Pastor in story who survives church collapse is my brother

It may be a long recovery, but he is surely one lucky man, you must be so thankful.

Oh my Sandi, I’m SO glad your brother survived although he’ll have a long rehab.I believe there is a reason for everything. Prayers for his recovery.

Wow–you must be so thankful.

Blessings to your brother Sandi. My goodness, what a thing to happen!

Sandi, I can identify with what you and your brother are going through. Our littermates who have known me from the beginning know that my daughter “Ladybug” was seriously injured in a car wreck a little over a year ago when she was just 14. She was thrown from a Jeep that overturned when the driver (my son) took a sharp turn on an unfamilar gravel road at much too high a rate of speed. The car landed on top of her. The fact that she survived at all involved SEVERAL miracles on the part of the Almighty. We were told that she might not survive the life-flight trip to the nearest trauma center in Houston, nearly 100 miles away.

It turned out that although she had broken every bone in her face (her jaw in 2 places), and completely shattered an eye socket, she had NO injuries below her skull save a couple of nickel-sized bruises. She also had no brain damage, although to this day she has some issues with headaches and short-term memory loss, although she has kept up her class load–2 pre-AP classes last year and THREE this year!

By the grace of God, Ladybug wound up at Memorial Hermann Hospital in the Texas Medical Center, whose trauma department is headed by Dr. “Red” Duke. Dr. Duke INVENTED the life-flight concept, using what he had learned at a military trauma surgeon to develop a civilian version that I believe was a major factor in my daughter’s amazing recovery. Ladybug required two surgeries: one to re-set her jaw that took 4 hours (we had been told it would take 6-8), and the other (a 6-hr. surgery) to reconstruct her face and eye socket. The first surgery was by Dr. Arun Gadre (who has since taken a position in Tennessee), and Dr. Gadre was assisted in the second surgery by a plastic surgeon who specialized in the eye, Dr. Richard Urso. If I were to tell you how great Dr. Urso is, it would take all week. All the people at Hermann are miracle workers!

She spent 10 days at Hermann (4 in the Shock/Trauma ICU and 6 in the Pediatric ward), and is still recovering, although she was able to work out with the cross-country team when practice began 8 weeks after the accident. The eye damage has taken the longest to overcome–she had double vision for about 6 months, and still may need one more surgery to fix a slightly droopy eyelid. Still, she looks great (if you saw the pictures on my posting on the “Suggestion” forum, that one of Ladybug was taken this June–1 year after the accident).

I am amazed that your brother didn’t lose his leg. I think that if this had happened just a few years ago, he might have. I am constantly thanking God that we live in a place and time when so many medical innovations are available to us! If you want to talk about things, e-mail me at catspringginnyATyahooDOTcom. The recovery is the most tedious part, because there is so much patience required and frustration involved. There may also be some post-traumatic stress (we have had to deal with that–it’s not easy or quick, but it CAN be overcome).

Please know that I am praying for you and your brother. We’ve been there, done that, and the T-shirt is now used as a dust cloth!

{{{purrs and headbonks!}}}

In truth, Sandi, I think he has had a harder time dealing with his trauma than my daughter had with hers. “Scooter” walked away without a scratch–the only one to do so.

The other passenger in the car, Ladybug’s best friend, savagely broke her arm in an attempt to keep my daughter from flying out. In the process of bear-hugging my daughter, her friend’s arm went out the open window and the car rolled on top of the friend’s shoulder. It caused her humerus to break and jammed the broken part into her shoulder blade, but caused enough resistance to keep the car from crushing my daughter’s skull (which certainly would have ended her life as we know it, if not totally). It took extensive surgery, and left an awful scar (she loves the attention it brings her, though!), but she is back playing her trombone and did very well in tennis last spring.

The mental anguish, though, has stayed with our son. Sadly, I don’t think it helped that all our energies had to go into getting through the initial period of uncertainty of knowing if our daughter would survive and, if so, at what capacity. We couldn’t be there when our son had to face the JP with the charges against him (my parents were, though), and he had an even harder time accepting our forgiveness of him because he couldn’t forgive himself. He has been a “lost soul,” rejecting our home and our love. It is only in the last few weeks that he has begun to put his life back together. He enlisted in the Navy (he leaves in December), has moved back home and gotten a job at a local fast-food place in the interim. The road is still rough, but he has been more willing lately to look at things from outside his own narrow field of vision. I do what I can, but the main thing that needs to happen is for Scooter to accept love from us and from God. He can’t get past his own feeling of unworthiness. The fact that this week he has had his heart broken for the first time by a love interest isn’t helping. I so want my son to succeed, but he is his own worst enemy.

I missed that, Sandi. I am so sorry that it happened. Let that little lady know that she is not the only one who feels what she feels. It’s one of Satan’s favorite and most effective scams for keeping souls from God: “God CAN’T love me because I don’t deserve it.”

That leads to the Christian apologist’s definition of mercy, and the best definition I know: “‘mercy’ is NOT getting the punishment that someone deserves,” as opposed to grace, which is “getting some benefit that a person does not deserve.”

Meanwhile, how are you doing? Did you have insurance, and is it meeting your needs? How are you getting by day-to-day?

Amen, sister. In the meantime, take advantage of the “second chance” you’ve been given to work out a plan of what to do both with yourself and your furbabies in the event of an emergency. Also make a “Plan B” and a “Plan C”; things almost never go as you expect. Practice, too–you are much less likely to panic if your plan becomes instinct, and it is the panic that kills more often than the circumstances themselves. Glad to hear that tempers are, well, becoming more temperate. (A little “low-flying humor” to start your day–I am obligated to dole out a bad pun whenever I mention Instinct lest he wallop me with the whack-bonk stick!)