David Olsen-Fabian, one of my readers, sent me this account of his horrifying accident in response to an article that I wrote called, "Cheating Death." I found it moving and a prime example of how one can get into a life threatening accident, when it is least expected. As you will see, he was not driving recklessly and basically he was just a victim of circumstance. What happened to Mr Olsen-Fabian could have happened to any one of us. Here is his story:

I was a riding my motorcycle, a highly modified Suzuki GSX R750. I was just tooling along and never even reached the speed of 30mph. My helmet was on my head for protection, everyone riding a motorcycle should wear one to protect their head. I pulled into a church parking lot and cut through the grass, I did this to avoid traffic and save a few seconds off my trip. Little did I know that there was a deadly trap waiting for me, in the form of a drain pipe that I couldn't see. It was buried in the grass, but still stuck up enough to be a hazard to my bike. The bike hit it and I went over the handle bars.

As I lay there bleeding to death I thought to myself, “you did it this time, you just killed yourself”. Then everything went gray and I got tunnel vision. My entire life flashed before my eyes. It wasn’t a frame by frame sort of thing. I could see the events of my life, they were in a stack, with the most current event on top and the earliest one that I could remember, at the bottom. it was visible all at once. I knew what I was seeing and I knew very well what it meant. Then everything went blank, not black. There was no white light, just a blank. A strange thing happened to me then, I heard what I can only describe as a voice coming from somewhere over my right shoulder and behind me. It said, “David do you see this nothingness? If you die now this is how you will spend eternity. This is NOT what I want for you. Go back and try again.” After that everything just stopped. I was dead.

By the time the helicopter got there, I had lost all of my blood and had no pulse. The medics looked at me and saw that I was gone. For some unknown reason they decided to perform an experiment on my body, I guess they figured that I had nothing to lose. They put an experimental blood substitute, *Polyheme, in me and jumped started my heart. It worked, I was alive again.

I remember being loaded on to a helicopter and taking off. There are other memories as well, such as the sensation of flying. I thought to myself, I have never been in a helicopter before. I was in small private planes and commercial airliners. I remember thinking, “so this is what it’s like to fly in a helicopter. I sure hope it doesn’t fall out of the sky.” At that point another strange thing happened, I remember crashing through hospital doors. For the next 30 days I was kept in a drug induced psychosis. The doctors were giving me Haldol, among other things, to relieve me from pain. Many memories were created during that time, but I have no way of knowing if they were real or imagined, since I was pumped so full of drugs. I had crazy thoughts and believed that the doctors were trying to kill me by baking me with the Thanksgiving turkeys. All this kind of stuff was going through my mind. I kept thinking that there was a helicopter gun ship flying around. It would shoot people that were trying to hurt me, if I gave them thumbs down as they had thermal imaging and could see through the walls! I later figured out that what my mind was interpreting as a helicopter was in fact the MRI machine, which was making unusual noises.

The doctors didn't know how to fix me, so I was being held together for ten days with 50 hemostats! They told my parents and wife that they had never had anyone survive with these types of injuries before and they just didn't know how to repair some of the trauma to my body. The accident gave me a broken pelvis, sacrum, coccyx, lower three vertebrae, left shoulder and I snapped my sciatic nerve in my left leg, so I have no feeling from the hip down. I also have a drop foot, I can't lift my foot up, it just dangles. I have a HUGE gash,which is now closed, but with an awful scar. It is on my left hip and is about six inches long by three inches wide and two inches deep. I also have one above my butt the size of a coke can. It is round and two inches deep. Apparently you could see through me at one point. The x-rays show a right hip that looks normal, but my left hip looks like mashed potatoes with screws in them.

The accident occurred in November of 2004. I am divorced now, living with my parents and can't work. I'm 34 years old with ten years of experience in EDI / Electronic Commerce. I'm was waiting for Social Security to approve me for disability, but I was denied and am now in the appeal process. My life now consists of lying in bed, as it hurts to sit or stand, watching DVDs and viewing the internet on my Treo 650. My step dad is graciously paying the monthly phone bill. I have no idea what life is going to be like in the future, but I do hope to work again some day. I can walk some what, but I can not sit at all because of the pain.

My medical expenses have eaten up my entire life savings. I literally have nothing, zero, zip, nada. I can’t even buy a cup of coffee. Now, through the kindness of their hearts, my parents pay for my doctor visits and prescriptions. I am taking the bare minimum of pain killers, just so I don't lie around crying in pain all day. I have to get free samples of several other prescriptions, because there is no money for me to get them any other way. The pain killers I take now are just barely enough so I can lie in bed, but if I move or do anything I am in extreme pain.

My story is a sad one, but one that could have happened to anyone. Yes I cheated death, but did I really gain a full life back? Maybe this will be answered in a more satisfactory way in the future, but as for now, I would have to say no. Sometimes you don't always get what you want in life, but as they say, where there is life, there is hope.

dofphishe@sprintpcs.com

*PolyHeme® is a human hemoglobin-based temporary oxygen-carrying red blood cell substitute in development for the treatment of life-threatening blood loss when an oxygen-carrying fluid is required and red blood cells are not available.