A woman who suffered a severe brain injury on Six Flags Magic Mountain's X2 rollercoaster has spoken publicly for the first time since waking from a coma, offering a detailed account of what happened and the recovery she's now facing.
The ride's troubled history
X2, which opened 25 years ago at the Valencia, California park, has now been permanently closed following two serious incidents involving separate riders. The ride has been shut since 12 July, after safety experts had raised concerns about it for years as injury reports accumulated over time.
A family day out that turned into an emergency
Pamela Guillen, 40, from Hawaii, rode X2 in July at her 16-year-old daughter's request, telling herself it would be their last ride of the day before heading to dinner to celebrate her daughter's birthday. According to ambulance records, Guillen struck her head repeatedly on the ride's headrest during the sequence of dips and turns, and had to be helped out of her seat when the ride ended, before she began vomiting.
Her daughter, Camille Marquez, has said her mother's eyes and mouth stayed open in what looked like shock, and that she lost consciousness shortly after sitting down on a nearby bench. Paramedics found her unresponsive, with unequal and sluggish pupil responses.
Emergency surgery and a two-week coma
Guillen was placed on a ventilator and rushed to hospital, where a CT scan revealed a severe subdural hematoma and brain compression. Surgeons removed part of her skull to relieve the pressure. She woke two weeks later with her head shaved and 20 staples in her scalp, initially unable to speak more than one word at a time, with no memory of what had happened to her.
A long road to recovery
Guillen has had to relearn how to speak and walk, and continues to deal with headaches, brain fog, and medication to prevent seizures. Reflecting on how quickly everything changed, she made an emotional admission about the experience, saying she's still struggling to process how she went from being herself one moment to a medical emergency the next, and that there's a real difference between simply being jolted around on a ride and suffering actual brain damage.
