'I Just Kept On Living'

(CBS)  Royia Grizzell refuses to give up on her life, even after the Oklahoma City bombing nearly ended it.

The Early Show correspondent Tracy Smith reports that Grizzell was hurt so badly in the truck bomb attack carried out by Timothy McVeigh that she was almost left for dead. Now 10 years later, she's very much alive and helping others.

Though the explosion occurred in the Murrah building, Smith points out, the damage extended far beyond its walls. In fact, 300 buildings were damaged that day -- and more than 800 people in them were hurt. The death toll was 168.

Grizzell told Smith she can't believe how far she's come since that awful day: "And it's only been 10 years. People say, 'Oh, 10 years is a really long time.' But it's really not."

On April 19, 1995, at 9 a.m., she was in the break room of her office, making breakfast.

"This is my memory," she said. "Looking out the window while my bagel was toasting, thinking, 'What is a Ryder truck doing in front of the Murrah building?' "

Two minutes later, the bomb inside that Ryder truck exploded, leaving Grizzell clinging to life.

"I had stopped breathing, evidently," she said.

"They actually thought you were dead?" Smith asked.

"Yes, they did," Grizzell answered.

She was put in what's called "black triage" -- those beyond help -- until an emergency medical technician realized she had a pulse, and rushed her to the hospital.

There, because of massive blood loss, Grizzell did die -- several times.

"They had to get my heart restarted three times that day," Grizzell said. And she got 25 pints of blood.

Grizzell also "stopped breathing twice for an unknown amount of time. So things didn't look good. But I just kept on living!"

But life would never be the same.

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