Rob’s Story: Slowing Down and Enjoying Life After Farm Accident

I was on my home from work at CareFlight during the night, and I arrived in Versailles when my pager for my squad went off and I realized I was very close to the scene where Rob had been injured.

I was Saturday morning, November 23, I was doing the feeding just like I do on everyday. Seven days a week, 365 days a year.

Rob had been on the back of a tractor. He was feeding the cattle and there was a PTO on the back of the tractor, was not protected and his pantleg evidently got caught in the PTO.

What we think happened is, the zipper was torn off of the Carhart pants leg a little bit and that zipper as I brushed my leg by the turning shaft, that zipper wrapped around the shaft of the piece of equipment.  And, I felt it start to tug on my leg and at that point, I just grabbed on to the side of the mixer, hoping it would tear my pants or whatever. It ended up basically completely ripping the bottom half of my leg off.

I closed my eyes and my whole life flashed in before me. And I knew at that point I had a choice of either lay there and probably bleed to death or get up and go get some help.

Rob was strong enough to crawl or hobble over to the other side of the barn where his son was in the truck.

So he helped me call 911 and I was laying on the ground. And he goes “Dad, do you want me to go the house and get some help?”  Uh….he’s 9 years old.

When I arrived, Rob was lying on the ground and the lady that lived at the house was holding a towel on the stump of his leg.

They put me in rescue squad and CareFlight met us at Sidney hospital. I didn’t’ even go into the hospital at Sidney, they brought me there, CareFlight landed, they put me in there, flew me down here, seems like we got here in two minutes. We get here and I remember going into the emergency room and stuff and doctors and nurses and stuff talking to me. Ended up going into surgery for eight hours that Saturday night.

In that first surgery, they tried to save my knee.  They, they took it off below my knee and they was going to try and save my knee. That’s what the surgeon and the doctors wanted to do, uh and I was fine with that. But Tuesday morning when I woke up, I just didn’t feel right.  The doctors came in that morning and they said my knee was, it was infected and they thought the best case scenario was get me into surgery that day and just cut it off above the knee and get me back on the way to recovery. So I went into surgery on Tuesday afternoon. It was like an hour surgery and when I got out of there, it was like, it was night and day difference, it was like I was a new man.  

In the middle of January, they started fitting me with a prosthesis and stuff and started doing some rehab with that, and here I am nine months out everything’s going pretty good, I have no complaints.

What they did here is unbelievable.

My grandpa taught me when I was young, that he was in the military and was prisoner of war and he always told me, that pain don’t hurt.  He goes, you can talk, your mind is so strong, you can talk your mind into or out of almost anything. And he goes, you can do anything, if you put your mind to it. And I’ve just always remembered that and as tough as this was at times, I just told myself from the beginning that I’m gonna get through this and I’m gonna go back to what I was doing before.

It’s either a little be slower or there’s an adjustment or, or you know I got to do things a little bit different that when I used to.  But I, but I can do 99 percent of what I used to do.

I was that close, couple different times throughout that and I’m just so thankful I’m here to slow down and enjoy life a little bit. And that, ah, you know, don’t give up, don’t ever give up.