The Accident That Put Me In A Wheelchair (part 3)

Part 3 – The Fight to Live

(in case you missed it: part 1, part 2)

In the early afternoon on Saturday, I woke up with no knowledge of my spinal cord injury. I remember Steve and Kurt being there, but John had been sent to a lab with blood samples to see if I had been drugged. There was a lot of commotion and they called for the doctor to check on me.

They were asking me all kinds of questions like ‘what day is it?’, ‘who is the president?’, ‘what country are we in?’, etc. They seemed stunned that I could answer most of the questions and Steve was telling me that I needed to get dressed and get going. I told him I was trying, but couldn’t seem to find the strength. Steve grabbed my foot and while pinching me, asked, “Can you feel this?”. I said,  “No, feel what?”. He pinched harder, still I felt nothing. I’ll never forget the look on his face; he went white as a ghost and he started telling me not to move, just stay completely still. He yelled for someone to get a cervical collar and a backboard.

Once I was stabilized with the c-collar and strapped to a backboard, they took me for x-rays that revealed severe damage to my spinal column. I had crushed C4, C5, C6, and C7 and there  appeared to be a complete break in my spine between C4 and C5. I had also suffered a mild concussion and I dislocated my shoulder.

By this time John had returned from the lab and was receiving reports from Steve and the doctor. The doctor and hospital staff were speaking to one another in Spanish while John paid close attention and waited for a translation. Up to this point John had been intentionally hiding the fact that he was quite fluent in Spanish. He realized that they were not translating truthfully. In Spanish, the conversation was centered on trying to get as much money from us as possible before I died. In English, the conversation was more along the lines of buy this, pay for that, and we can probably save your nephew’s life. I can only imagine the look of horror on their faces when he began speaking in Spanish to the doctor. Once they realized that he could actually understand and speak their language, their demeanor changed quite a bit. Actual medical care became more of a priority.

The so-called hospital did not have the equipment to treat a spinal cord injury, so they gave John a list of items to purchase from the hardware store. The idea was to build a homemade traction unit to realign my vertebrae and stabilize the spinal cord. So, John went to the hardware store and returned with the supplies. Then the Mexican doctor took me back into an operating room and started to attach the yoke to my skull. I still remember the pressure from the contraption and hearing my skull crack as the screws were being turned. At about the same time that the skull cracking appliance was being attached, John saw a rat run across the floor. That was the last straw and he demanded that all care stop immediately.

While John was running all over town for blood work and hardware, one of his friends had gone to the American consulate to see if there were any other options for medical care. The consulate gave him the name of an American doctor who had a clinic close to the hospital. Dr. Michael McFall would be the next answered prayer in my story.

By mid-Saturday afternoon, the guys had made arrangements for me to be transferred to his clinic. However, the staff at the hospital was not in favor of the transfer. In fact, they were not going to release me over to Dr. McFall. This is where our friend Kurt came in very handy. He was a senior and on his way to becoming an Army Green Beret. He stood about 6’2” and weighed over 200 lbs. with chiseled abs of steel. He stood up next to my bed and told the hospital staff that I would be going with him and they were welcome to try and stop him. The hospital staff declined his invitation and I was transported to Dr. McFall’s clinic soon after.

Once at the clinic, I remember Dr. McFall standing over me as he went over the results of my x-rays. As he told me the severity of my injuries, tears started to roll down the side of my face. He stopped me and said, “Son I need you to understand something;  you have to fight for your life right now, you don’t have time to feel sorry for yourself”. With that, the focus became survival and no more tears. The fight to live had really just begun.

Behind the scenes I knew that everyone had been doing what they could to help my dad find medical transportation. They needed to get me out of Mexico to operate on my spine if at all possible and time was becoming a major factor for several reasons:

• The spinal cord injury meant that I had to remain strapped to the backboard. Meanwhile, my bowels and bladder were filling with no safe way to relieve them. Severe infection was only a matter of time.
• There was the potential for pressure sores from being on the backboard for too long. If sores were to develop and open, then there would be another high risk for infection.
• When the spinal cord is injured it swells and as the swelling increases, the body continues to lose control of certain functions. The area that allows you to control your diaphragm for breathing is located very close to C4. So, as my injury was swelling, I was gradually losing the ability to breathe on my own.

The clock was ticking and I still remember a lot of the feelings and thoughts that were rushing through my mind:

• There was the feeling of intense pain from my shoulder and neck. I kept asking for them to set my shoulder back in the joint, but they couldn’t risk further injury to my spine, so it had to remain dislocated. The only thing they could give me for pain was Tylenol 3 with codeine, which was not very effective.
• I was hungry. The last meal I had was lunch on Friday. I had met my grandfather for lunch at Buns restaurant. The chili, french fries, and chocolate milkshake were long out of my stomach by then.
• I was thirsty. With most severe spinal cord injuries, the patient loses the ability to control bowel and bladder functions. Since they couldn’t properly empty my bladder without moving me and causing more damage, I was only allowed to have ice chips.
• I was afraid that I might never walk again. What was life going to be like this way? What did the voice mean when it said everything would be okay? The voice said that life would be different, what did that mean? For how long?
• Where is my mom? I really want my mom.
• Where is that plane? How long am I going to be stuck here on this backboard?

I remember John reading to me from The End of The Battle by Evelyn Waugh to comfort me while we waited for for my mother to arrive. The storyline was just enough to escape the swirling thoughts and fears. I could not even begin tell you what it was about or even if the book was any good. To this day it sits on my bookshelf collecting dust. Perhaps someday I will read it myself, but I don’t think that I will ever part ways with it.

When my mother arrived the airline staff made sure that there were people there to get her off the plane and over to Dr. McFall’s clinic. As she entered the building, Dr. McFall was in the waiting area where he stopped her and said that she had to keep it together or she would not be allowed to be in the room. He told her that we were fighting for my life and she could not lose her composure. She looked at Dr. McFall and told him very plainly, “Get out of my way or I will move you, I’m going to be with my son.” John assured Dr. McFall that she wasn’t joking.

I remember that having her there gave me a sense of comfort, but I was still disappointed because I could not leave and the fight to stay alive was getting harder by the minute. At one point I remember Dr. McFall and my mother stepping into the hallway and whispering. Because I couldn’t hear what they were saying I knew it had to be bad. I started making as much noise as I could to get them to come back into the room and I can remember telling my mom, “I have to know what’s going on you cannot keep secrets from me. We have to fight this together and if I don’t know what I’m fighting, it makes it really difficult to fight.”

Dr. McFall then explained to me that my temperature had risen to 104 and that my respiration was so low that if things did not improve, he would have to perform a tracheotomy. I said, “Okay, give me one hour and then we can see where things are after that.” He had a puzzled look on his face, but he agreed and stayed right by the room ready to take action if my condition worsened.

I spent the next hour meditating on what the Holy Spirit had told me in the water; that I would survive this and that there was a lot of work to do. I knew in my heart that I would not die. I remember mentally telling God over and over again that it was in his control, that he could bring down my temperature and I turned it all over to him. I remember focusing on my breathing to make sure that I was taking as many breaths as I could.

An hour later my temperature had gone down one degree. Dr. McFall was surprised and we did the same thing for the next hour. I would meditate on what God had said and focus on my breathing. That hour I maintained the same temperature. So the cycle would repeat itself and every minute of every hour became intentional. It would be the longest night of my life.

Read more in part 4 of our series. If you haven’t already, please consider sharing this website with friends to share how God uses trials in our lives to grow us up into the character of Jesus. If you have already shared or contributed, thank you!