This is what can happen when you ride with a drunk driver

I've kept in touch with a friend of mine, Randy, since he left the company a couple of years ago. He moved his family to take a new job in Mississippi where he lives with his wife, Deirdre, and their 20-something daughter and 18-year-old son, Daniel. Great, great people and a lot of fun to be around. I really miss working with this guy because you could be having the worst day at work and you'd always have a smile on your face after he left your office.

Anyway, he sent this email the other day. It's a real wake-up call for anyone who even thinks twice about getting in a car with a drunk driver.

Daniel was in a really bad car accident on Monday night. He was a passenger in a car that was being driven by a drunk teenager. (Dumb I know. But Daniel did say the only thing he remembers about the accident was saying, "Stop and let me out" before it happened.). It was the classic drunk teenager accident - speeding - missed a curve in the road, hit trees, flipped over. I don't know how but the right side of the car was largely ripped off, (even the floor was missing on the passenger side). Daniel was in the front passenger seat. The driver got away with only a broken arm. The other boy was in the back, and has some major internal injuries. The EMT said it was hard to tell who had been sitting where because everyone was so thrown around inside.

So we got the dreaded 11:00 at night call from a complete stranger who said, "Did you know that Daniel is in the emergency room and was in a car wreck?" It seems that now news travels faster via the teen cell phone network than it does via official network. As we were rushing out of the house - the phone rang, and it was the hospital confirming what was going on. We show up at the emergency room, and the lobby is full of teenagers, and more arriving all the time. They all wanted to know how everyone was. That was a big surprise to me. They even had a big prayer session in the lobby later that night.

From the local hospital they wanted to medivac Daniel and one of the other boys to the trauma hospital in Memphis, (Memphis has a great trauma center), but there were big thunder storms moving through so they took him by ambulance. They say he will be there for 2 weeks. He is still in ICU, and probably will be for a while. Both the sheriff and the EMT said that they are surprised that anyone survived the wreck.

Fortunately, most all of Daniel's injuries are broken bones. The worst case scenario of brain or spine damage did not happen.

Daniel had surgery Tuesday to put his foot and leg back together. It was a mess I guess. His lower right leg was completely mangled, his leg bones were poking out badly and filled with dirt and grass. The doctors were, and still are afraid of major infection. They cleaned it out, and put it back together with pins and rods and stuff, but are very, very concerned about infection. There are large amounts of skin and tissue missing there, so blood can't circulate, and they will have to piece together pieces of muscle and skin and stuff and major grafts to try and get it all covered up. They are not very encouraging, and say he will most likely have problems with the wounds the rest of his life - because that part of the leg has a hard time healing. He's scheduled to have surgery again today just to do more cleaning and to assess what the next step will be. They have mentioned several times that the ultimate bad result could be the loss of his right foot - which was his mom's immediate worry. That freaks us out as you can imagine.

His pelvis is broken, as is the very very bottom of his spine, (in the upper tail bone area). Apparently there are some important nerves there that control things like bladder and such. Yesterday they did some tests to look for permanent nerve damage, and the initial (but not real dependable) tests show there is damage. It would not affect his walking or that, but would cause him some issues that he would have to deal with the rest of his life.

They are operating on that part of the spine today or tomorrow to remove bone pieces and that may let the nerves settle down enough to make things right.

His right hand and wrist are broken is 3 or 4 places, so they will pin that together in todays surgery. They will screw and pin his pelvis together in one of the surgeries this week. It looks like he will be under the knife 3 times this week, and several times (maybe next week?) to work on his leg more. I cannot believe how much they are doing surgery one after another after another.

The doctor said the leg injury is a very major and dangerous injury in itself, so adding the others along with it are putting a stress on his body (not to mention all the surgery). They keep pumping blood and antibiotics into him.

They say he will also be in bed for 3 months - but I honestly don't believe that. I think they are just giving the worst case scenario.

Everything could well turn out fine, and he would only end up with some foot/leg issues to tend to the rest of his life. So all of these 'bad' scenarios may be just scares. That is what we are hoping for. In the meantime I am a complete basket case. I cannot even talk about it without crying. Of course Deirdre is steady as a rock, planning what to do when he gets home, communicating with all the family, etc. God only knows what I would do if she was not here!

I was all excited last week and was going to call you to tell you that Dan had just been accepted by the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, and was going to be there his whole freshmen year. He was really, really looking forward to that.

It will be a miracle if that happens now, but I suppose it could. That may be what makes him determined to get better ASAP. We'll see. Some of his first words when he woke up were, "I will be able to go to Edinburgh won't I?"