SHELBY, N.C. -- A Cleveland County woman who survived a car crash and then a 70-foot fall last week said she wants to be home for Thanksgiving with her two small children.

Nicky Minix is recovering at Cleveland Regional Medical Center in Shelby. She suffered a broken pelvis and still has nightmares of her crash Friday night.

Minix said she believes she fell asleep at the wheel because of medicine she took for a virus. She slammed into the concrete rail on the Broad River Bridge near Boiling Springs. She couldn’t open her car door, so she climbed out of her shattered window, slipped on the guardrail and fell off the bridge.

“I remember hitting the river and I felt like at the moment I broke my back,” she said. “It was dark. I thought I'd be down there, nobody was going to find me.”

But the driver who was behind her shined a flashlight down and found her. He called 911.

Minix held onto a rock in the river until rescuers arrived. Officers Jonathan Gantt and Jose Lopez, who were first on the scene, said they were surprised the woman survived the fall.

“I ask myself everyday how I made it through a 70 foot fall without more injuries than I got,” she said.

Police said Minix was saved because of the drought. The river is at least 3 feet below its normal level. Officers said if it was at its normal level, she probably would have been washed away by the current.