Thursday, April 02, 2009

"God Was There."

Rather than updating you on Tyler's health once more, we thought it best if he could talk to you himself. Below is an interview with Tyler on his thankfulness for your prayers, his experiences, and some lessons he learned in the hospital.

When I asked Tyler whether he wanted to work on writing a post, sharing his thoughts and experience with you, he joked, “No, I want a hotdog.” You see, he’s on a liquid diet. Inevitably, every conversation leads to a discussion on what kind of food we’ll eat for dinner when his body is finished healing. Food cravings are part of his new daily reality.

It’s difficult to write about Tyler’s accident as an incident in retrospect, because it is still very much a part of our lives. We haven’t seen or fully processed all the things we have slowly been learning since January 17th. In a way, this interview is still in the making.

For those, who only have heard bits and pieces about the accident, the full story is here. In quick summation, Tyler was in an all-terrain vehicle accident in January with his friend, Chris. Chris’ leg was severely broken in three places, while Tyler was given a less than 10% chance of survival due to the extensive injuries to his internal organs.

When asked what he remembers of the accident, Tyler said, “[As I lay] on the ground [the world] was going black-white, black-white, black-white. They said I was going into shock and I was turning yellow….then they half-walked me to the car.”

“They drove me to [a hospital that will remain unnamed] and Chris and I both lay in the truck while they tried to get some nurses to come out. It took about 20 minutes before they could get anybody to look at us. Then they just gave us some medicine to calm us down. Christopher was driven by ambulance to another hospital for immediate surgery on his leg, and I was careflighted to another hospital for emergency exploratory surgery. Then I remember looking up at seven or eight doctors and nurses and they were all holding scalpels and scissors and needles. I felt the needle go in…

H: At the crash, what went through your mind?

T: I thought I was dead at first. [Then] I remember thinking ‘Well, we wrecked [the ATV] but at least we’re okay. But we weren’t.

H: Was it scary?

T: No, it was a little walk in the park. [I thought,] “I’m in a field with a kid with a broken leg!” [Of course] it was scary. [Then, at the hospital] I hallucinated a lot.

H: I remember you playing football a lot in your hallucinations. And one time, you took my hand and started pretending it was a phone.

T: Yeah. [I hallucinated] that Miriam [my nine year old sister] was Goth and was taunting me with cookies.

H: That was because you were hungry, right? When you spent all that time in the hospital bed, what were some of your thoughts?

T: [When I was pain, I kept thinking] I wish I was dead. It all blurs together; it was an awful experience.

I remember in ICU, I felt really bad that I was using praying as a 9-1-1 phone call--like only in emergencies, and I didn’t have a good walk before the accident and I was now praying all the time. [A friend had to explain to me that] God knows we’re faulty human beings, [but any kind of prayer] was a good place to start.

Read the rest.