389: What if you were crushed by 10000 pounds of stone? [Rebroadcast Ep274]

Audible subscribers can listen to all episodes of This Is Actually Happening. Add free right now. Join Audible today by downloading the Audible app. This Is Actually Happening features real experiences that often include traumatic events. Please consult the show notes for specific content warnings on each episode and for more information about support services. Hi listeners. Today we begin the first episode of our annual three-week winter rebroadcast series. We'll be on hiatus starting today and we'll return with all new episodes starting January 13th. Today's rebroadcast episode, What If You Were Crushed by 10,000 Pounds of Stone, originally aired as episode 274 on April 18th, 2023. I entered the bathroom and I finally look in the mirror and all I can think of is the horror. The lowest moment in my life was looking at that mirror. I kind of just felt dead. From Wondery, I'm Whit Missildine. You are listening to This Is Actually Happening. Episode 274 What If You Were Crushed by 10,000 Pounds of Stone. Whether you're exploring your fascinations or discovering new ones, Audible has stories that will introduce you to your most fascinating self. Audible has been to a whole new world of heated conversations with a saucy romantic series. Know how true the latest blockbuster movie stayed to the sci-fi story it was based on or find unexpected reveals through an exclusive true crime podcast. However you listen, Audible keeps you fascinated so you can be just as fascinating. Select any audiobook every month plus exclusive podcasts, plans now start at £5.99. Audible, be fascinated, be fascinating. Both my parents were born in Boston. My father grew up in Dorchester, a mother in South Boston. Shortly after my parents got married they had my brothers John and then my brother Steve a couple years later. I fall in as the third child and then I have two younger brothers who are a set of twins four years behind myself. My mom was a small framed little Sicilian woman who can cook like no other. I was her favorite, most likely because I mostly resembled her dad. I was also small and looked a lot like him. My mom didn't work. She was a stay at home mom back in the days when dad actually worked for a family financially. My dad also just a very loving person, very supportive us kids, loves watching us do our sports, played in every sport possible growing up. He's a very hard working man to help provide for us. Is it a perfect home? No home is but it was as perfect as I was going to get it. I think I was a pretty happy kid growing up. I was a middle child, I have five boys. I was a little bit more independent I think than my brothers. I had to figure out things on my own, play on my own. I was a little bit smaller than my brothers. I was kind of like the runt of the litter. As I got older, my dad kind of looked at me one day and said to me, you're going to be a small person. You're just not a big guy so we need to make you stronger and faster than the other kids. So I think I was in fifth grade. My dad put together a workout routine and every single day I'd run two miles and every night sit ups and push ups and working out with barbells. Sure enough that did help me and I played football and I fell in love with it. And my coach put me in there figuring, hey, nobody's expecting a little guy in there against a big guy and he was expecting me to be able to break into the offensive line and make a play. Well sure enough it was working so football ended up being my favorite sport. My senior high school was tough because that year we had a new defensive coach come into play and the first game comes and goes and I sat on the sidelines. Very frustrating since I made first team for a junior varsity team and I was getting no play time. After the fourth game I kind of spoke up to the defensive coach asking him to play and he insisted I was too small to play. So I went to the head coach and kind of complained to him. So he made me a deal. You come into tomorrow's practice, I'll put you against my fastest kid. If you beat him you can start the next game. Well he put me against the whole team and had us running I think three or four races and each time I kept on winning. So he kept his word. Fifth game comes along. I start the game. I have a great game. I get my name in the newspaper for my performance. It was great. Come the next game I'm back on the sidelines. I didn't want to sit on the bench my senior year so I ended up quitting and I regret that for 22 years. Being insecure of your height when you're a man, when you want to be six foot tall and you're barely five feet seven tall on a good day and I always felt they need to prove myself because people say oh you're a small guy. Oh look at the small kid. Oh you can't play this game because you're too small. Once I got older dating scene comes along. You're trying to talk to a woman and she's looking down at you going how tall are you anyway? And kind of giggles and nothing takes you down a notch more than feeling that you're a short person in a tall world. I needed to prove to them that you know this sized person, this sized man can be just as tough as you can. Just as good as you can in anything. After high school I ended up going to study electronic engineering at Wentworth Institute. I ended up taking two years of electronic engineering and switched over to industrial design. After college I went into the kitchen home design business. My boss's son had opened up a granted importing business. Once while I'd be asked to go help him unload a crate from overseas of granite slabs. Sometimes it'd be operating a forklift or help rigging stone with a crane. The stone is actually shipped standing straight up rather than laying down which to me didn't really make much sense because it seemed very dangerous. Right before I turned 30 years old I met this girl Cece, 7 years younger than me. We hit it off pretty quick, pretty strong but after a couple months things were kind of just up and down the relationship. I think both of us maybe maturity levels, two very stubborn people. Nice person, very insecure herself, very jealous, being constantly on and off. I'd say we loved each other at different points but that created lots of issues in our relationship for the next few years. It was October 2003, 32 years old. Apparently we decided well maybe we should give it another go and we went out for dinner in a movie and went to go see Mystic River. And she came back to my house, spent the night and next morning I take my two boxer pups out the door and go for a walk. As I'm getting back to the house my phone's going off. It's my friend David who owns the granite importing business and he's asked me to please help him. He has a shipment of granite coming in and needs help. I told him right off, no I really don't like doing it. I've helped him multiple times now and each time I keep saying I don't want to do this again. It's very dangerous work. It's something I've never been trained to do and I never did for a job or anything. It's just more of a helping a friend out. I start eating my breakfast and his father calls. Who is the person I actually work for? He is this nicest, greatest man, like a second father to everyone. And he asks me, hey Mike can you help out one last time? I promise this will be the last time. I have somebody else's son helping out that day. So you won't have to do all the hard work and I'll take good care of it. So I couldn't really say no to him because once again he's just a great man. I remember shaving and just staring at myself in the mirror after I shaved for whatever reason I couldn't tell you. But just getting one extra long stare at my face for unknown purposes. And took my shower, got dressed and head off to the granite location. The other helper that he got for the day, Anthony, he's the son of the office manager. Real nice kid. It's his birthday. So of course we're like, okay, birthday lunch, happy birthday. We don't know who you are. But very nice man. Finally, a tractor trailer shows up with a stone. The cargo container the truck is carrying looked like it was pulled out of Boston Harbor. It is so rundown, rusted up, banged up looking. And we're all just looking at each other going, where the hell did you pull that out of? We just couldn't believe they would show up with such a container. So now the crane operator, he shows up. This crane operator is a new one to us. We've never had this operator before. So he sets up kind of perpendicular to the tractor trailer. We kind of questioned him like, why would you want to be behind the tractor trailer so you can see where you're unloading from, you know, see us working inside the container. Because being parked perpendicular to it, it's kind of a blind spot. And he let us know, hey, I'm in charge here. If you don't like it, I'll leave. So of course we gave in and said, okay, well, you're in charge. I still remember us trying to open up the rear doors of the container. And we had to take a sledgehammer to open up the pins. And once we opened up the top pin, the walls just bowed out and doors popped open and we almost fell out. We're also going, geez, we really shouldn't be messing this thing. This thing seems structurally not well. But David insisted, nope, it should be fine. There are six bundles of stone in the back. Each stone is seven feet tall, 11 feet long, an inch and a quarter thick. Each one weighed up to 9,600 pounds. We got the first four bundles out, but as we were taking them out, we could see that the floor was buckling up and down. And we were kind of getting a little nervous, like, oh, wait a minute. We've never seen the floors bouncing up and down like a trampoline before. But at this point, David's like, well, it's not what we can do. We have to continue on. We get to the final two bundles. I get back in the container and grab the straps. I'm to put the straps around one end of the bundle and Anthony's to do the back end of it. As I'm knelt down and I have the straps set in place, waiting for David to tell the crane operator to stop lifting the stone, David happened to be walking by the back door of the container and he could just start to see that the bundle was starting to fall towards me. He was moving silently and you don't really notice when you're knelt down next to a wall of something moving towards you. And I just remember him screaming and I'm just thinking, what the hell is he complaining about? What's he screaming about now? And Anthony runs over to me and grabs hold of my shoulder and tries to lift me to get up and run. I look up and I see the wall of stone coming at me and the feeling was, holy shit, this is really happening. Literally there's no other time to have any other thoughts. I didn't have time to even have my life flash in front of me, so to speak, when you think death is upon you and there was no time to even have that moment. All I can remember is just run. You have 11 feet to run and I made it just barely five feet because it was at this point falling so fast and it collapsed and pins my head by my temple up against the other bundle of stone and crushed my head up against it. The whole tractor trailer went up on its side and then slowly fell back down to the ground. It hit with such tremendous force because it was nearly 10,000 pounds falling over. The impact noise itself must echoed for miles. I felt no pain, I don't recollect that moment, it happened so fast. I didn't get a chance to think about my family. If I had died at that moment, it was such a flash. AJ comes running out of the building, his father comes running out of the building, David's there and all he's doing is screaming, raging, screaming no, crying and just distraught. He and his father get back up on this steel container, undo the straps to free me by my head because I'm pinched, laying the lifeless and crushed. They redo the straps and David turns to the crane operator and starts screaming, lift, lift. Crane operator looks at him and puts his hand up and says, nope, let's wait for the fire department to get there. They're all freaking out going, what's the fire department going to do with 10,000 pounds of granite on this guy? There's a granite fabrication shop next door to the accident scene and about eight employees come running out and they start climbing up on the crane and they were just going to yank the guy out of his seat and lift it themselves. The crane operator realizing he's about to get his ass kicked by these guys, he finally lifts the stone up just enough to release my head and I follow, they say like a sack of potatoes and just a huge gigantic puddle of blood. Anthony now jumps underneath the stone that's kind of resting just over me at this point and pulls me out and flipped me upside down to clear all the blood and they said I started kicking so like okay they knew they had me breathing again. So the three of them are taking turns holding my head together and they said that the blood was just pouring out and they can see right into my skull. My mouth is sideways, the eyeball is down whereabouts my chin would have been. Ambulance finally shows up, they drive me over to the helicopter and I was still holding somewhat of a pulse but they knew like I was starting to shut down so the med flight crew takes over and they go to fly off. Got me to the hospital with the minutes because we're at this point I think about 30 or 40 miles away from a level one trauma center in Boston. That was the only hospital that can take care of me. I'm Leon Nefok best known as the host and co-creator of podcast Slow Burn, Fiasco and Think Twice Michael Jackson. I'm here to tell you about my show Final Thoughts Jerry Springer whose name is synonymous with outrageous guests, taboo confessions and vicious onstage fights. But before the Jerry Springer show became a symbol of cultural decline its namesake was a popular Midwestern politician and a serious minded idealist with lofty ambitions. Through dozens of intimate and revealing interviews with those who knew Springer best I examine Springer's lifelong struggle to reconcile his TV persona with his political dreams and aspirations. 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You can also listen to the full season of The Spy Who sold nuclear secrets to Iran early and ad free on Audible. The next thing I do remember, I'm kind of like in a dream. I had recently lost a friend of mine, an old colleague of mine, and he had passed away. He got stung by a bee while working on a job and he was driving on the highway when he got stung and didn't have his EpiPen with him. So he had passed a few months before my accident. And the next memory that comes into mind is I'm walking through a forest and he's sitting there on a log. I start talking to him and he looks at me and says, hey, you shouldn't be here. It's not your time. You're going to be fine. If you can, just check in on my family's doing well and if they need anything. But you're going to be fine, Mike. Next thing you know, I wake up and I'm in a hospital bed. I can just barely see my brother Steve sitting by my feet. I remember I can see all these cables running along me. I can hear machines going beep and whatnot in the background. I have a trach tube going towards my neck. So I'm feeling all these wires and cables and whatnot all along my front of my body and I try to sit up. And that's when my oldest brother, John, kind of places his hand on my shoulder and says, you know, hey, Mike, you were just in an accident. We're in the hospital right now. They're going to take a care of you. And he grabs hold of my hand and I start holding his hand and my youngest brother Mark is there in the room and he's getting kind of excited that I just had wakened up and the nurse says, oh, well, no, he's not waking up. That just reflexes and whatnot. No, there's no way possible that he's coherent. So my brother, John says to me, Mike, squeeze my hand once, yes, two for no, if you understand what I'm saying. So I clench his hand and I'll squeeze it tight once. And next, you know, he starts asking me questions and the nurse is like, okay, well, forget everything I just said. And my brother Mark goes right down the hallway to get the rest of the family because they were instructed by the surgeons to go in there and say their goodbyes because at this point they were only giving me a 2% chance of surviving. At that moment, mass confusion, but also massive amount of pain. The pain I was feeling was my entire body just screaming all at once. And there's really not enough words to describe the pain all at once you're getting. Any talking in the room was extremely loud to me. My brother whispering to me was very loud and that the lights above me were like burning me. The feeling of heat on my skin was such an amazing, insane sensation that lights felt like they were just like heaters right on top of me. And next thing you know, it had to be eight doctors come running in the room as well as my parents and the amount of noise over stimulating me and it was quite horrifying to me of just all the reactions all at once. So now I went from being confused with what's going on to okay, I'm feeling a ridiculous amount of pain and the feeling of fear because I didn't quite understand the seriousness of my situation. When you're confused like how the hell did I get here? Like I don't remember, you know, you just don't remember how you ended up there and somebody's trying to describe to you what happened. But at this point my head's the size of a basketball, bigger than a basketball. My entire body was swelled up. Next you know, the lead surgeon, he raised his voice and just screams, I need everybody out of this room now. The room cleared and the doctors want to ask me questions so they let my parents stay. At this point I can't talk. I have no mouth. I didn't realize they didn't have a mouth and I have a trig tube. But I just remember I couldn't do anything with my face because I don't feel my face. And my mom and dad sat there and they took turns holding my hands and they would ask me questions and my parents would say yes or no. Doctors are sitting there quizzing me and asking me all these questions and I am so exhausted and in pain and I don't understand why they're asking me these questions. I do remember though the nurse coming over and handing me a controller of some sort with a push button on it and she starts explaining to me this is for morphine injection. If you're in any pain press this button and I just remember pressing that button like I was a kid playing the Atari 2600 Space Invaders game. Not realizing that it would only do one dosage but the amount of pain it was in the morphine just was not doing enough. They put me into another room in the ICU. Finally somebody got me a pen and paper and I am kind of writing to everybody what I can. I can't really see the paper so I'm trying to write blindly so to speak. David comes in to see me and AJ, his brother. I just begged him to tell me more of what happened because I just felt I was being left out of the dark. He was reluctant to tell me too many details but once I found out that it was actually his quick thinking that helped rescue me I still have this sheet of paper and I wrote hero and drew an arrow pointing to him. He kind of looked down and looked away. He obviously felt some remorse and guilt that you know he felt it was his fault for my accident. Once again I still did not realize how bad I really was. My family made sure all the staff and nurses kept mirrors away from me and made sure I didn't enter the bathroom and made me use a hopper next to the bed. They did not want me to see what I looked like. Finally a swelling has gone down enough for a plastic surgeon to come in and start reconstructing me and I wake up and I'm in a different ICU or recovery room and the lights are somewhat mostly off and they left the radio going. And the radio station they had on was playing a radio story, the old 1960s, 9th of the Living Dead and I am toked up on morphine listening to this story as I'm just waking up and I think now that everybody here are zombies of some sort and they're trying to eat me. Next you know I am trying to rip off all the bandages and all the needles plugged into me and what not and I'm trying to escape. Two nurses come running in and I just remember them holding me down and talking to me like Michael you don't want us to have to restrain you. We just had surgery you got to keep these bandages on and next you know I'm taking swipes at them. I end up getting restrained. Every 45 minutes they're coming into the room to take my vital signs. And mind you I'm not sleeping. I'm starting to get a little delirious. I'm starving and I can't eat because I don't have a mouth so they're feeding me through a G tube which is not pleasant at all. They get me in my own room and as I'm laying there I start having another new hallucination and I wake up and I realize they were feeding me through the G tube but they had me recline too far back and it had flung back up into my trach tube and it was blocked. I'm trying to call for help but I have no mouth so I'm pressing for help. Over the loudspeaker I hear pshh can I help you? It's the nurses station. I can't respond back to her. I don't have a mouth. I start smashing the controller against the bed rail because at this point I'm starting to lose consciousness. Finally nurses come running in and I'm pointing to my neck and throat and all I remember is them pulling off the trach tube and seeing red just shoot across the room. The two of them sat screaming at the top of the lungs and all I can think is oh great is that my jugular just burst? I had no idea what was going on. My parents are going to come to the hospital and find me dead and how awful and horrific that felt of just like okay I've made it this far and I'm going to die. I'm writing on the pad of paper to my parents saying you need to get me out of here. I'm going to die. Everybody is trying to settle me down and saying Mike you're in the best hospital in the world. You're going to be fine. I've choked twice and almost died. If you leave me in here tonight I will be dead by tomorrow afternoon. At that point my mother all I remember is her taking off her jacket throwing it across onto a chair and said okay I'm staying here. She looked at my dad and my brothers and said when you go home bring me some spare clothes and some toiletries and my mother slept on a chair for almost two weeks helping taking care of every need of mine and she saved me. My body was trying to go through the healing process so one moment I'd be freezing and within a couple minutes I'd be overheating. I'd point it up meaning I was hard or cut my hand for a seat and say I was cold or point to my mouth for water. I kept on having more hallucinations and they were just getting more and more real and horrific that I finally pleaded with my family to make them take me off the morphing. Life improved from that point on. Now I'm just really tired but I'm a lot happier not going through these horror dreams. A nurse comes in to give me a shave. He's lathering out my face and he's just using not the sharpest disposable razor possible and he's just going over the same spot over and over again and I get started to feel the pain on the side that was not hit. So I'm like okay that's a new pain and can you please stop and he's like okay I'm almost done so he kind of cleans it up and next you know he kind of put out a mirror and realized that okay you don't need to really look in and kind of put it away and took off kind of abruptly. Well my curiosity was kind of getting to me at this point because I've not looked at myself in the mirror and now probably nine days. My mother had just entered back in the room and she sees me getting up and she's like where are you going? And I point to the bathroom and I point to my face and my eyes. I want to look in the mirror. I enter the bathroom and I finally look in the mirror and all I can think of is the horror. If you've ever seen the movie Goonies I look like sloth but just a little bit uglier. My head is gigantic. It's misshapen kind of dome like on top. My jar had ripped off and broken three and my pallet had ripped off and broken in two. So the reconstructive surgery I had they went into my mouth and I pulled back my lips so my lips now are oversized and disfigured. My left eye had blown out of my head and was down below my jaw. Once I put that back in that eye is kind of moving on its own in different directions. My right eye all the blood vessels in it were blown out and looked like the devil's eye. My face is extremely swallowed up because it was reconstructed and I have a bunch of stitches all around my left side. And I just remember looking in the mirror saying guess I'll never going to have children. What kids going to go near me once they see this horror and then what woman would want to be with me. I look horrific. Before the accident I always assumed that some day I'd meet the right girl and grow old together have a family to raise and looking in the mirror I assumed all that was out the door and how I regretted not doing something sooner in my life. Maybe I shouldn't have been so stubborn. I felt like I was way behind in that aspect of my life and now I'm having immediate regrets. My own wonders of what could have been my on off relationship with CeCe should we have already been married and had a family. These are the regrets I started wondering. While it's too late it's over I probably wouldn't have a wife and family on my own. I'd probably be recluse, be hidden away and I wouldn't want people looking at me and staring at me and I'm a short, ugly, disfigured man. Everything was over for me to potentially be a father and a husband. The lowest moment in my life was looking at that mirror. I kind of felt that I made my way back and instead of sitting in the bed I sat in the chair next to the bed and looked out the window. Boston's really pretty at night time to look out. I just started staring out the window and started to weep and I realized I got my mother crying. Any mother who is a mother of five boys you know they're tough. They can't handle anything. My mother is like a pit bull but also a very caring and sweet woman and I got her crying and that's when I felt terrible. I can't see and watch my mother cry over me. Both my parents looking at me I was aging them rapidly from this accident. You just see it in their face. They're exhausted, they haven't slept, they're going through a different pain than I am and how guilty I felt that I was putting this pain to them. This burden. That's why I was so determined I just need to get out of this hospital. I'm going to prove everybody wrong. I'm going to prove the doctors that I'm going to be able to do everything I used to do. I point to my mom and I write on a pad of paper, grab hold of the machine or whatever machine that I just connect up to so many different things. Grab hold of that, let's go for a walk. We go down the hallway maybe 20 feet down the hallway and back and said to myself that's it. Every day let's start doing some more exercise. I don't care what I look like at this point I just need to get out of this hospital. I was a pretty active person and I overheard the doctors talking to my brothers and some friends on the hallway of them asking, would we be able to do any of this stuff and them saying no. He's going to be here for a long time. But I was convinced that I was leaving sooner than they think. After two weeks the swelling was actually reducing it with the doctors saying remarkable speed they never seen such great healing. Finally get to the point that the hospital said okay well I don't think there's much more you can do here so they finally released me to the rehab hospital. That was just the most unbelievable moment ever. I guess it goes back to me I always wanted to prove people wrong. Don't let the size fool you I'm getting out of here. So once I reach the rehab hospital I'm getting a steady stream of visitors which is amazing. At this point AJ and his brother David are visiting me every single day. I'm begging them to tell more stories and I'm writing to them more pleading for more answers. After I was crushed I was pinned by my head and dead for about five or six minutes. The granite when I had fallen over had enough force and weight to cut my head clean off when it hit me in the temple and put me up against the other wall of stone. But what stopped it from cutting my head clean off was a piece of 2x3 Italian pine wood. A piece of wood stopped the granite from cutting any further and whitehead was wedged in between that piece of wood and that piece of wood was 2 7 8 of an inch in thickness. So that's what the maximum width of my face was at the time of impact. Person by size only has 9 to 10 pints of blood. Going by the accident scene photos and the investigative reports or not I lost over 6 pints of blood. The surgeons still don't understand how I survived living with only 3 pints of blood in me for one, not being paralyzed to and surviving a traumatic brain injury that shouldn't have been far worse. They simply don't understand how I made it and neither do I. The other helper who almost got crushed as well, Anthony, he came in to finally see me and very emotional which essentially made my eye now finding out through David and AJ that the three of them were taking turns holding my head together as I was pouring out pints of blood all over them. Anthony visiting was just a cryfas and how appreciative I was because if he didn't pull me by my shoulder to get me running we probably wouldn't be talking right now. I'm forever grateful of what he did for me. 31 days after the accident I'm back home, meanwhile still being visited every single day by AJ and David. Now that I'm able to talk more freely I'm getting a lot more details about the accident but I'm also watching their faces and what the impact of my accident had on them. Me I had it easy, I got knocked the hell out, I don't remember much of that day at all except for waking up out of the coma but I do worry about everybody I impacted from my accident. After I saw myself in the mirror for the first time, the nurse that was in the room that had left, she had returned. She knew I was going to go through a difficult time after seeing myself and she kept on reinsuring me, you're going to be fine, you had the most amazing doctor in the world reconstruct you. I'm arguing with her going how? Prove to me that I'm going to be fine and all she can do is just look at me and assure me that you have to trust me, you can look a lot better than you think. So finally I get to meet this surgeon and you know what? He is amazing. What he was able to do in three surgeries reconstructing me would have taken probably over a dozen surgeries with different doctors. He went in and reassembled my jaw and palate and rebuilt all my cheekbones and used parts of my skull to rebuild my left eye socket because that was completely destroyed. All in all he used 110 titanium screws and 20 titanium plates to reconstruct my face. Every few months as I'm looking in my self in the mirror, not seeing the massively ugly guy but I'm seeing a less ugly guy every few months in the mirror. But at the same time when I go out in public I do anything, I am getting stares and I kind of was afraid to go back out in public and it got to the point that I was having a tough time leaving my home. Yeah, I've started to look better but now unfortunately mentally I'm now dealing with new issues, anxiety, depression and now fear of leaving my safety zone. I didn't really find out until months later seeing a psychiatrist that I have agoraphobia. I can't work. I'm getting paid by workers comp and you know pay a mortgage, a car payment, insurance, dog food for my two dogs and trying to survive off less than $500 a week. Now I'm big time depressed, can't go anywhere, can't do anything, I can't leave the house and now I'm getting anxiety because every time I leave the house I have up to six private investigators following me around. Get this while I'm in the rehab hospital I get notified by workers comp that they identified that I was injured by a third party and therefore if I choose not to go after the third party that they would be going after the third party to reclaim my medical bills and the payout to me and that I would not be able to go after them afterwards. So now I have to go after all the companies that created the accident. So I have literally 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, the five different private investigators following me around. I have people jumping out of the bushes with cameras watching me. Now I have people making me feel guilty that I'm getting healthier and better and healing. I dealt with that for almost three years. The agoraphobia made it difficult being on and off with CC before and after the accident. I give a tremendous amount of credit for being by my side during this whole ordeal but it didn't change the fact that the foundation of our relationship just was never good and doesn't understand now that I'm suffering anxiety so she couldn't understand why I felt like that. I myself did not understand why I was so difficult on being away from my five mile happy safety zone. It was a tough couple years. Dealing with PTSD it wasn't easy. I can be watching a TV show and they'd have a hospital scene and just hearing the same noises I heard in the hospital can kind of set me off shaking, anxiety, crying. It comes on you and you have no control over it but it's taken me years and I have control of it now. I got laid off from doing kitchen home design from the 2010 housing collapse and needed to take on a new job so I went back into telecom and the job required that I actually travel every single day. I thought well this is my moment to make it or break it and was traveling literally every single day to the point I was traveling 1500 plus miles a week and faced my fears. You do have to kind of believe you can talk yourself down out of anything but it takes a long time. It took almost eight years to put my life back to normal. There's a few different things that helped me get to where I am today and heal me the most. Mentally I had an amazing support system. I had family and friends every single day, anytime I needed. Six years post accident CC and I finally decided okay let's move on. I needed to do more self improvement from me to be able to be with anyone. You can never really love someone unless you love yourself. I at this point was making some strides in my own insecurities and saying to myself you know what you're looking pretty good for a guy who got his head crushed and I started just doing some self help. At this point I started dating again. It got a little weird at first. A couple of dates they look at the side of my head and a little ugly monster inside of me saying uh oh they're looking at your face uh oh. But then I kind of faced it and said to myself no no no. No Brad Pitt here but I'm not exactly you know sloth anymore. So I got back out there. My height. One thing amazing to me is I learned that my height actually saved my life. When I went to visit Dr. D he and I had the same height and he kind of explained to me going by the point of impact on the side of my skull and he explained Mike if you were any taller that granite actually would have decapitated you. If you were any shorter it would have crushed your brains. So I was literally the perfect height. And of course him being the same height you know we had a nice you know smile with each other like okay for once my height was a good thing. From that moment on I was no longer insecure about my height. In fact I felt invincible. Nothing could take me down and I still find it amazing to stay that uh it took it my head crushed to actually feel good about myself. So now it's eight years post accident. Everything the doctors told me I would never be able to do I have done. I started working out with the football team and after I think a third or fourth week the season was ready to begin one of the coaches comes over to me he goes okay enough of this shit go get some pads and dress for this week's game. And I kind of looked at him like are you serious at this point I'm 40 years old I have 110 screws and 20 plates hold my face together and he's asked me to dress for a semi pro football team a triple A football team no less. He's like yeah you could be the backup to the backup you can help mentor you know be good for morale good to have more guys on the bench. So I'm like okay great maybe if I whatever help on on special teams I kind of looked as I am literally twice the age of some of these kids on the team and obviously reconstructed in half the size. But I got the equipment and I showed up for the first game a couple hours before the game all just hanging out at the field and coaches sitting there he always gets my last name wrong and you know he looks at me as hey wongo how much you weigh. I'm like I'm down to like 174 he goes I have I need to help on the on the line today. I'm like yeah I'll do it. He was okay well we'll try for the first series of two and see how it goes. My first game doing full contact in 22 years since my senior year of high school. I line up against a guy they called Weebel and I think the stat showed he was 360 pounds in like six foot two and he was just this gigantic wall. Wall gets hiked and I run right through him run right by him he doesn't even get a hand on me and I flushed the quarterback out of the pocket and he ends up throwing the ball away. So I do this for two more plays in a row and then they punted. Next series comes same thing starts happening and they're kind of getting pissed at you know the other teams now they start swapping out players and having me go against this gigantic it even bigger dude. He looks at me as what the fuck are you the water boy and I say nothing I don't trash talk but after I think two or three plays getting by him they're respecting me and not giving me any crap and come half time we get to locker room and the coach is calling out for me hey where's my little guy he goes that's your position you've earned it it's yours. I end up playing for two full seasons and was able to hit a milestone check off a dream that I never thought would ever come true after going through the hell I've been through and actually making right a regret I've carried for so long of quitting my senior year of high school football and end up playing semi pro triple A football life is really good. Getting out getting ready for the second season I'm going for a jog to the neighborhood and I come across my old neighbor they had moved into my town in 1987 they had a younger sister Becca that was 10 years younger than myself so I run into him and he says hey you know my sister Becca is moving back to town just went through a break up and a couple weeks later I happened to be driving by the house she had just bought and saw her out front and pulled up and started talking and she brings me through the house showing me her the new house she just purchased and wished her a good day and said hey you know she should grab a drink sometime soon about a week goes by she messaged me through Facebook saying hey when are we going to grab that drink that you mentioned so I said to her well hey we're going to Red Sox game we end up going to Red Sox game and she and I I don't think watch more than an inning because we talked all night two years later we were married and you know a year after that first son was born and two years later second son's born and life is amazing. Who would ever thought looking at myself in the mirror for the first time in the hospital thinking that all my dreams are gone having a family with a wife and having children and there would just be none of that in my future and then after eight years of being patient and self-help who would ever know that I would now be the most secure I've ever been in my life never ever can I have imagined this in my wildest dreams or hallucinations. And I have to give out a shout out to AJ, David, their dad, Anthony, his mom you know she's the one had to call 911 and I've only heard that recording once it's something that will haunt me for life feeling and hearing the pain in her voice calling in the accident. All the doctors and nurses, PTs, OT's, my friends and family, everybody who helped me get to where I am today I thank them and I still find it amazing to stay that it took at my head crush to actually feel good about myself. From Wondery, you're listening to This is Actually Happening. 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