His femur in an enduro cross dirtbike accident. He is a paramedic and firefighter, and when he fractured it during the race, he was able to comprehend the situation and coach the ambulance crew helping him through the things that he wanted them to do for him as they prepped him for the ambulance and to go to the emergency room for surgery.

They got him stabilized in the ambulance and started transporting him to the hospital about 40 minutes away. In the middle of that ambulance ride, he all of a sudden didn’t realize what was going on, where he was, or why he was there. They ended up needing to sedate him in the ambulance because he was causing problems.

My wife and I were at a wedding reception near the hospital and were able to head there where I gave him a blessing prior to his surgery.

The following late morning, we started receiving messages from his wife that he hadn’t woken up from his surgery. This continued for another few hours and the doctors were concerned and ordered a CT scan of his brain.

The CT scan of his brain showed that he had no brain activity, and they were able to eventually determine that fat globules went into his blood and ended up blocking oxygen from getting to his brain. So it wasn’t from a direct blow to his brain, but these Emboli ended up causing damage.

His wife was actually approached about pulling the cord on life-support after a couple of days of continued lack of any brain activity, but they elected the way things out.

He was basically in what I would describe as a comatose state for about 15 days before we started seeing signs of any life. We started to see a little tiny glimpses of life after a couple of weeks, including him SLOWLY opening his eyes and eventually slowly closing them. It was like a really long 5 minute blink. This got a little faster over a couple of days. He then got to the point where he would actually look over at people as they walked into the room, but there was no verbal or emotional response to those people when they came in - he would just lay there and stare.

On the day that he was being transported to a specialty hospital for all forms of therapy to see if he might improve better there, a good friend of his who he knew from an ambulance crew that he worked on came in and excitedly said “Hi Wes!” to him (not expecting a reaction), and he immediately perked up and gave a very audible smile with a little laugh in it. It was the first sign of life beyond his blinking that we were able to see from him.

He seemed to really start to develop from there, but it was like watching someone go from infancy all the way back up to an adult over the next several months.

He eventually was able to retest for his drivers license, go back through all of his physical and written fire and paramedic certifications, and has carried on with his life, his marriage, and being a father.

There was some hard times the next couple of years through all of that as he had bouts of struggling with impulse control, filtering his thoughts in the things that he would share with other people, and other actions that caused occasional issues with people he was close to.

It’s been about a dozen years since his accident, and I would say he’s 99% of the person that he was before the accident. If you didn’t know him before the accident, you wouldn’t know that there’s anything really different about him or off, but there are little subtle things that we are aware of.

He’s done incredibly well, and he’s been a great provider for his family. There is hope. He atrophied from 6’4” 195 lbs down to 145 lbs. He has regained his strength and health since and only has scars on his body from the feeding tubes he had and the rods he had (he actually also suffered a spiral fracture of his tibia and fibula in his lower leg in the wreck - so that plus the femur).

I explained your situation to my 6 year old before family prayer tonight, and he offered a fervent, loving prayer for your daughter. I can only imagine how difficult it has been for you guys. Prayers will be offered on behalf of you and your wife as well. Hang in there.