Gavin White fell 30 feet from a tree, shattered two vertebrae in his back, broke 14 ribs, punctured a lung, and, with the help of a walker, was able to walk into his home three weeks
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| Arvil White, 5, explains how his dad, Gavin White, hurt himself after falling from a tree at his home in Preston Wednesday |
On July 13, Gavin was trimming a tree in his front yard in Preston and had climbed roughly 10 feet above his ladder when things went wrong.
“I’m not sure exactly what happened,” he said. “Something cracked, and I lost my balance.”
He said he tried to grab onto another branch but ended up falling a long way to the ground. Some of his kids were outside and witnessed the accident.
“I called my son over because he was right there and had him call 911,” he said. “I wanted him to stay by me because I needed somebody to talk. I needed to stay calm.”
Brigham, 9, called 911 but was so scared he couldn’t really talk, Gavin said, so Dawsey, 11, was the voice telling the dispatcher about the accident.
A friend who was a paramedic was close by and heard the 911 dispatch, he said. He was by White’s side within minutes.
“That was probably the first little miracle I felt was there, because I was starting to get kind of scared laying there on the ground and knowing that something was seriously wrong.” he said. “He showed up really quick, and as soon as I saw his face, I knew everything was probably going to be OK.”
Gavin had lost sensation in his legs and was transported by life flight to Portneuf Medical Center in Pocatello for surgery after a few tests at Franklin County Medical Center.
“On the ground, I kind of realized what the situation was because I was hurting pretty bad in my back and I couldn’t feel my legs,” Gavin said.
Callie White, Gavin’s wife, was with their oldest at a garage sale and didn’t have her phone with her. She found out about the accident when she called home to talk to Gavin about a $25 lawn mower.
“I about collapsed on the lawn crying,” she said. “I felt so guilty about not being there.”
She said she was grateful for all the people who helped, especially during the beginning when they had no idea what was going on.
“Friends first took the kids, the neighbor brought pizza, and everybody was just so nice,” she said. “I was really grateful for all the love and support.”
During the eight-hour surgery, Callie said doctors would come out every so often to give her updates. They removed shards of bone that had shattered and replaced the broken vertebrae with a combination of rods, screws and donor bone.
“When he came out the doctor kept saying, ‘He has extensive damage,’” she said. “He made it sound really bad.”
Gavin is a broadcast engineer for Idaho Public Television. He maintains translators throughout the state of Idaho, which requires climbing towers. He said he has extensive training with climbing heights.
“I wasn’t probably as careful as I should’ve been, and I knew how to climb safer than I was,” he said. “I was just trying to hurry and get something done.”
He said while he was on the ground, he thought of the kinds of injuries he knew could come from a fall like his.
“I knew it was something that I wasn’t going to be able to just get us and shake off,” he said. “I knew that I needed to get help as fast as I could if I wanted to walk again.”
After surgery, Callie said she tried to take one day at a time. The hardest times were trying to plan for the possibility that Gavin would never walk again, she said.
“At first I couldn’t think past that minute because I would start to go down this road,” she said. “The train, when I started going down that path, was so frantic and made me want to scream.”
Gavin said he never let himself go down that road because he didn’t want that to be a possibility.
“I was determined that I would walk again,” he said. “I woke up, one day, feeling better. I had a positive attitude, and I was ready to be somewhere else doing different stuff than just laying in the bed waiting to get better.”
Callie remembers that day. She said her sister called her, and for the first time in three days she was able to say that things really were going well.
“That one day I called and you wanted to shave,” she said. “You’d had some luck with everything, and it was just like it all went great.”
Gavin spent two days in ICU and then about a week and a half on the surgical floor, she said. The recovery process was happening much faster than anyone could’ve predicted.
At one point, he said, the doctors were predicting he would need to be in the hospital for at least 60 days. Forty days earlier than expected, Gavin was able to walk into his house.
“They’d give us these time frames,” Callie said. “Everybody was amazed. They told us recovery would be two to five weeks in the rehab, and it was a week and a half.”
Gavin’s father comes every morning to take him on a walk as a part of his therapy. He said doctors told him walking is the best therapy he could be doing right now.
“For a little while I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to go back to my job and back to life as before,” he said. “But it’s getting better all the time.”
Though his story is amazing, Gavin said he doesn’t feel like his story is that miraculous.
“To me a big part of the story is how much support we’ve had,” he said. “A lot of people in town have rallied around us and I get surprised sometimes at how many people know about what’s going on.”
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from a Tree and spent several weeks in the hospital before coming home in August.