One year ago I was involved in a near fatal collision. The accident was not my
fault but I'd like to think that
even if it had been I'd be sharing this story with you because we're only human
and reminding myself of that has been helping me get thru this.
August of 2013 was looking like it was gonna be a spectacular month. First I bought a brand
new 2013 Subaru WRX.
Over the last six years I've gotten to see time in a variety of vehicles
on every type of terrain possible and I developed
deep appreciation for every driving surface,
but there's something I find feverishly fun about mixed terrain
and a car that can find its grip in any weather. Rather than compete in a rally
I choose an STI but as a daily driver the WRX has all the characteristics
I look for in a car. As if that weren't enough
two weeks after I bought my precious new car
I flew to Germany to tackle a couple big bucket list items
starting at the Nurburgring a track so epic
it feels sacrilegious to spell its name without the umlaut.
Like any enthusiast I've long dreamed attacking the green hill
and doing it in an iconic car like say
a 2000 Porsche 911 996 GT3.
Warned about its tricky gearbox and demanding clutch
but the 996 and I got along famously
and I enjoyed every gear changing every one of those
seventy-plus turns.
I would like to spend a full week at the ring but the next day
i woke at 4AM and drove 6 hours southeast to meet Bjorn Berak
from AP Sports line and to drive the AP Audi R8 GTR.
Have you seen this car if you've seen images of this car you'll understand
why I was
beyond enthused to get my hands on it. First things first if
visually stunning half a million dollar prototype
and it also won the fastest R8s on earth thanks to APs engineers
who increased the horsepower from my 525 to 620 and used
carbon fiber to drop 220 pounds of weight.
It can reach 202 miles per hour and every inch of it
is gorgeous. When we arrived at the location
Bjorn showed me all the changes that AP made and we said by to the video crew
so that i could
go get familiarized with the car. Everything was going absolutely
beautifully
it was going to be such a good video I
even said that to Bjorn we were having a famously
great time together feeding off each other's energy
and enthusiasm for this amazing machine
and eveyrthing was going well until the final mile when we were reminded of the gruesome reality
that anyone can do anything
at any time.
I was in the left lane where quickly moving traffic belongs there was a car in the right lane
moving at
a much slower pace
where more slowly moving traffic belongs
and all we had to do was stay in our respective lanes. I did my part but unfortunately the
other driver did at all do his. I would say that he cut our line but that would say he was driving
in an acceptable speed to overtake us or nearly
overtake us. That was not at all the case. Instead
at the last possible moment and traveling
at maybe a third our speed he careened out into our lane
essentially turning his car into a brick wall we could not avoid. I remember
Bjorn shouting or screaming something don't think it's words just some
gutteral fearful expression
and I hard brake like our lives depended on it
because they did. Okay this is where it gets rough.
So the moment of impact, oh
hang on.
Ok the moment of impact
was in nightmarish explosion and that i relive more times than I can count
and I am still pretty deeply haunted by this.
sounds and smells and the inertia despite the impact we did not roll tho
the other car certainly but we coasted for what felt like a very long time
and before we even came to a stop our car was already on fire.
I knew I was seriously injured there was pain radiating from my leg in a way
I will not
even try to describe I
immediately began saying oh my god oh my god oh my god.
Bjorn shouted we're on fire and our engine was engulfed in flames I can hear and
smell and feel but I was so
focused on my leg i'd tried to move it I saw
it fall im so many
different directions and worse than that several bones had broken out
through the skin because we were on fire tho we needed to get the hell outta
the car.
So we both just began unbuckling our belts and reaching for our doors
and thank God for that incredible roll cage because each have our doors open
within seconds.
Without hesitation I threw myself out of the car and the moment I hit the ground I
started crawling with my elbows
and never stopped for even a second until a woman appeared and
picked me up and started running. When we reached a safe distance from the car
she lay me down on the road where I began
praying to the universe. I could hear people shouting in German
and felt more free than i've ever been in my life I didn't know if they can fix
my leg
and I was terrified by the thought of losing it. When the Medivac arrived the
paramedics put needles in both arms began administering morphine
and cut off my right shoe and cut my pant leg and secured a tourniquet to stop the bleeding
made a splint then for my leg one began treating an injuring in my neck
one was pressing my internal organs and that was really the first time it
occurred to me that I
very likely had more than one serious injury.
Then they loaded me into the medivac and after what felt like a very long time
we landed at the hospital.
I was rushing to 100 fluorescently let
operating room and quickly surrounded by strangers in surgical masks.
There were two doctors on my feet who at the same time begin cutting off my clothes
both legs at a time
which I never knew it happened like that
and I remember thinking in this deeply serious way
that this was total bullshit but if you end up
in this room in this scenario you're not supposed to be awake
and I had just never so desperately wish that I wasn't.
In addition to having trouble speaking I was also up against the big language
barrier
because although I'd learn some German words and phrases prior to my trip do
not cut off my leg was not one of them
so I gestured and begged a best I could I
would not wake without it. Because I was conscious
the law required that I sign forms before my surgery but I
had no fine motor skills like couldn't hold the pen
let alone write my name. The last thing I remember before being anaestetized
was
surgeon holding my hand around the pen and dragging my arm across the page.
I have no idea how
many hours or days later I woke up in the intensive care unit
when I woke up I was my chest was covered electrodes
and my arms and my hands were covered in needles
and i felt pain everywhere. My tibia had been broken in half
and both parts had broken through the skin and I had a compound fracture of the fibula.
So the German surgeons implanted a titanium rod through my tibia
and secured it with three screws and did what they could to line up the pieces of
fibula.
I also damage my patella and meniscus
had a severe concussion, rib contusions, whiplash, and lacerations.
I was bleeding internally and I damaged quite a few major organs
but the most serious injury I sustained was a traumatic dissection of my left
internal carotid artery.
One of the the only arteries to transport blood to the brain in which is responsible for
the pulse you feel on the side of the neck.
Severing this artery can kill you or cause life-threatening blood clots
and it's the most common cause of stroke in young adults.
I stayed in intensive care for
I think three days and was moved to a hospital room just in time for my
family's arrival.
I really don't wanna talk much about the hellish week so I spent in hospital
but suffice it to say they were among the worst weeks of my life.
I was attached to a morphine pump and half a dozen IV's
I spent each day undergoing countless tests and scans and medical procedures
and I was in more pain than I knew how to process.
When I got back to the states at the end of September my life became an endless
succession of
doctors appointments and every day revolved around pain management.
I woke up crying every day because even the
opiate meds didn't bring me much relief.
I've never experienced
pain of that magnitude that lasted for so long.
Much like September, October through December were pretty horrifying
I was bedridden unable to do anything for myself
and my pain didn't let up at all. The worst part was
I still needed another major reconstructive surgery on my fibula
on December 30th I learned I'd be having surgery on New Year's Eve but by
this time the broken pieces of fibular had
improperly fused together and the surgeon would rebreak them before realigning them and secure them
with a second titanium rod. Everyone told me it would be
nothing like the first thing you went
through its gonna be a lot easier.
When I awoke in the recovery room the pain I felt
it kinda paralleled the pain I felt in my leg
after the accident occurred and i felt like I was back at the starting line of my
recovery despite that I was four months in. So January and February were a lot
like September through December
constant pain,
lots of crying, wheelchair-bound, bed bound,
and alone.
In mid-march they took off my final cast put me in a boot,
granting permission to weight bear which I was ecstatic about.
But after seven months of the immobility I had severe
atrophy and I couldn't even move let alone lift my leg.
I couldn't wiggle my toes everything I asked it to do
it would not respond.
Physical therapy was incredibly frustrating I cried at many
sessions I will be going physical therapy for years to come and I still
cry sometimes.
Because it's painful and also because it's incredible frustrating.
I have always been an incredibly active person
I played pretty much every sport I was an equestrian til I was
6 or 7 was on the swim team, I was a barrel racer,
have played softball, basketball, baseball, volleyball,
mountain climbing, practice Jiu-Jitsu, Muay Tai, I love mixed martial arts,
hapkido, kickboxing you name it and I don't really know how many
of those physical skill sets I'll be able to regain
but I'm going to do my damnedest to get each and every one back.
At the same time there's some sincere limitations that I will not be
able to fight and I'm
learning to accept after two surgeries seven incisions,
100 stitches, two rods, three screws
and
a knew that now faces west it's quite possible I might not ever be able to heal
for a rev match
or at least I won't be able to without a custom pedal. I've been practicing on my
I-racing peddles since my cast was removed and
it's just a constant
struggle
to build up the muscle to push through the pain
to regain use of my leg to walk again.
I've only been back at work and driving for a couple months
and it is great to be back but in a couple weeks I have to have a
third surgery on my leg and while that breaks my heart a bit
I'm really glad I got to spend half a dozen weeks doing what I
truly love again like driving this 1969 Camaro Z28 from the original Trans
Am Series.
Despite how awful this whole ordeal has been
my job allows me not only to drive incredible supercars
but to be myself indulge my passions and share it all with you.
People ask me how I broke my leg I tell them
in one of the best ways possible.