Ditch-deep Disaster
Used with permission. Article originally appeared in the July 15, 2007 issue of
Today’s Pentecostal
Evangel.
Ditch-deep Disaster
By Jennifer McClure
Battling infection for two months with the fear of loosing a leg, developing a stomach virus that limited food to crackers, as well as experiencing a brush with death –– it was a high price for a 12-year-old boy to pay for disobedience.
But through the tragedy and painful recovery process, Lucas McCloud learned a valuable lesson about God’s grace and provision.
“When you’re faced with things like this, God always brings you through,” says his mother, Amy McCloud.
The first person to see Lucas after his crash was his 8-year-old cousin, Abby McCloud. She screamed at the sight of her older cousin. His flesh along with his tourniquet hung like a loose tube sock down around his left ankle. Tears and sweat streaked his muddy face. As Lucas leaned on a stick, he tried to keep his left leg out of view from his three younger cousins who were now also at the door.
The scream sent Lori McCloud running to her daughter’s side. She immediately ushered her nephew into the house.
Lying on the cold tile floor, Lucas trembled and cried as throbs of pain pushed him further into shock.
“Am I going to die?” he screamed. “Please don’t let me die!”
“I’m not going to let you die – not in my house,” Lori responded.
On Oct. 21, 2005, Lucas had set out on his four-wheel all-terrain vehicle wearing a T-shirt and black gym shorts without a helmet or shoes. He intended to seize the final hours of warmth and sunshine since the forecasted storm would certainly sentence him to stay inside for the next several days.
Like many boys who live in the country, his ATV had become his legs, transporting him to and from his aunt and uncle’s house and grandma’s house half-mile down the dirt road. Lucas never dreamed he’d be counted among the more than 40,000 children in the United States under 16 who had an ATV-related emergency room visit in 2005, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.
He didn’t consider the risks or have knowledge that Florida is ranked among the top 10 states with the most ATV-related deaths. After all, he had ridden one for three years and nothing serious had happened.
Passing his uncle and aunt’s field and the polo horses his family raises, a dust cloud billowed behind his four-wheeler, hanging just above the dirt road that weaves around ranches and citrus orchards in Vero Beach, Fla.
Though Charlie and Amy McCloud had admonished their son not to ride his ATV in water runoff ditches, Lucas and a friend had done so anyway.
“I know that it was the wrong thing to be doing, but I guess sometimes you have to learn the lesson the hard way,” Lucas says.
Their favorite ditch to ride through was at least 10 feet deep, but recently, a mound of sandy dirt was dumped there in effort to discourage the activity. Determined to restore the playground, Lucas parked his 2005 Honda Rancher 350, took the shovel he and his friend kept at the ditch for such repairs and began leveling and smoothing down the new mound. Working alone, progress was slow. So he decided to put his four-wheeler to good use.
He carefully drove the vehicle up and down the uneven mound, seeing the embankment take form with each pass. The growling beast seemed to be just the ticket to do this job right – until everything went wrong.
Nearing the top of the hill, the ATV reared back as its front wheels peeled away from the earth. As it did, Lucas considered the possible consequences: the 500-pound vehicle could crush him; the 10-foot drop could cripple him. If knocked unconscious, he could drown in mere inches of water.
At the last possible second, he jumped off.
His body hit the muddy embankment then ricocheted backward. He and the ATV tumbled back into the ditch. His helmetless head smacked the bottom of the ditch. Ditchwater surged in around him – covering his body but not his face. Lying on his back, he raised his head up to survey the damage.
The top front portion of the ATV landed on his left leg and had sliced it open. Had he landed a little farther in one direction, he could have drowned pinned under the ATV in knee-deep water.
Adrenaline pumping through his body, Lucas maneuvered his leg out from under the ATV.
A bone-deep gash snaked around most of his leg from his kneecap to just above his ankle, with a chunk of flesh just below his knee completely gone. Frightened, he tried to stand up, but excruciating pain sent him back into the water. Both his left leg and ankle were broken. His head throbbed from a concussion.
Holding his flesh in his hand, he waded through the ditchwater and crawled up the embankment, using his good leg to propel him. As he made his way out, he recalled a documentary of a shark attack he had seen on TV a couple weeks before. The victim in that story had bled to death. Lucas feared he, too, would share this fate.
But God had other plans for Lucas than to bleed to death in the bottom of the ditch.
Once at the top of the ditch, the flesh that once covered his shinbone rested like a tattered rag atop his foot. Picking up the mostly detached skin and tissue, he tied his shirt around the top of the wound in effort to stop the bleeding and to prevent it from dragging through the dirt.
With his tourniquet in place, he began to drag himself to the closest house, his aunt Lori McCloud’s – a quarter mile down the dirt road.
A broken stick became his cane when he realized crawling wouldn’t get him to help in time. Clumps of dirt that had clipped the hard-plastic olive green shell of his four-wheeler were now splattered with crimson.
“I was really in pain and don’t remember much,” Lucas recalls. “I knew that God was with me helping me get there, and I know God gave me the knowledge to wrap my leg.”
But what he didn’t know was that Lori’s 4-year-old son, Ethan, had a soccer game that afternoon. However, though seemingly happenstance, Ethan had woke up that morning with a fever, keeping him from playing in the game and his family from leaving the house that afternoon.
“I don’t believe in coincidence,” Lori says. “I feel that every circumstance in our lives is in God’s hands and that I was home for a reason that afternoon.”
Emergency vehicles already littered the quaint, country landscape when his father, Charlie McCloud, arrived at his brother and sister-in-law’s house.
Earlier that day, Charlie McCloud had journeyed to the middle of the peninsula state to purchase a generator. A storm, possibly a hurricane, was forecasted to hit his hometown in the next few days.
He was nearly back to town when his wife Amy McCloud called him with the news of their son’s accident.
“You just don’t think of your children dying,” Charlie McCloud says.
“You just feel hopeless; you want to be able to take his place,” Amy McCloud adds.
The paramedics transported Lucas via ambulance to Indian River Memorial Hospital in Vero Beach. They focused their efforts on saving his leg. The split-open leg had been completely submersed in ditchwater, and they feared the infection it could cause.
The wound was cleaned out and sewed it up. After five days in the hospital, Lucas was released to weather the hurricane at home. Everything seemed to be going well. But the following week when he returned to have the leg placed in a cast, a new nightmare began.
Removing the bandage revealed a two-inch-wide infectious black band that outlined the wound. The doctor rushed Lucas into surgery to cut out the infected areas. In the weeks to come, he would undergo four more surgeries.
View
pictures of Lucas' leg wound. (WARNING: PICTURES ARE VERY
GRAPHIC) >>
Two months after the accident, the week before Christmas, Lucas was released from the hospital.
Remarkably, a loss of sensation around the skin graft, a bone-deep indentation and scars are his only bodily reminders of this tragedy – reminders that his father says will reassure him of God’s miracle-working power whenever he goes through times of questioning or doubting the Lord.
“When I see him running – this was all so impossible to us,” Charlie says. “It made me thank the Lord so much more for what He’s done for me.”
Since his recovery, Lucas has learned to play the drums and does so in the band for children’s church at Vero Beach Central Assembly of God. He is still able to ride horses, play polo with his leg protected by a kneepad and now also lifts weights with his dad. Though running is allowed, doctors warn an impact to his leg could reopen his wound.
“I’m thankful, and know it’s a miracle, that I have a leg and that I can run and play and enjoy life,” says Lucas, now 13. “It built up a lot more of my faith in God. It was encouraging to know God was with me the whole time.”
JENNIFER MCCLURE is assistant editor of Today’s Pentecostal Evangel.
E-mail your comments to tpe@ag.org.
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