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God My Protector Author: David A. Zey Copperhead
Innocense My dad and my older brother Michael were digging a large hole close to our house, for a purpose I don't recall. Our property was bordered by acres of woods and I was outside in the yard. While playing, I noticed something moving in the grass. A little snake! So many times I has
watched my older brother Michael handle and play Hold
On For Life It was a day at the fair and my younger brother Mark and I got on a ride called the "Scrambler", The ride consisted of a series of four octopus type arms and each arm had an additional four arms which each held a seat which would hold 3 persons. When the ride is in motion, the arms off of each main octopus arm rotate causing the seats to dash at, and narrowly missing each other. My brother and I got on the ride and the only thing to secure you in the seat was a seat belt. There was no bar in front to lock, only a seatbelt to hold you in the ride. We both tried and tried but could not get the seat belt to fasten. Then to both of our surprise, the ride started. We both began screaming for help and to stop the ride but the speed of the ride increased and we were struck with terror. We both turned around and grabbed the main shaft which held the cart to the metal frame, and held on for our lives. We were both in tears when the ride finally stopped. I don't remember the ride operator's response when in tears we told him that we were not secured in the ride. If one of us would have lost loose our grip, we would have surely been thrown into one of the other cart's path and to a certain death. Blood
Poisoning I had surgery on both my big toes because I kept getting ingrown toenails. Following surgery, both of my legs were wrapped from foot to my knee with a ace bandage. A few days following the surgery and at home, my right foot and leg began throbbing with enormous pain. The pain continued to grow in intensity, to the point I began crying. I recall my dad scolding me because he had had the same procedure performed on himself years earlier and thought I was over exaggerating the pain. A short time afterwards, the pain was becoming more than I could bear. I rocked my body back and forth while crying in agony. It was about that time that my mom noticed two red streaks appearing from under the ace bandage just above my knee. My parents immediately rushed me to the doctor's office. When the doctor removed the ace bandage from my right leg, it was as though the flood gates to pain were opened and I was completely consumed in it. The pain was unbearable. Incomprehensible pain flooded my body and mind in full, undiluted strength. The pain was so immense, I literally wanted to die. I remember hearing the doctor frantically tell my parents I had blood poisoning and to get me to the hospital immediately. Through the pain I only remember flashes of images; the hospital doors, the wheel chair, the concerned look from a security guard. I was immediately rushed into a room, and placed in bed. By this time the red streaks had progressed almost halfway from my knee to my thigh. My leg was placed in a long metal tray. Doctors completely covered my leg in gauze and soaked it with boric acid. It was about that time they gave me an injection of morphene for the pain. As the pain subsided, I remember saying, "this must be Heaven". The pain was completely gone. The boric acid created heat around my leg which slowly began to draw the infection back down and the doctors immediately began administering antibiotics. I overheard the doctors telling my parents; "If they would have gotten me there a couple hours later, they would not have been able to save me". I was hospitalized for 4 days. By
Electricution My brother and I were going to camp out in a old utility trailer my dad had set up in our back yard. We had to run electricity to it each time we camped out so we would have light. This particular night was very humid
and there was a lot of dew on the ground. Before I even realized what was happening, my body was being violently jolted and I could not let go of the light bulb. Mark had plugged in the extension cord. I remember thinking that I was going to die. Somehow I managed to raise my right arm and bring it down, knocking the bulb out of my left hand. I probably should have gone to the hospital because for about fifteen to twenty minutes, my breathing was labored, but I was soon feeling fine. The
Hitcher I was hitchhiking one afternoon and a Datson 280Z stopped to give me a ride. Inside the car was a tall heavy build man who asked me where I was going. After I told him he replied that "he was going in that direction" so I got in. We traveled a short distance on Hwy 61 and was approaching Hwy 7 where we would need to take a right. If you go straight down Hwy 61, it turns into a all wooded and at that time, a desolate road. The light ahead of us was red and he came to a stop. I could tell that he was not planning to turn so I asked him "where are you going"? He didn't say anything. He just keep staring straight ahead. At that moment I felt panic, and as quickly as I could, I opened the door and jumped out of the car. No sooner than I got out of the car, the light turned green and he took off straight down Hwy 61. To this day I shutter when I think of what might have happened if I would not have been able to get out of the car. Barracuda
Fish Tail I was going through a welding school at General Dynamics which I flunked out of. I attended class during the midnight shift. One morning at 07:15 when I left to go home, I was traveling about 55mph and looked down to grab my car cigarette lighter. When I looked up, there were two sets of headlights in front of me. Another car tried to make a daring pass with not enough time nor space to do it. I instinctively veered off the road to the right with only inches to spare, narrowly preventing a head on collision. I tried to pull back on the road and lost control of my '69 Plymouth Barracuda convertible. Unable to regain control, I was sliding sideways in the oncoming lane and saw a car's headlights coming right at me. The next thing I remember was my car sliding sideways down a deep embankment. When the car came to a stop, I looked at the side of my car which had dirt caked all over it from skipping sideways down the steep slope. I was amazed that my car did not flip and roll down the embankment. I was even more amazed that I was not hit by the car I saw coming at me. It was right in front of me and I knew we were going to collide, but by a miracle, did not. I was very shaken up, but not as much as a scratch on myself, or my car. By
The Hair Of My Head It was 1976, the bicentennial year. My mom owned the property next to our house where a trolley car had been converted into a small home. My mom thought it would be patriotic to paint the trolley car home in red white and blue colors. I was standing near the top of a aluminum extension ladder, painting the outside top trim about 12 feet above the side of the cement porch and steps. Without warning, the bottom of the ladder kicked out. Both my legs fell through the rung of the ladder as I fell backwards. The ladder came crashing down with both my legs bent underneath the rung and my back against the ladder. My head narrowly missed the edge of the cement porch by mere inches. When the ladder hit the ground and came to a rest, my legs were trapped underneath me, and I was in terrible pain. One of my brothers helped to turn the ladder sideways to free my legs. Both legs on the inside of my knee were cut and severely bruised by the ladder rung from the stress of the fall. I had difficulty walking for several weeks. The discomfort was minor compared to the thought of if my head would have hit the edge of the concrete porch. Miracle
Whiplash I was riding in the back of a taxi cab without a seat belt. The taxi cab stopped at a red light and the next thing I knew, I was laying on the floor board and in a daze. Someone had rear ended the taxi at 45mph. I suffered a whiplash but what makes this so amazing is because of what I found out at age 29, the whiplash should have instantly killed me because of a medical condition I was born with which is described in full detail in the story below at age 29 titled "Basilar Impression". Disaster
at 90mph I was out joy riding with a friend in his '69 Nova. While at a stoplight a Monte Carlo pulled to the side of us and revved his engine. When the light turned green, the race was on. We were up to 90mph when I was overcome with a bad feeling. I told my friend to slow down. He did not respond, so I yelled at him "SLOW DOWN"! No more than a couple of seconds later, the right front tire blew out. We were immediately pulled up on the curb and I saw a utility pole coming straight at me. There were no seat belts in the car and I began to crawl to my friend's side of the car because of the pole I saw coming at me. My friend was able to pull the steering wheel enough to where we just grazed the utility pole and that's when things got worst. We went down an embankment and all I could remember was smoke and glass. I couldn't tell what was up and what was down. I was thrown around the front of the car and finally managed to get back in my seat only to find myself thrown into the back seat. We finally came to rest in a ditch. My friend jumped out of the car and yelled a few words of disbelief as to what had just happened, and then asked me if I was alright. When I went to grab the front seat I had a sharp pain in my right thumb and when I tried to step out, I had pain in my right leg. The car was totaled. The police arrived and after examining the scene, they said that the car rolled at least three times. There was a hole in my floorboard where a tree stump rammed through. Both sides of the front windshield was shattered where both of us were thrown into it. My friend did not get as much as a scratch. I had a piece of glass in my thumb from the impact with the windshield and a severe sprain in my ankle from the stump which tried to come in from under the floorboard. The next dayI had to go to the hospital to have the glass removed from my thumb, and I was placed in a walking cast for the following six weeks. Not too bad for a crash where police were amazed we were not seriously injured or killed. Awaken
At The Wheel I had just enjoyed a late night of midnight bowling which was sponsored by one of the local radio stations. It was 4:00am when I headed home in my '77 Camero. I was feeling tired but felt I would not have any trouble making it home. I was traveling 55mph which was the posted speed limit, and about one and a half miles from home. The last thought I recall was "boy am I going to sleep good tonight". The next thing I knew, I am opening my eyes and I am soaring in the air, over a 10 foot drop into the woods. I watched a utility pole fly by just to the right of me and a large oak tree to the left of me. Seeing nothing but woods in front of me, I grasped the steering wheel tightly, and closed my eyes. I slammed down on top of some small saplings and at once, everything became still and quite. I opened my eyes and tensed in anticipation for the pain to come. Nothing! I released my seat belt, opened the door and slowly stepped out. I did not receive as much as a scratch, I didn't even get the wind knocked out of me. I yelled out "Thank You Lord!" Landing
On A Cloud I was working for a cable tv company and as part of my job I would climb utility poles with either hooks or a extension ladder. On one occasion I was using my extension ladder to reach a piece Of equipment, about 24 feet from the ground. I put on my safety Belt and made sure the strand hooks on the ladder were securely over the strand cable which held and supported the cable and the device I was attempting to reach. I placed the strap for my field strength meter which is used for reading signal strength, over my shoulder and began climbing the ladder. I was almost to the very top when a wind gust pushed it's force against me and the ladder. The ladder began to slide sideways along the strand cable. I leaned in close to the ladder knowing that the strand hooks on the ladder would stop the ladder from sliding at a certain point as I had experienced many times before. I was wrong. When the first strand hook hit the strand cable, the ladder bounced away, then back towards the strand cable. The ladder slide a couple inches further and the top of the strand hook hit the strand cable and then slipped underneath it causing the ladder to flip. As I was thrown from the ladder, I knew I was in trouble. Falling horizontally, I quickly met the ground and landed on top of my field strength meter. A pick-up truck that was passing by quickly stopped to assist. I picked myself up from the ground and to my astonishment, I had no injuries. I did not even have as much as the wind knocked out of me. The driver of the truck ran up to me and asked if I was alright. Shaken from the fall, I replied I guess I shouldn’t be but yes, I am. I opened the padded case to my field strength meter and the weight of my impact had crushed all of the control buttons below the faceplate of the meter. Eye
Saw The Light While still working for the cable company, I decided to take my lunch break in a parking lot which was under a bridge that crossed the Intercoastal Waterway. This was a very common spot for people to launch their boats, or to fish. The view was beautiful and I could watch boats of all types traveling up and down the waterway. Being a cigarette smoker, I struck a match to light my cigarette. Just as I struck the match, a piece of the red tip from the match popped off and went directly into the center of my right eye where I could feel the searing pain as it ignited. I held my hand over my eye while trying to endure the excruciating pain. After several minutes I tried to open my eye in order to get a look at it in the rear view mirror. The pain was too intense. Just to try and slightly open my eye, the air felt like a blowtorch causing me to immediately close the eye. After about an hour, the pain decreased to a point to where I was able to drive myself back to the office using my left eye to see. Inside our office, I used a wet compress against my eye until I was finally able to open it for only a second. Long enough time to reveal that the match tip ignited directly over the pupil. The pupil was no longer black, but white. Vision out of the eye was like trying to see through an immensely thick fog. I was taken to a eye doctor who numbed my eye so I could keep it open as he examined it. Using some type of tool, the doctor shaved off a extremely thin layer of my cornea, which removed the white layer covering the pupil. I was able to see perfectly. He told me I was very fortunate. Only the surface layer received a burn, and there was no permanent injury to my eye. Basilar
Impression - Case #67 I was diagnosed with a extremely rare and dangerous condition called Basilar Impression. A bone at the top of my spine "the adontoid" was elongated and compressing my brainstem. A simply accident such as a whiplash would cause the bone to snip my brainstem like a pair of scissors and death would be immediate. This was a condition I was born with and the Doctors were amazed that I was still among the living. Any minor accident such as a whiplash or fall thoughout my life should have killed me. The condition was so rare that there were only 66 previous cases of my condition since the beginning of recorded medical history, and none of those cases were exactly like mine. Most previous cases were discovered because the patient had died from a result of their brainstem being severed. In my case, I was having extreme problems resulting from the condition. I have had problems in the past but nothing like I began experiencing the past year. Severe head pain, numbness in my arms and legs, and extreme dizziness. The only cure was surgery, only surgery of this nature had never been performed. I was the first. I was warned that there was a risk that I might not survive the surgery and recovery. As the way things were, I could not go on living with the pain. The dizziness was preventing me from learning and I was close to being fired because of my inability to comprehend. I also now had the fear that I am walking on eggshells. I decided to go through with the surgery. Just before the surgery I hugged my mom and my wife wondering it this would be the last time that I would see them in this life. I wasn't afraid because I knew Jesus was with me. The first surgery took 13 hours. When I awoke in intensive case my first thoughts were "I'm alive! Thank You Lord!". Then I tried to touch my face and found my lips swollen to a size which shook me up and I thought "I'm messed up!". I had to undergo a second surgery to have bone removed from my hip and used to fuse my spine to my skull. I was placed in a halo brace and had a trach put in so I could breath. The next week things took a down fall. I came down with pneumonia and had high fever. Someone had to be with me around the clock and use a suction machine to draw the mucus from my trac when I coughed otherwise I would have choked. My fever increased and now the doctor's noted a infection in my blood, but could not trace it's source. They started me on a very powerful antibiotic to combat the infection. Every four hours they would give me the intravenous drug which was cold and painful as it flowed through my vein. They would have to move my ivy location every other day otherwise the drug would cause my vein to collapse. The last night of my high fever, things got rough. My fever was up to 106.1 and I was trying to pull the tubes from me, telling the nurses that I was dead and did not need them anymore. They had to strap me to the bed and place ice bags around me to get the fever down. The next morning, the fever broke. For about three weeks, I had numerous delusions that were as real as reality itself. Some of them were pleasant, while others were terrifying. I was in the hospital for six weeks. I was in the halo for 3 more months and then other types of neck braces for the next nine months. The surgery was a success. I no longer experienced any of the previous symptoms, when I went back to work, everything easily came to me and everyone was awed at the increase in my comprehension level. I was cured! Unexpected
Intruder I was working in Fort Mill S.C. and I has to go to a
fenced unmanned site which sits off the road in a wooded
section off York road. I arrived there about 10:30pm and
was on the phone with people in Atlanta and folks from
another part of the country. About 12:30am I heard a
noise outside of the door, like someone punching in the
combination buttons on the door trying to gain access. I
listened for a moment and did not hear anything further. A Sign From
Above I was driving home to Fort Mill from Charlotte one evening. It was about 2 weeks after hurricane Hugo and there was still debris around the roads. I was traveling about 55mph in the left hand lane down I77. There was a tractor trailer in front of me, a car behind me, and two cars in the lane to the right of me. All of a sudden I saw the tractor trailer in front of me run over a speed limit sign which was laying on the road and the rear tire flung the sign in the air. I watched the sign as it was flipping in the air and it began dropping right at the hood of my car. I began to drop my head lower than the dash because the sign would obviously come through the windshield. At the very last second, the sign dropped below the grill of the car and sliced the left front tire wide open. I instinctively held the stirring wheel with all my strength. The steering wheel tried to pull from my hands and the front of the car began slamming up and down so violently that everything in front of me was a blur and I could not focus on anything ahead of me. The cars around me hit their brakes in panic. I managed to keep control of the car until I was able to slow down enough to get over into the emergency lane. |
