Meeting an Old Friend...

Today I was sitting @ home and mum called me. An old friend was in town and she was going to have dinner w/ him and his mum. I haven't seen him in ages, and I heard that he was in a terrible accident just recently.

I'm glad I took the time to go out and have lunch with the 3 of them. It was nice to see my friend and his mom. He's looking pretty good and you can't really tell that he was in a life-changing / threatening accident just a couple of short months ago. The only REALL tell-tale signs for me were the small scar on his forehead, and the fact that he's lost 40 pounds since then. He's now roughly 200 lbs.

As the story goes he was riding an ATV w/ his friend and they ended up flipping it. His buddy ended up breaking a leg, and the ATV ended up on top of my friend roll bar crushing him. They ended up righting the ATV and riding back to the house where he lays down... here's where I lose the details, but I know they were rushed to the hospital. He was there for a couple of days getting fixed up and had tests run to see if there was anything else wrong... they couldn't figure anything out so he was trying to convince the docs to let him walk out. No dice... which was probably good, because apparently after a couple of days his stomach began bloating up to a ridiculous size and he slipped into a coma.

I'm not sure what the extent of the internal injuries are but I know that he had to have a Colostomy. Fortunately, it seems that his is not permanent so he will be able to go back and get the procedure reversed. His appetite has come back and he's trying to gain back the lost weight as well. On top of that he has a massive hernia as well. The operation to correct that will take place at a later date as well. For him there were 2 options: a mesh (non-dissolving) to hold everything in, or use the existing stomach walls to overlap and secure. It wasn't a hard choice as he doesn't want a plastic mesh inside, plus, apparently there is a higher risk of infection with the first procedure.

He's going to be in town for the rest of the month (on Bowen island) so we're going to try to get together and catch up... definitely nice to see him again :) and even better to see that he's recovering well!