I stopped plowing and came to a stop and the first thing I said was

I stopped plowing and came to a stop and the first thing I said was "Thank you Jesus, I'm alive!" I could wiggle my toes, but I couldn't move enough to stand up because of the severe pain in my back. Then I realized that I had stopped breathing. I couldn't inhale or exhale - again from the pain. I decided all I could do to make myself breathe was scream. That worked, but when I screamed I saw that I had lots of blood coming out of my mouth and filling up my helmet. I wasn't sure where it was coming from, but took my helmet off very rapidly. Turned out I just had two split lips.

A couple very nice gentlemen by the names of Jeff and Travis stopped to help me out (the cement truck had to have seen me wipe out, but they didn't stop.) I blurted out Dennis' cell phone number and asked them to call him and an ambulance. Dennis took care of letting Monica know - that was much better than the way she found out 17 years ago. Meanwhile, Jeff got down on a knee and started praying for me - I believe strongly in the power of prayer and his laying hands on me helped comfort me as well as helped to heal me.

The ambulance arrived shortly and they took me to the emergency room. They x-rayed everything and scanned a couple cats in the process! They never checked my brain out though. Nothing was broken, but I had unbearable pain in my back and a big bruise across my forehead. A few weeks later they did an MRI to double-check the brain. When they got the results, they informed Monica that my brain was perfectly normal. Monica was somewhat taken aback by this suggestion, but was flabbergasted by the underlying assumption - that I actually had a brain to start with!

They did keep me in the hospital since I couldn't get to my feet. I came home just in time for thanksgiving. Then I spent about three weeks in my recliner taking percocet and flexeril for my pain and stiffness. We discovered soon into this period that I was 3/4" shorter than before the wreck, but I have already regained half of that height.

I've been doing physical therapy since about the time I started back to work. I've been going two days a week and have done a fair job of keeping up with my exercises. Jeff at SSM Rehab in Lake St. Louis has been very helpful

I'm almost completely healed as of now (2/1/2006 - about two months after the crash) and have even taken the wrecked bike for a spin once after getting all the plastics off.

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