My New Life, I Will Never Quit

In April 2009 my daughter Emily shot her first turkey. In June 2009 we had an accident. I have driven over 20 years and thousands of miles on a motorcycle. We were going 50mph on a straight road. A truck was coming on the opposite side of the road. He turned across the road to a gas station and hit me and Emily. I was knocked out instantly. People saw the accident and rushed to help. A man had to take his belt off and wrap my thigh in a tourniquet. The ambulance showed up 12 minutes later. I had lost 75% of my blood. My blood pressure was 40 over 20. My heart beat was 8-10 beats per minute. At the hospital they had to put enough blood in me for 2.5 people. My skull was cracked. My eye socket, nose, and jaw were broken. My collar bone, six ribs, pelvis, and both hands were broken. My right lung collapsed. My left leg broke in 6 places. In my right leg over 50 pieces of bone were broken. The right leg was amputated. I was in a coma for a month. After the coma I was in the hospital for another month. They rebuilt my left leg with 9 titanium screws. Six months later, my jaw was wired shut for 2 months. Emily's leg was broken. They put 10 screws in her broken bones. She was in the hospital for a week.




It took me several months to put a prosthetic leg on. During Christmas, Emily and I decided to hunt turkeys in April 2010. I spent weeks and months to walk several feet, then yards, then ½ mile, and a mile.




Spring of 2010. Getting up at 4am shows how Emily can snooze while she waits for a tom. She was lights out!

The fourth day she shot her tom at 12 yards on full strut. She gets pretty shaky when those toms gobble so close and loud.

I can walk! I carried her gear, decoys, and gun. She carried the 20lb tom by herself!