Jason Smith of Taylorsville, Kentucky is a proud father and found himself in a fight for his life at the intersection of Highways 155 and 1633.
The accident happened less than a half mile, maybe a quarter mile from his home. Smith said he came up to the intersection and the brakes on his truck froze.
“You can’t see any traffic at that intersection until you get there and stop,” Smith said. “Across the road is a long gravel driveway, which I decided to aim for once I realized I wouldn’t be able to stop. I said a quick prayer and hoped to get across the intersection to stop in the driveway. That’s the last thing I remember until I woke up in the ER at UofL Health. I found out that I got t-boned by another semi at that intersection. I was doing maybe 30-35 miles per hour, and the other driver was doing 55 or 60. My neighbor said it sounded like a bomb had gone off, and the explosion knocked picture frames off her wall.”
Smith and the other driver were life-flighted to UofL Health.
“I don’t remember the accident,” he said. “I just remembered praying to get through the intersection and waking up in the hospital. I came to the ER with my wife there, and my mom and dad. The wreck happened on a Friday. I remember some people coming to visit me in the ER, but I don’t remember everyone who came to visit. The only thing I could complain about at the time was the back of my head hurting. It was killing me. My semi was so destroyed that, when they found me in the cab, I was in the passenger-side floorboard, my head and body hanging out of the firewall of the truck, my head was laying on the exhaust. It burned the back of my head, plus all the glass. I messed my shoulder up pretty bad too, it needed a steel plate and 12 screws. I broke every rib, and lacerated my spleen and liver. All my injuries were internal. I made it through the weekend fine, and they repaired my shoulder the following Tuesday. I have told my family that they will never understand what I went through at the time, just as I could never understand what they went through seeing me the way that I was. But they fixed me up the following Tuesday, and we were talking about going home by Thursday. That’s when all hell broke loose; I developed a blood clot, one of my broken ribs punctured a lung, then the other one collapsed. I also developed blood clots on both of my lungs. It was really touch and go for about a month.”
He spent about a month in a medically induced coma on a rotating bed. There were a couple of times where the doctors told his family that they might want to begin considering making some funeral arrangements.
“It was a lot, especially my family seeing me in that shape,” Smith said. “Mom kept a notebook diary of everything throughout that experience, and I still have it. Hearing they had doctors telling them they might need to consider funeral arrangements, I obviously don’t remember any of those conversations. I know they had to put a chest tube in, I had a mucus plug blocking my airway, fortunately my brother could get a nurse to clear it at the time…there was a lot, but I’m still here and still kicking, able to see my kids and grandkids. God is good.”
Smith’s incident happened in 2015. Oftentimes, the survivors interviewed have experienced their trauma within a few years after the incident, so the event is still fresh in their minds, and they are still working through the challenge of processing their trauma. In Smith’s case, the event happened about a decade ago. Smith said he still has his business and is still living at his house.
“I will say, I still stop at that intersection hundreds of times a month,” he said. “But to this day, if I sit there long enough, I can feel the emotion come back, especially if I see two big trucks coming by. It puts things into perspective. I’m just so thankful that I’m still here and I can see my son still playing ball (he played in the state tournament last year for the first time in our school’s history), and watching my daughter graduate from the University of Kentucky, now studying at Johns Hopkins University, chasing her dream of helping people. She’s engaged now, my oldest son got married and had two granddaughters. A lot has happened, and a lot has changed, but a lot has stayed the same. I still work every day, still support my kids and grandkids. It’s been a blessing. I thank the good Lord that it was just me and another vehicle involved, that it wasn’t a school bus full of kids or a family in a van, that it was just two people in the accident. I’m grateful that we’re both still here. I’m glad to still be doing the dad things, supporting my kids and loving every bit of it.”
