'I Just Kept On Living'

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.

"I had severe brain trauma to the top of my head. I had (several holes in my head). My right eye was severely damaged, as well as my left. I had no lips."

And that wasn't all. Grizzell's arms and legs were literally shredded.

"I asked to see a mirror. And they didn't want to. But they gave me one. And it was bad. …When I looked in the mirror, I thought, 'I'll be alone for the rest of my life. I'll never have children. I'll never work again. I'm only 27," Grizzell recalled, crying. "(I was) very disfigured. Very much so."

But one man saw through the scars.

Two years later, she married Ray Grizzell.

While doctors in Oklahoma City did a tremendous job, Grizzell needed more help, and it came from Dr. Gregory Chernoff, a plastic surgeon.

He said he took on Grizzell as a patient because she "presented a tremendous challenge. The extent of her physical scars was horrendous. The extent of her psychological scarring was equal to her physical scars."

A child of domestic violence, Chernoff has made it his mission to seek out victims of violence like Grizzell, and treat them for free.

So, for the last eight years, Chernoff's been slowly rebuilding Grizzell.

She had some scars that were actually sticking out, "from my cheekbone all the way down to my neck. They were raised and very angry red-colored."

With the help of countless therapies, from laser treatments to high-tech cell replacement, Grizzell's scars are fading

All this work would have cost $700,000.

"Honestly," as Smith put it to Grizzell, "in your wildest dreams though, did you ever think that you would look like this?"

"No," Grizzell responded, "especially, even when I look back at the pictures now, I feel like that's -- is that really me? And it's not vanity, either. It's just, 'I look good (now), I look like a normal person.'"

Grizzell and Chernoff have created a foundation with the goal of raising money to help treat other victims of violence free of charge.

"Insurance doesn't always cover what insurance companies think is cosmetic -- and it's not," Grizzell observed. "It's just to get you back to what you were looking like. That in itself is rewarding, giving someone back their life."

Does Grizzell see herself as a victim? "At first I did. Not anymore," she said. "You don't look at it as being a victim. You look at it as overcoming a challenge. …I consider myself a survivor. A true survivor."

And this true survivor has another reason to celebrate life – Grizzell and her husband are expecting their first child, a daughter.