KAMIAH, Idaho - A north Idaho woman who was skewered in the neck by a tree limb during a leisurely drive along the Lochsa River earlier this month is recovering at home after the limb was removed by doctors at Missoula's St. Patrick Hospital.

Michelle Childers, 20, and her husband were driving down a rural road in north-central Idaho on Sept. 5 when a spruce tree crashed through the passenger side window of their pickup truck.

Childers, a Kamiah native, says she could feel a strange pressure on her neck and shoulder when her husband, Daniel, a 22-year-old who works in the timber industry, saw the tree limb had impaled her and started to panic.

"I asked him 'What? Where is it?,' " Childers said.

Her husband answered, "It's in your neck," she said.

The couple drove to the Lochsa Lodge near the Idaho-Montana border to call for help and arrived about an hour after the tree limb stabbed the woman.

While Childers waited to be flown by helicopter to St. Patrick Hospital in Missoula, she said a nurse and her husband stayed close, trying to calm her down.

"So, here I am sitting in a pickup with all these wonderful people around me and a 13-inch spruce limb with branches coming off it still in my neck," Childers told KHQ-TV.

Surgeons at St. Pat's removed the 13-inch tree limb from her neck during a six-hour surgery, said Childers, who was interviewed at her home and wore a large piece of gauze on the scar on left side of her neck.

Childers does not have insurance. Friends have set up an account for the couple at a Sterling Savings bank location in Kamiah to help pay for her medical expenses.