This work is dedicated to:My Angel, the love of my life and the three wonderful children she gave me.
A nurse in ICU reminded me what Albert Einstein said: “Live as if everything is a miracle or nothing is.”
I didn’t realize pride of life had taken over. I had the sports car, a nice house, a beautiful wife and three great children. I had life where I wanted it, a few bucks in the bank and good friends. I guess you could say I had it made. I spent most of my time at home due to a disability and managed to spend tons of time with my wife and children. I love hearing them laugh and play. We had our holiday plans made to go up north to visit family and had already made most of the arrangements. We were going to drive from Florida to visit family in New England and along the way stop and visit close friends in Kentucky. My beautiful wife had already let our family know that we were going to be there for Christmas. I have three young children and they were extremely exited about going on their first family vacation and especially the prospect of seeing snow for the first time in their
lives. My only problem was pride. I guess you can say; I thought I was invincible. Two days after Thanksgiving on November 26, 2005 I was at a friend’s house consoling him over his divorce and spent the afternoon hanging out, munching on some halibut that he caught in Alaska.
My wife called at 6pm and reminded me that I had a date with her that night and to get home. She asked me to stop on the way and get something for the children to eat. I hung up the phone and ended up in another long conversation with my friend. She called me again at 8pm a little upset. Her and the children hadn’t eaten yet and were waiting for me to get there, so I said bye to my friend and headed home. I was a mile away from his home on a nice winding road, really enjoying my convertible top being down and the sound of my engine in the cool, beautiful Florida evening. I think it is a safe estimate that Iwas doing between 45 and 50mph when I rounded the bend. The road conditions were dry, clear and my car usually handled very well. The next thing I knew I heard someone yell and I ducked and jerked the wheel to the left. In an instant the back end of my car slid-out and the car headed straight into the ditch on the left side of the road. I hit the brakes but it was too late...
I was instantly bounced out of my seat; my face was being smashed into the top bar of the convertible windshield. My seat belt was on, but it released all of its slack. I remember the weightless feeling similar to the negative g’s that you feel when you ride a roller coaster. My left leg got thrown through the windshield and I felt it crush and crackle,but my face had taken the brunt of the force.At the same time my left side was dragged across the sea grass as the car went up on it's left side and I remember the feeling as if I was out of the car my arm in a raised position sliding across the grass on my side. My car ended up coming to an instant dead stop then cartwheel from 45-50 miles per hour against the backside of a dirt embankment. The car hit with so much violence that the rear end spun around going airborne in an instant, flew around to the point where the car faced the direction I was coming from. The car landed 25 feet away from the impact site, tilted on the driver’s side door. It then fell back on its wheels with a final bang with me bouncing back into the seat still buckled in. The car landed in a manner that positioned it completely hidden between the embankment and sidewalk aimed in the opposite direction from which I was headed almost completely out of sight of the road in front of a stilted house 200 yards from any other house. The only thing I knew was that I had to get help and get it fast or I would bleed out.
I looked around me and could see that the closest lights were on my right and belonged to the house that I crashed in front of. For some reason the thought of laying on the horn never crossed my mind. I just felt the pain, the blood and pieces of teeth and bone pouring out of my face. My left leg felt like it was shredded to pieces but I had to get help. I unbuckled the seat belt struggled to open the door and tried standing on my feet getting out of the car. I fell to the ground in excruciating bone crushing pain that to this day I cannot begin to describe. I dragged myself through the mud between the car and the embankment then onto the cement driveway. I can remember the abrasiveness and grit of the driveway as it rubbed against my skin and recall wishing that it didn’t feel so rough. But I had to get to the stairs of that house and to the door or I knew I would die. The photos of the accident scene show where my car was situated. Not a soul driving by the scene could have possibly seen either me or my car. If someone driving by happened to see my car it would have appeared as if it was just parked there and they would have just kept driving. The car was perpendicular to the driveway with the rear bumper almost perfectly positioned to allow vehicles access.
In a video interview, my cousin, my wife and myself conducted with the home-owner a few days after I left the hospital she told us that not only are her and her husband never home on Saturday nights, but that in previous years she had a difficult, if not impossible time, getting her husband to put up Christmas lights right up until Christmas Eve. He hated putting those lights up. It just so happened earlier that evening he suggested rather than going out with friends they should stay home and put the lights up together. Had they gone out that night as usual they would have came home later that evening only to find me dead on their driveway in a pool of blood.
God Had Other Plans....
The homeowners saw my accident and called 911. I remember looking up and seeing a woman coming down the stairs,hearing her cry out to whoever was in the house on the phone “tell them to hurry up it’s life threatening.” A few moments later she was standing by my side telling me to be still, help is on the way. I had dragged myself almost 30 feet up her driveway in my quest to reach her door. The first responder to arrive on the scene was a man who I found out after I left the hospital was a Pinellas County deputy who spoke to me a little and told me to remain calm. The weirdest thing is the fact that for some reason I had no major fear of death. I didn’t care what this deputy and the homeowners had to say; I just couldn’t get out of my mind that my face was destroyed, I couldn’t walk and believed that I had lost my left leg from the knee down, and I was thinking to myself and I believe I stated that “my wife is going to be really upset with me for wrecking the car and getting myself hurt.” I was thinking and attempting to say “no, this isn’t happening, no, no, no please God.” Please let this not be real. I don’t want to be hurt.” The ambulance got there within a few minutes. I lay in their driveway moaning in agony, trying to put my face back together and but the bones back that were falling out. I could feel that my upper jaw was ripped in half and my nose was hanging off my face.My hands were completely covered in blood and mud. I will never forget nor could I ever imitate the awful guttural, gurgled moaning sounds was making while trying to piece my face back together. When the ambulance got there they worked quickly to get me stable and keep me conscious. I was able to talk by holding my jaw and face together and responded by telling the ambulance tech that I had 0-blood; he said that I was bleeding too much from my throat to get a good airway and told me he may have to do a tracheotomy. I told him “Do whatever you need to do, just keep me alive till we get to the hospital because I have a wife and 3 beautiful babies at home that need me”. He asked me what hospital I wanted and I told him to Bay-Flight me. He said I’m in luck because the helicopter was in the area and they would take me to the middle school down the street to meet the chopper The technician continued attempting to roll me over onto my back so he could secure me to the back-board but every time he tried to do so my airway would fill with blood and I couldn’t breathe so I would fight my way back onto my side and consciousness. As a result, the techs wrote in their report that I was combative. I wasn’t combative; I’m just addicted to breathing and didn’t want to drown in my own blood. A few minutes later I was loaded on the helicopter and I remember saying in my mind “thank you lord” I closed what was left of my eyelids and despite the noise from the chopper began to fall asleep. During that flight I died at least for a few moments and recall an entire dream of being in a flood hanging off the side of a tall building. Looking down, I recall a rushing large black river below me with people screaming and I recall reaching up to the helicopter as the people reached out and pulled me onboard. I vaguely remember landing on the roof of the hospital and being wheeled out of the chopper. There was a lot of activity and I finally allowed myself to fall asleep.
I woke up six weeks later.!
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