upset too often,” she said, summing up everything that has happened since the crash. “I have to go on with my life. I can’t just sit around and pout. I’m not going to forgo doing all these things I’ve been looking forward to for years.”

Thomas Schroeder, a Placer High teacher in charge of the exchange trip, is delighted Morgan is well enough to come on the trip.

“My first thought after the crash was, ‘What a shame.’ She had worked really hard to get the money together and make it possible,” he said. “I’ve just been amazed with her progress, and we have a great group of kids and we’re all going to rally around her.”

The Journal’s Loryll Nicolaisen can be reached at lorylln@goldcountrymedia.com, or comment online at Auburnjournal.com.