BRIDGEWATER, SD (CNN Newsource) – A South Dakota woman is OK after a freak lawnmower accident sliced open her neck.

It could’ve been much worse. A flying piece of debris narrowly missed critical parts of Kendra Jensen’s neck, including her carotid artery and trachea.

“I thought that I got hit by a rock,” Kendra said. “It felt like something hit me and then fell off me. I didn’t know that my neck had been sliced open.”

The first thing that came to the mind of her husband, Andy?

“She’s going to bleed out in front of me,” he said.

Kendra describes herself as “extremely lucky.”

“When I walked out the door, I started picking up a couple of toys, stood up, then all of a sudden, I was hit,” she said.

Andy was mowing their lawn when the mower kicked up a piece of debris.

“I was immediately just like, ‘That hurt,'” Kendra said. “So I grabbed my neck. That’s when I realized I was bleeding and it was wet, and that’s when I freaked out.”

Andy saw her in pain and knew what to do right away.

“He ran to his car and grabbed his trauma bag,” Kendra said. “I make fun of him all the time for having it. I’m like, ‘We’re never going to need that.'”

“So I just put my thumbs in it and started going with the gauze,” Andy said.

An ambulance arrived quickly and took Kendra to the hospital.

She still doesn’t know what hit her but whatever it was, it just barely missed her carotid artery, trachea and vocal cords.

After the accident, she posted pictures on Facebook to show family and friends.

“My intent on posting what happened to me was to update my family and friends about it,” she said.

That post has now been shared more than 16,000 times and has generated some backlash.

“The ones that keep making comments that are like, ‘You shouldn’t have done this,’ or just shaming my husband like it was his fault. He didn’t even know I was outside,” Kendra said.

She’s not letting all the negativity affect her recovery, though. Kendra and Andy hope her story will remind people anything can happen in the blink of an eye.

“No one is definitely ever going to be outside again when I’m mowing,” Andy said.