(Image Credit: ABC News)

A Washington State woman who felt like she "was chewing glass" and had 200 splinters removed from her head now says she "feels great" after a bundle of 27-foot wooden poles from a truck smashed through her windshield when she rear-ended the vehicle.

Erin Burns, 36, said doctors removed 200 wood fragments and sewed stitches along the side of her head and the more severe wound in front, where her brain was pushed back in her skull. A bone from her hip was used to patch it up. The shredded chunk of pole didn't make it through to her brain.

Burns said she "feels great." Her mother, Janet O'Mara, is grateful beyond words. "She's going to come out of this OK," O'Mara said. "And we're so grateful, so thankful."

Burns believes she has been given a second chance at life. "I still have this opportunity to live my life," she said. "And I do plan to live it every single day."

More than anything, Burns says, she's thankful her kids weren't in the backseat at the time.

Burns is being called a walking, talking miracle after the accident that occurred two weeks ago when she was out shopping for a child's birthday present and a truck in front of her suddenly stopped, and she didn't. The poles then came crashing straight into the Deming, Wash., woman's windshield and out the car's back window, leaving her with wood fragments in her head but apparently no brain damage.

"The first memory I have is I feel like I woke up and I was chewing glass," she said.

Burns says she doesn't remember, but figures she must have somehow flinched and turned her head at exactly the right angle. Police said that they were imagining that there was no way the driver made it out alive.

"I'd say she was extremely lucky, and she's here and she's alive and I think that's what counts," Washington State Patrol Trooper Bob Wilson said.