Shot in the Throat with a Hunting Rifle and Lived!

In this episode, Keith Mask shares his harrowing experience of being shot in the throat at the age of 18 during a hunting trip. He recounts the events leading up to the incident, the immediate aftermath, and the emergency response that followed. Keith describes the pain and fear he felt, the miraculous survival against the odds, and the long road to recovery. He reflects on the lessons learned from this traumatic experience and how it shaped his life moving forward.

Takeaways

• Keith was shot in the throat at 18 years old.
• The incident occurred during a hunting trip with his stepdad.
• He experienced no pain medication for almost three hours after being shot.
• Keith's stepdad, a Vietnam vet, recognized the severity of the injury immediately.
• He felt a sense of impending doom, believing he was going to die.
• The emergency response was critical in saving his life.
• A trauma surgeon happened to be at the hospital when he arrived.
• Keith's recovery involved multiple surgeries, including a tracheotomy.
• He experienced PTSD after the incident, affecting his relationship with hunting.
• Keith reflects on the spiritual significance of his survival and the lessons learned.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Welcome back to episode 59 here. What a guest I have. Mr. Keith came in through episode 13, which was James Boron, the trauma surgeon. And Keith is a member of the Interesting Humans podcast community. He wrote a comment. on the surgeon's video. And he shared his own personal story. So I reached out to Keith and said, hey, this sounds awesome. Let's do a pre-interview. And if it goes good, we'll jump on a real episode. Well, our pre-interview was this morning. And I said, this story is just too awesome. Let's run it ASAP. Here we are today. Thanks, Keith. Thanks for jumping on with me. Yep. Appreciate it. Thanks, you too. I'm not going to give away this story, but I'm going to tell you that he was shot in the throat, age 18, no pain med, and I can't imagine for hours. And I'm going to let you fill us in the rest of the story. So take us back to that day, Keith.

SPEAKER_02: 1:01

All right. Well, I was 18, senior in high school, December the 10th, 1988 was the year. And my stepdad came in one morning. Early one morning on the weekend wanted to know if I wanted to go hunting. Neither one of us really wanted to go, but we ended up going. He and my mother had been married approximately, they were in their first year, I can't remember, it was 37 years ago, something like that. Anyway, so we pack up, head down to my grandfather's farm in Toombs County, Georgia. We go down there, get out. We just, what we call steel hunting. We didn't go getting any stands or anything. We were just walking around. My stepdad had bad knees and a pretty big guy to be getting up my stand. So we just, you know, went walking about back in the woods on my grandfather's property. We spent an hour, hour and a half doing that. Saw some deer, saw some does. Nothing we wanted to take a shot at. So as we decided to come out, we're coming out on this old logging path road. and a good, pretty clear road in the timber, and a doe jumped out between what ended up being my first cousin and me and my stepdad. So she was probably, I don't know, 40, 50, 60 foot away, guesstimate. She saw us frozen in the middle of the path, and unbeknownst to us, my first cousin had spent the night with my grandparents in a As country guys do, you know, boys like us, we hunt. We've been outside all our lives, you know, shooting guns and stuff. He grabs my uncle's 30-30 and just happens to be in the same area of the farm that we were. And long story short, I'm looking at the doe. I've dropped down to one knee just looking at her. I was about to spook her. I was going to, you know, stomp my foot and get her to run off. Like I said, I didn't really want a doe. It was no days, but that wasn't what I was there for. Anyway, just as I would say probably the signal was going from my brain to my right foot to stop, I'm on my back. And it happened to be that my cousin was another 80 yards or so, 90. And we were a little higher than him as well in the woods. It kind of rose up. There have been a lot of questions people ask when I tell the story. One of the first questions is like, well, I mean, you know, was somebody shooting at you? Was it, you know, he was 13. There's never been any animosity in, you know, as far as me towards him with it. But he did take a shot, you know, and he missed the deer and he got me. So you can probably see here, small scar, this entry area. As soon as the bullet, you know, it hit me, it knocked me down. Yep, right here. Straight here. Yep. Yep. So it knocked me down. First thing I saw, you know, blood came out of my neck. You know, it was kind of wild to see your own blood come out of your body, fly out of your body. So blood flew out of the hole in my neck. The next thing was even really weird was my left lung deflating through that hole in my neck. That was an eerie sound. Really strange. Really scary. I can't describe it. It's a swish and, you know, I mean, you're basically your lungs deflating. I didn't really give you that detail this morning. I forgot about that one. But, yeah, that was... It's all right. As I ruminated over it after we talked, you know, I remembered those first things. This was, you know, in 88. So a lot of time has passed. I mean, it's here every day. Every day I wake up, I mean, it's in the mirror. It's forefront. You know, it shouldn't be here, you know, by all accounts. And... Uh, so my, my lung deflates, uh, my stepdad shoulder to shoulder with me, you know, I mean, he wasn't kneeling down, but so he's over me and the pain starting to kick in, you know, and, uh, I start clutching my chest. Well, he's a Vietnam vet. So he put it together that somehow this bullet had gotten into my left chest cavity or gone through it for what it ended up doing. I didn't have the sense to think rationally because I tried to put my hand back here to check for an exit wound. You know, if it had exited, I wouldn't have been, I'd have been done. I mean, it hit me dead center. I couldn't really think rationally. So as I'm clutching my chest, looking at him, like the question, he's like, it's in your chest. That's why you're hurting. The next thing was, you know, I said it. I said, I'm done for. You know, I'm dead. It's just a matter of time. I was like, there's no way. There's no way I'm living through this when I realized what had happened to me. Fast forward a few, not long, he jumps up. He says, I got to get the truck. I literally told him. I said, no, don't leave me. I didn't want to die alone because I was prepared for it. I really felt that this was the end for me. I It wasn't a smart thing to do, but I realized, or either, you know, through divine guidance or whatever it was, I decided I didn't need to walk after I walked a little bit. It was too much. So I sat down on the side of the path. He took off trucks, probably four or 500 yards away, uh, parked up in the field next to a pivot, an irrigation pivot. So in the meantime, my cousin's coming to where we're at and, uh, Cause he's heard the yelling and stuff after he shot. And that's another thing. It's weird to get hit and then you don't hear the bullet. You don't hear the crack for a good bit. I'm sure there's a lot of vets that can attest to that and been shot at a lot more, but I thought he was shooting again, but it was just the original, the first shot, the shot that hit me. Cause I did yell out, you know, stop shooting. He didn't shoot twice. He shot once because the deer took off. It wasn't a second shot. It was just the shock that I was having. So my stepdad comes in with the truck, comes in, pulls up to me. In the meantime, I've gotten his Vietnam vet army jacket off of me because everything was bothering me. I mean, the weight of it. And I had a... pistol strapped to my side, too, which was his. We got that off. My cousin's just standing there. My stepdad throws me in the truck. Doesn't even acknowledge my... You know, he's in panic mode, and he's focused on me. He puts me in the truck. We had to go up probably a couple tenths of a mile. Thankfully, that property led straight to US 1. That was the main highway. Instead of us having to go back out through the farm, he had Forsyth to pull up to the gate and he had a, he had a big truck. It was jacked up, had to, it had a brush guard on it back when people didn't have brush guards like they do now. He had one on it and he pushed the, the fence was basically two railroad ties with a, like a three quarter inch cable, you know, locked across that way. He pushed the, uh, got the table cable tight, gassed on it and he just laid the timbers down. And, uh, we got out on the highway immediately. That's 20, 20, 20 ish miles to, uh, My regional hospital in Vidalia, Georgia. So by this time, I've figured out, or just by instinct, I put my left index finger in the bullet hole because I couldn't breathe, you know, with the lung had deflated and

SPEAKER_00: 9:04

it's filling up. How far in are you?

SPEAKER_02: 9:06

That's the first knuckle. Yeah, right into my throat.

SPEAKER_00: 9:11

Wow.

SPEAKER_02: 9:11

You know, so I can breathe the best I could. Because you got the right lung that's the only one working, the left one's filling up with blood or trying to. What's

SPEAKER_00: 9:21

the pain like right now?

SPEAKER_02: 9:24

Well, the initial pain was nothing like I've ever felt until, and we'll get to this later, some of the stuff that was done in the emergency room, you know, life-saving techniques that were used. It felt like somebody took a hot poker that was, glowing orange you know that you would see a blacksmith or something you know do it forging making a knife or something and they stuck it in my chest that was where the the pain you know the entrance the entrance wasn't where the pain was at it was where that thing had gone through my lung was was the really rough part but I guess with being in shock honestly from once he got me in the truck I mean I know I was hurting but I think your body takes over and Kind of helps you a little bit. Uh, I don't really remember the pain. I just remember thinking, you know, he's praying, you know, the whole time he's, he's God, please don't let this boy down. You know, he's like, you know, I'm just over there trying to survive sitting in the truck next to him. And he's, he's going up, uh, North from towards Baxley between Baxley, Georgia and Vidalia, Georgia. He's going up us one to Vidalia to the hospital. And it takes about 20 minutes, uh, We had a close call with a logging truck that was on that road. To go to Vidalia, you don't take US-1 all the way to Vidalia. It peels off and goes to Lyon, so there's a road called Center. Some people called it Center. Somebody will probably see this and correct me, but we called it Center because we lived off of it in town. We actually went by the house, the road that our home was on, on the way to the hospital, but you couldn't pass on that road, and there was a log truck on it, so... He got on the common channel, said, hey, you know, I'm behind you and I need you to get out of the way. My son's been shot and he's hurt bad. So the guy didn't really look. And I can remember thinking we're about to have now we're going to have a wreck because the guy just put he almost locked the truck up. He didn't have a trailer on it, but he didn't have a trailer. But he he bounced the back tires. And then my stepdad had to kind of. do an invasive maneuver, excuse me, not to hit him. We're still about 10 miles out there. But he gets me to Vidalia, gets me to the emergency room entrance. I'm still conscious, still got my finger in the bullet hole. And like I said earlier, you know, you asked me if I ever lost consciousness. I think I was about to there because my sight started looking like when a TV screen goes off. In the old days when you had regular cable and you lost the signal and it went fuzzy, it looked like that. And all I could see was like the outline of the people coming, you know, the nurse and whoever was coming out of the hospital to help get me into the emergency room.

SPEAKER_00: 12:23

Yeah. Is the pain still in the same place that you described before?

SPEAKER_02: 12:28

I feel like it was kind of all over.

SPEAKER_00: 12:32

I mean, you had to be totally in shock. Totally in shock. I was

SPEAKER_02: 12:37

in shock, for sure. Body was in shock, everything. By the time I got there, I was hyperventilating pretty bad. I mean, taking to the point I got in there and they actually gave me a bag because I couldn't stop to slow my breathing down. They were like, we need you to slow your breathing down so we can work on you. And I was like, your body's just doing everything it can to survive, so. He got that under control. There happened to be a trauma surgeon from Atlanta, Georgia that did volunteer work that happened to be in that hospital

SPEAKER_01: 13:16

just

SPEAKER_02: 13:17

by happenstance that weekend. He takes over. He starts calling out what to do. It was a little chaotic. He got them in the right direction. He actually, instead of cutting a tracheotomy, He used a bullet hole that was large enough, a 30-30 caliber, to trach me, to save that time and effort. He trached me through the bullet hole. He put a trach tube in the bullet hole after he got me working. Next thing was, he had to chest tube me because that lung, that's where, they figured out where the bullet was at. They'd cut my clothes off. I didn't have an exit wound, but there was a big knot. You're looking at my back, standing right behind me from the left shoulder down a few inches off center. There was a big knot. He asked me if I had a cyst or he asked my stepdad. He got any kind of cyst in his back. He's like, no. He's like, here's the bullet. It was between my rib cage and my skin. It made it all the way through me. Stopped there. They didn't cut it out there. They left it in. They left it in. But then he came up with he had to chest tube me. And that was really rough. He let me know it was going to be rough. He told me, he said, look, I can't give you anything. I can't even give you a local, you know, like you would get to get stitches.

SPEAKER_00: 14:53

So here you are. You're 18. You're laying in an emergency room. You were shot two hours-ish, roughly, before this. You still have no pain?

SPEAKER_02: 15:04

Probably. This was probably getting to an hour. The

SPEAKER_00: 15:08

two hours was

SPEAKER_02: 15:10

by the time, yeah, probably one hour

SPEAKER_01: 15:11

to there. Nothing from pain?

SPEAKER_02: 15:13

No.

SPEAKER_01: 15:14

Nothing from pain?

SPEAKER_00: 15:15

Oh,

SPEAKER_01: 15:15

my gosh.

SPEAKER_00: 15:17

No pain. All right, so they cut your, what is it called, the

SPEAKER_02: 15:21

stomach? So he cuts me underneath the left breast, you know, down, kind of just below your... nipple basically around under your arm but below your armpit it's pretty much if you came straight down from my left armpit like four or five inches they clear the chest they clear your pectoral muscle and just below it kind of center back some uh they cut you two and a half inch incision And, uh, no pain meds. He told me, he even showed me that, I mean, he, I don't think he was trying to be any way. He was just wanting to give me all the information. He showed me the blade. He said, I got to cut you and I can't give you anything. He says, it's going to hurt. And, uh, he asked me if I watch Westerns, you know, I was like, of course, you know, who doesn't. And, uh, he said, well, I'm not going to give you anything to bite. You know, you've seen Westerns when they get shot, they give them something to bite when they cut the bullet out. He said, but I want you to squeeze this. I had an EMT in that town that was a pretty big guy, and he was at the head of my bed. And he told him, he said, give him a finger or two, you know, let him squeeze your fingers. So when he cut me, I squeezed him, you know, and it still

SPEAKER_00: 16:36

hurt like hell. What was that like? What was that like right there? Like, oh, my gosh.

SPEAKER_02: 16:41

Yeah, I mean, you're just getting laid open. I mean, he's cutting you to the point where your ribs are exposed, you know, so he can shove a tube between two of your ribs. I mean, he's got to go through the skin, so that helps. You know, he's not just going to put a– as far as getting through the ribs, it's got to be pushed through, and it's got to be pushed into your lung. It pierces your lung.

SPEAKER_01: 17:05

So,

SPEAKER_02: 17:05

yeah, that– That was the next step. And he showed me the tube just like he did the razor blade, basically his scalpel. He said, I got to put this inside of you and it's going to be rough. He's like, it's going to be bad.

SPEAKER_00: 17:21

I can't imagine. It was. Quick pause right here. I want to understand. So you already have a trach in.

SPEAKER_02: 17:28

Yep. Got a trach tube.

SPEAKER_00: 17:30

What is this next thing for that they're cutting you for?

SPEAKER_02: 17:34

For the collapsed lung.

SPEAKER_00: 17:35

It went through

SPEAKER_02: 17:36

my

SPEAKER_00: 17:36

lung.

SPEAKER_02: 17:38

It drains the tooth. It drains the blood out of it. Because when you get your lung collapses, usually something's pierced it and caused it to bleed. And I mean, it may be to help keep it inflated as well. I'm not sure. I think the main goal is with a collapsed lung is to draw any blood out of it. They hook you up to a machine and it may help You know, I've never really thought of it that way.

SPEAKER_00: 18:06

Yeah. Okay. So here you are. It

SPEAKER_02: 18:09

stayed in. It stayed in for like probably eight or nine days, somewhere, or maybe not long before I got to the hospital is when they pulled it out. And that's skipping forward a little bit. But since we're there, you know, I made it to Savannah. I went through trauma surgery. I had a week.

SPEAKER_00: 18:29

How'd you get to Savannah? I didn't really have a long.

SPEAKER_02: 18:31

Yeah. That's where you end up flying me to. Okay. Helicopter.

SPEAKER_01: 18:36

Yep.

SPEAKER_02: 18:36

So as soon as I got into Vidalia, I heard them. They knew we're just going to try to stabilize him, and they called Savannah immediately. One of them called out. I don't know if it was that surgeon or who it was. And by that time, it wasn't long, my mother and my dad's parents were in the room. Now, after I'd gotten the tube in, and I'm basically– I'm breathing normal. You know, I'm trached. I got a chest tube in for the collapsed lung. I get kind of a sense of peace, really. It's the only way to, like, I knew as bad as it was, I had a sense that I was going to be okay. I mean, I wasn't scared anymore. Not like bravado, but it was just like a, you know, I just had a sense of, They didn't have that sense. I mean, they were torn apart. I was the oldest of– I've lost count. My mom was the oldest of eight. That was her dad's farm that we were at. I was her oldest. She had four. She had seven siblings, five brothers, and two other sisters, and all of them but one had children, and most of them had three, four, or a minimum of two. So there's like 20 siblings. They're in the mid-20s of us. You know, I was the oldest. On my dad's side, it was just me. Me and my two brothers and my aunt had two girls. It was a lot smaller family, but...

SPEAKER_00: 20:10

Wow.

SPEAKER_02: 20:10

Yeah, they were in there.

SPEAKER_00: 20:12

So you arrive at Savannah. Yeah. When you arrive there, did you ever find out, like, did the surgeon think you were going to make it?

SPEAKER_02: 20:23

No. He told me that after... Really?

UNKNOWN: 20:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 20:27

After I got out of intensive care, somewhere around the eighth or ninth day, he came in with a diagram of what the bullet had done and what it did to get into my chest. As soon as it went in, inside my windpipe, it turned and traveled over five inches inside my windpipe and didn't destroy my windpipe. I mean, it just rode inside my windpipe, basically five-something inches wide. That's what the larger scar's for. I don't know if you can see it. There's one above the trach. Runs across here. That was to go in to fix the hole in my windpipe that was down in my chest. Of course, they just sewed this one up from the outside. But he said it went. It came out, and millimeters above my heart, it turned again. And this was a 30-30. This was a big, big piece of lead. And it wasn't a soft point because I don't think I'd have made it if it was a... A soft point. It was a full metal jacket. But it went through the left lung, front, back, and then through the rib cage. And like I said, they cut it out there. That's something else people ask me, you know, when I've told people this over the years since this happened. Like, did you get the bullet? And I said, no, you know, I didn't. And I kind of wonder why, but something as traumatic as that and as crazy as the story is that they... that wouldn't have been something to offer, you know, Hey, you know, this thing, I sure would have held onto it, you know, but at the time that wasn't really something I was thinking about, you know?

SPEAKER_00: 22:01

Yeah. Yeah. You're worried about making it.

SPEAKER_02: 22:04

Making it. Yeah. Not thinking about, Hey man, save that bullet. You cut out, you know, that bullet you cut out of my back.

SPEAKER_00: 22:11

Right. All right. All right. So you're at Savannah. Yeah.

UNKNOWN: 22:17

Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 22:18

How many hours has it been now since you're able to get some

SPEAKER_02: 22:21

pain? It's over two, well over two and a half hours.

SPEAKER_00: 22:25

And when did they give you the pain medication?

SPEAKER_02: 22:28

No pain medication. What they gave me was the anesthesia to put me under. That's when I got some relief.

SPEAKER_00: 22:36

Holy cow. All they did was

SPEAKER_02: 22:38

they rolled me in, prepped me for surgery, put a catheter in, drained my bladder. And when that guy did that, I was kind of like, what in the hell are you doing, man? That was painful. Wow. I was kind of like, damn, I'm already in enough pain. But, you know, they got to do what they got to do. Yeah,

SPEAKER_00: 22:56

yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 22:57

But, yeah, there was nothing until that. No relief. I mean, I'm in that helicopter. They were putting one of those manual bubbles on me to, you know, make sure I was getting enough. And I was like, no, I'm good. I felt like she was about to blow my lungs up with that thing. I told her. I said, I'm breathing well enough without it. And I could feel that bullet. That padding in that helicopter is not much. I mean, I was laying on that thing. Now I'm feeling it. I can feel it, you know, because it's between my ribs, so it's pressing. I mean, I could feel it because I was laying on it.

SPEAKER_00: 23:35

Why don't they give you any pain medication in the helicopter?

SPEAKER_02: 23:39

I mean, they just said, you're in shock. We can't. So you're in shock. When you're in that kind of shock, I don't know if medicine's progressed from that. I still, I hear stories about it, you know, other people. But, I mean, that doctor in Vidalia was up front. He said, I can't give you anything. And I didn't get anything. What I got was an IV with fluids and like them, you know, using that manual chest inflate, I guess, but I didn't need it.

SPEAKER_00: 24:13

Do you have a diagram that the doctor drew? No,

SPEAKER_02: 24:17

it'd be cool to have it. His name was Carl Boyd. I don't think I'll ever forget him unless I get dementia. But he came in with it. When I got out of intensive care, it showed your windpipe, your trach, your lungs, and your heart. And that's where I got the five-something inches and the millimeters. I mean, this all came out of his mouth on about... the eighth or ninth day of my visit. I was only in there 11 days, which is kind of crazy, too.

SPEAKER_00: 24:49

All right, so one more time. It goes in about here? Right here. Okay, it enters here.

SPEAKER_02: 24:56

Turns. Turns straight down, travels inside my windpipe five-something inches, and then comes out of the windpipe on the front side of it and turns right above my heart. Because you've got to figure from here to here is about six or seven inches or so. I mean, everybody's different, but he told me it was, he said, kid, it was millimeters, millimeters where it turned. That's what that large scar is for above your heart. So it was running straight at my heart, which if I'd have been standing up, I don't know if I just, I think I did mention that, that I was kneeled down when I got shot. I was in a kneeling position. looking at holding my firearm in my hand, the barrel of it out. I had a shotgun. In

SPEAKER_00: 25:48

that episode, the surgeon that I met you, basically, because of that comment, he tells a story of something similar, but the bullet actually rested against the person's heart. They never died, but it rested against their heart. Yeah, they

SPEAKER_02: 26:03

left the

SPEAKER_00: 26:04

bullet. Yeah,

SPEAKER_02: 26:04

it's moving it.

SPEAKER_00: 26:05

Yeah, it's wild. All right, so you're in, so you have surgery.

SPEAKER_01: 26:10

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00: 26:13

And I want to just make sure, this is going to be a very basic question, what ultimately was the surgery for? It was for a couple different things, right? You had to repair

SPEAKER_02: 26:23

something? Yeah, he had to repair the hole in the windpipe and then to look and see if anything else was, you know, messed up. Just like where I made the comment, that surgeon said it's like plumbing. You know, you're just you got things that are torn apart or cut apart or whatever. And you're trying to you're trying to stop the bleeding and put them back together. So that's what the that's what the surgery was for. And they did the trach there as well. That's why my trach is pretty clean for a trach. A lot of people have rough looking trachs because they're done. They're done under an emergency situation. Somebody does it. civilians have done it before for people. Somebody I just met recently on a job I was on, his was, man, it was two times the size of mine. Because it was done out on the highway or either on the highway before they put him in the ambulance. He had a bad motorcycle wreck. Yeah, his was way... Way bigger than mine. Mine's pretty symmetrical.

SPEAKER_00: 27:36

Yeah, right. If ever there was a scar that looked good.

SPEAKER_02: 27:40

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 27:41

Exactly. It's symmetrical.

SPEAKER_02: 27:43

Yeah. Yeah, I've never been covered it up. You know, it's just, it is what it is.

SPEAKER_00: 27:49

It is what it is. So let's keep going. You have this surgery. So now you finally get your relief, right? Yeah. Which is a big part of this story. You wake up to what? What's life like

SPEAKER_02: 28:00

when you wake up? Intense pain again. Pain worse than any of the other pain. Yeah, and I was strapped down. I woke up in recovery. And it was a recovery room with, I don't know if there were dividers in there or not. I mean, everything was, the only thing I could move were my hands. And I was moving them trying to get attention, but it was crazy intense. So that same morning, another hunter had been shot somewhere in the general area because he was in the same recovery room. And the game warden when I came to was literally over there telling the guy how lucky he is and saying, hey, this kid over here in the corner across from you has been shot in the neck. This guy, I remember him saying he's shot in the leg. I mean, I don't know to what extent, but. I didn't pay much attention beyond that. I was moving my hands trying to get somebody's attention and get some pain medication. I couldn't speak because I'm trached now. I got this sewn up. I got staples all the way across here. I got the trach tube in here. When the nurse came over and leaned over my bed, I just said, pain. I mouthed it. She's like, I just got you some, let me check. And I just kept saying it, you know, mouthing it, pain, pain. And yeah, that was rough. Now after that, they must've gave me so much, or either your body's, your body's protecting us and using its own defenses because I don't, I don't remember waking up but two times during that week that I was in intensive care. One time I opened my eyes and The nurse was standing by the bed. Second time, I opened my eyes and my grandfather was in there praying. But other than that, I don't recall any pain other than waking up and recovery. I think they gave me enough morphine because when I went into, when they put you in progressive care, you're just outside of intensive care, literally through the doors on the same floor in case they got to put you back. I hallucinated really bad. coming off the morphine. I woke up and I was wet. I was wet all over. Initially, I was embarrassed. I thought I'd, you know, gone to the restroom on myself. But then I realized it was from all the way from my head to my feet. I realized I had sweated so much. I saw, you know, I'm in a hospital room that's not very large. You know, they're 20 by 30 if they're that big, probably not even that large. And my mom was in the corner sitting in a chair and And she looked like she was a mile away. It was like, you know, weird. I don't know how to describe it. I mean, she just looked like she was way, way far away. And then I saw a grandfather clock. It wasn't a grandfather clock in a hospital room. Why I saw a grandfather clock, I don't know. But I literally saw a grandfather clock. And when I woke up, As well, I was startled because I thought I was being rolled to the morgue, honestly. And you ever tried to wake up and couldn't wake up before? Everybody's had that happen to them. Well, I was trying to wake up, and I couldn't wake up. So when I did come to, it was with a jolt, kind of panicky. And then I realized I'm soaking wet. So literally, within an hour, a nurse comes in and asks if I want some... pain medication and I was like, no. I mean, I didn't shake my head, but I, I believe I could, yeah, I could move my head, but I wasn't like all immobilized like I was. I still couldn't speak. You know, I'd use a notepad, but she could read, you know, I said, no. She said, you have a bad experience? And I was like, she said, well, let me see if I can get you something different. So they put me on like Tylox, which I think is kind of like Tylenol 3 or something. But when I left the hospital, 11 days. That's only as long as I was in there. And I was ready to get out of there.

SPEAKER_00: 32:24

I'll bet. I'll bet.

SPEAKER_02: 32:26

Can't get any rest.

SPEAKER_00: 32:29

Right. Then something incredible happens. Like, as if this story's not remarkable enough, you go to college.

SPEAKER_02: 32:40

Oh,

SPEAKER_00: 32:40

yeah. You gave me this. You told me this story.

SPEAKER_02: 32:44

Yeah. Yeah, so I go to college the fall of the next year. I think that would be when it was. Yeah, the fall of– actually be that upcoming– yeah, the fall of 89. So I go to a little college in a little town in Bleckley County, Georgia, called Cochran. It's probably closer to Atlanta than it is Vidalia, where I lived at the time. I've become friends with this guy– His last name was Schumann. I think his first name was Schumann, but like I say, it's been a long time ago. And he notices the scars were getting to know each other. And he asked me and I'm like, yeah, you know, this happened to me. He said, where were you at? And I told him, he said, you know, that was, he said, that was my dad in that emergency room because he wasn't a surgeon that worked at that hospital where I lived. He was a trauma surgeon from a hospital in Atlanta. I don't know which one. that volunteered to go around to small towns like mine and help small town hospitals deal with big trauma. So that was, you know, as bad as that day was, it could have been, it was like the stars were lined up for me not to, you know, leave this earth that day. It's the only explanation I got for it because I should have been gone. My doctor told me that when he came in with that diagram. He's like, kid, if you don't believe in miracles... He said, you need to start. He said, because I've been doing this 23 plus years. And he said, don't take this the wrong way. But when I get a call, whether it's an ambulance, another hospital, whatever, I get a call to get scrubbed up to do surgery and I get the description of the victim. He said, I'm pretty good at knowing whether I'm going to actually have to operate. He said, not always prepare myself to operate because that's my job. He said, but I told my partner and my nurses that were scrubbing up with me, he said, we're not going to have to do surgery. He said, there's no way. And he's telling me this himself. You know, on the eighth day, he said, there's no way this kid, this dude's going to be DOA. And he told me himself, he said, then you come in there with your eyes. You're not just, you know, shot and in bad shape. You're wide awake. I was like, yeah, I didn't want to be. I wanted to be knocked out.

SPEAKER_00: 35:14

Yeah. Was there a point in any of that, the couple weeks, starting from the gunshot through the healing, were you just praying for like, I mean, I hate even saying it. No, not really. No. No. No. No.

SPEAKER_02: 35:36

That week, I don't remember. Like I say, I remember those two points. Yeah. I mean, I felt pretty bad when I got into an actual room. I remember the first time I looked at myself in the mirror and I was pretty.

SPEAKER_01: 35:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 35:48

I mean, because I still had staples all the way across here. Had the trach was still in. Some staples where the entrance room was at. And I mean, I look rough.

SPEAKER_01: 36:00

Jeez.

SPEAKER_02: 36:01

But I was told later, they're like, my neck was out to where my chin was at. From the swelling.

SPEAKER_01: 36:12

Wow.

SPEAKER_02: 36:14

Yeah. I mean, never saw it. I was never aware of it, but yeah. Black and blue and, you know, out to my chin.

SPEAKER_00: 36:26

Wow.

SPEAKER_02: 36:28

Pretty swollen. But no, as far as wishing, you know, no. I mean, it's, I had a, so close to Christmas. I mean, it happened on December 10th.

SPEAKER_01: 36:40

I

SPEAKER_02: 36:41

had a 270 that was going to be my Christmas present. And as wild as it seemed, I don't hunt anymore. I wasn't a big hunter then. I actually went hunting there that season after I got home. I still had trakes. They don't sew trakes up. They just let them grow. They bandage it. They grow together. I still had the trake. The trake was still open. I mean, there was still a hole in my neck. And I took that 270 and went hunting. Ended up, the PTSD, because I've got PTSD from it for sure, because I'll jump. A lot of people that know me and have been around me, like, man, you're jumpy. I said, well, you get shot in the neck, you know, you'd probably be pretty jumpy too. There's probably some other factors going along with it. But I went the next season, and my brothers didn't really hunt much. We were more... We fished more. I mean, we were outdoorsy, but we were more into the fishing. We hunted, but we weren't avid hunters. I think they wanted to go with me because they were worried about me, both of them. Because I was. I was like, well, I got this gun. I'm going to go the next season. I was going while I was going to college, and they would go with me. And everything was all right until– you start hearing shots from other properties. And then I went to pieces and then I just really didn't, I haven't gone deer hunting since 89. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 38:16

Yeah. I'm always looking for like, is there a moral of the story? Is there anything, if you can go back to that day, is there anything you would do differently?

SPEAKER_02: 38:28

I don't think so. I mean, I was just trying to, like I said, my mom hadn't been married to, my stepdad long, less than a year. I was a troubled kid. We lost our father when I was eight, between Christmas and New Year's of 78. Lost him to a car wreck, and the stepfather we had between him and the one that I have now was not a good guy. So I had a lot of questions. You know, I was raised religious, and I still am somewhat, I'd say, more spiritual. I don't know about religion as much. I know there's something controlling it because I should have been out of here. And I had a lot of questions about why things had happened the way they did when I was a kid to the point. I can remember one time I was in my bedroom, and I'll try not to get too emotional, but it was some years before this happened, but I got really emotional. I kept saying, show me, show me. I was talking to God. I was like, I want to, and I almost think that that day he showed me some years later, because I mean, I was real, it was like 30, 45 minutes to where I had gotten a feeling that I had messed up that, you know, if you've read the Bible and I don't want to get, you know, go off track, but it says you can't, see him in this form. And I felt like I had conjured him. I mean, honestly, I got really scared because I just kept on for like 45 minutes because I'd lost my dad. My stepdad was violent, alcoholic, and there were things that happened in that house that made me like, if you're real, why? And show me. I just kept saying it. And I've looked back on it and thought that that day was He showed me he was real. That's a hell of a way to learn it, but I just kind of feel that way. I was probably 14 or 15 when this experience happened, and it was real. It was as real as anything I've ever experienced in my life. I was asking for proof, and I think I got that proof.

SPEAKER_00: 41:00

Yeah. I've heard it said, He ordains what he hates to accomplish what he loves.

SPEAKER_02: 41:08

Yeah, that gives me goosebumps. Yeah, I've never

SPEAKER_00: 41:12

heard it put that way, but

SPEAKER_02: 41:14

yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 41:15

Wow. All right. Then tell me the story. So we were on the phone this morning, right? Yep. You said you're a Boilermaker. And I said, oh, that's

SPEAKER_02: 41:28

interesting. I love this. Yeah. So... Yeah, I was just in Pennsylvania at Susquehanna Nuclear Plant doing some work on their condenser that they had a big mess up in. We're up there about 50, almost 50 days solid just working 13, 14, even some nights, 15 hours a night. And then you were like, oh yeah, where at? And I was like, Hazleton. And you just like flipped out. You're like, no way. I was like, you're like, we're at in Hazleton. I was like, well, West Hazleton, right off the, you basically come out of the parking lot of my, where I was staying and jump on 81 South or jump on, I think it was 93. 93.

SPEAKER_00: 42:13

It

SPEAKER_02: 42:13

goes towards, yeah, it goes towards the plant. And you were like, you mentioned that restaurant. And I was like, yeah, that's it. You're like, yeah, grew up.

SPEAKER_00: 42:20

Yeah, that was wild. Most of our family went to college right across the street from there. There's a Penn State.

UNKNOWN: 42:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 42:27

Yep. Yep. I saw it. Yep.

SPEAKER_00: 42:29

Right there. Yeah. So funny.

SPEAKER_02: 42:32

Yes. That was wild. Small world. I know. Make that comment.

SPEAKER_00: 42:38

You know what I love? Go ahead. What I love about this the most is none of this happens if there's not the comment that you made on the post. Oh,

SPEAKER_02: 42:53

yeah. I know. None

SPEAKER_00: 42:54

of this happens. We don't get to talk.

SPEAKER_02: 42:56

I mean, that just came up. I haven't seen your podcast. I've watched a lot of podcasts. I've spent a lot of time away from home, a lot of time driving. I was working at two of the newest nuclear plants in the States to be built. I was pretty much at home for over 10 years working at two of them that are online now about an hour from me north of where I live now in Statesboro. And I had a lot of, I love music, but at some point it's like, I gotta have a little something else when you're driving two hours round trips, one hour there. So I listened to a lot of podcasts. So now I'll be, you know, I started scrolling through yours and I found some interesting ones already. But I'll be catching up with your stuff now.

SPEAKER_00: 43:48

Yeah, that's wild. you now have another one here to add to the interesting pile. I mean, this story, I do want to say, uh, you know, thanks. Thanks for,

SPEAKER_02: 44:01

thanks for, thanks for the interest.

SPEAKER_00: 44:04

Yeah. And I love it. It's a small world. And if you're ever up in this area, my favorite,

SPEAKER_02: 44:09

I

SPEAKER_00: 44:10

love grabbing coffee. So let me know if you ever come around.

SPEAKER_02: 44:12

I sure will. We're probably going to be back up there. Good. Good. Oh, yeah. I will. I'll reach out. We probably will. I mean, I may not be with the same company, but... Sure. Yeah, they got to work on their other ones. Their other turbine was doing the same thing that that one had done.

SPEAKER_01: 44:29

Good.

SPEAKER_02: 44:30

So there'll be an outage next spring. They're trying to run it until next spring, but I don't think the one we just worked on is running yet because the millwrights had to do all their work after we did ours. So, I mean, I hope it does. I hope the work... I hope the work... holds up, but it wasn't regular maintenance. So it, we may be back up there sooner than, than we think.

SPEAKER_00: 44:54

Yeah. Well, I mean, I mean, I'm in Georgia.

SPEAKER_02: 44:57

Oh yeah. You're in Atlanta

SPEAKER_00: 44:59

now. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 44:59

Oh, I'll be up that way. Cause our daughters, our oldest went to Kennesaw and then she came home and she finished up at Georgia Southern and she's out of, she's got her degree now and she's like, dad, I can't make any money in Statesboro. So she's, She's going back up to Atlanta. So, yeah, I'll be up there. I'll definitely hit you up.

SPEAKER_00: 45:22

Go out and

SPEAKER_02: 45:23

grab a drink or a bite, you know, something to eat.

SPEAKER_00: 45:26

I love it, man. All right. Thanks for your time today.

SPEAKER_02: 45:30

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00: 45:31

Great story. Appreciate it.

SPEAKER_02: 45:33

Yep, anytime.

SPEAKER_00: 45:34

Yep.

SPEAKER_02: 45:34

Have a good one.