Terrence Towns Jr. (26) of Louisville, KY enjoys time with his friends. He loved playing basketball, but spending time with friends and family is how he enjoys spending his time. He previously had two jobs, the first working with the Kroger Distribution Center, and the second as a Coca-Cola Merchandiser. “I would wake up at 4:50 in the morning, clock in by 5:45, and do my first job at the Kroger warehouse. I’d get off between 2:30 to 3:00 p.m., then go work for Coca-Cola until about 7…then come home. I’d be gone sometimes 15 hours a day. They were long days, but I was working towards some stuff.” He only had Tuesdays and Wednesdays off, with an occasional Sunday off. “My schedule was weird, you wouldn’t think that I ever slept. If there was an event or somewhere I needed to be, I was there.” When he isn’t working, Terrence enjoys spending time with his girl and his 11-year-old son.
In the early morning hours of December 31st, 2023, between 3 and 4:00 a.m., at the intersection of 7th and Central, Terrence was involved in a motor vehicle accident that would forever affect the course of his life. “I was celebrating my girl’s birthday, me, her, and our son. We went to Malone’s. We came back, and I think New Year’s Eve (NYE) was on a weekend…we got back home. That night, I didn’t drink, do drugs, or anything. I was sober. An extended family member invited me out to a music performance he was doing at a gentlemen's club that night. If you know me, I’m an introvert. I don’t go out, it’s not my thing. I stick to myself, I keep my select friends, I do the same things; I’m a pretty simple guy. He had been asking me, and I usually had an excuse not to go…but this time I said yes. I asked him to call when he was heading that way, but I didn’t think he’d want me to call. As soon as I lay down to go to sleep, he calls and invites me out. After talking it over with my girl for a few minutes, despite me wanting to stay in, I decided to go see [the family friend] perform.”
As soon as Terrence arrived at the club, he went to a quiet corner, away from the bar and where people were gathered. He didn’t have any cash on him at the time, but one of the entertainers was trying to get his attention. As one does, Terrence went to the bar to get some cash. “I went to get some 1s, and I bought half a shot…I thought it was a full shot, but it was only half. They charged me $15 for that. I went back to my table…I didn’t even drink the full shot, I had half of a half shot. She was dancing, and I was minding my business, when I decided to get up and walk away. I didn’t get far from the table - maybe four or five steps away. I was taking in the scene, and looking at the club as a whole. I go back to my chair, sit back down, and this same girl comes back over to me from behind where I was. At that point I had the rest of my shot. The girl didn’t stay, which was weird, because I still had some money at the table; for a dancer, the goal is obviously to collect as much as you can. I set my money back down, stood up, and started tripping.”
“My vision felt like I was fighting to not be on autopilot; sometimes I was there, other times I wasn’t. I was staring into space, and started bumping into chairs and tables. There was a spiral staircase; I didn’t go up it, I just walked up to it and stared. That’s when I knew something was wrong. I didn’t want to seem vulnerable, scared, or freak anyone out, so I tried to play it off. I was so far gone, I didn’t even know how bad it was. I saw some people leaving, and I was so far gone that I thought it was the people I came in with who were leaving. The people I came with were still on the stage. I walk out of the club with a group of people, and remember walking to my car…and then it goes black. The car was an ‘07 Camry; it was my mom’s car, who passed away in 2020 from breast cancer. I had to manually unlock the car…and I don’t remember getting in the car. The next thing I knew, we wrecked.”
“Right before the wreck, I was still fighting. The car is moving, and I see flashes of lights through the windshield…I was basically asleep, like a drugged type of sleep, like sedated. At some point, I lunged toward the driver, and swerved the wheel. We went into oncoming traffic and had a head-on collision. Only my side of the car was wrecked, and I didn’t have a seatbelt on. I flew headfirst into the windshield from the passenger side. The right side of my whole body and my face hit. I broke the right side of my neck, my spine got compressed, I broke my left scapula, and I fractured 18 ribs (out of 24). After we wrecked…I don’t remember anyone calling 911, but I do remember people trying to pull me out of the car. Apparently the people who pulled me out were the ones who were in the car with me. I have no idea who they were or who was driving. It was my mom’s old car too, it was one of the last things I had from her…that was devastating. I never let anyone drive my mom’s car. I hardly let anyone besides my family in that car. But they were four deep, three in the back, and a driver, and I was the passenger.”
“I live on the upper side of Dixie, so they were taking me toward 7th and Central…I think heading toward downtown, or the West End maybe…but they were taking me somewhere I don’t know. I haven’t lived that way in 10 years, I have absolutely nothing or no reason that I would be going toward that part of town. After we wrecked, they couldn’t pull me out; I was dead weight. Someone said, ‘I’m sorry Terrence, I’m so sorry.’ That’s when I realized it was somebody I know who did it. I felt them pulling me, then drop me when they said sorry.”
“I tried moving myself off the dash, but my legs wouldn’t move. I thought I was going to die, that’s the only thing I could think. Then the police came out of nowhere, and that’s when the other people left when police arrived. The officer had a choice to chase them or save me, and he chose to save me and the guy we wrecked into. He pulled me out and dragged me behind the car to the curb, on the strip of grass before it became a sidewalk. I tried telling him ‘I need to call someone,’ to which he replied, ‘Buddy, you’ve got bigger problems.’ I tried asking again and then I passed out. Before I passed out I remember thinking, ‘I’m about to die right here…so be it. I accept it.’”
Terrence was transported to UofL Health. “I don’t remember the ambulance, just being in a bright room at UofL. Brightest room I’ve ever been in. They were trying to bring me back to life. Both my lungs collapsed…I remember waking up in the ICU. I couldn’t get up, I couldn’t eat or drink water, I couldn’t talk for two days, and I was labeled a quadriplegic. The doctor told my family I wouldn’t be able to do anything for myself ever again…it was scary. It still is.”
“If I was drinking and driving, I’d accept this. Like, this is what I get, I did this to myself. But somebody else took something from me, that knows me. I’d appreciate it if they’d tell me where we were going, somewhere I knew or somewhere safe because I was out of it…but it feels like foul play. My blood alcohol level was 1.8 when I got to the hospital. Somebody definitely spiked my drink. I remember that half-shot, I didn’t drink anything besides that. I grabbed my phone, my wallet, the money I came with, my bank cards…when we wrecked, nothing was missing…I don’t trust people at all now.”
“I knew something was wrong, because I knew I couldn’t drink hardly at all; I operate machinery, and I can’t be under the influence at work because then I’d lose my job. I had a plan to leave after seeing who I came to see at exactly 3:00 a.m.; not five minutes before, not five minutes after. Go home, change, then go straight to work. My girl noticed something was wrong, because my work clothes were still out. I didn’t smoke weed, I don’t do cocaine, I don’t pop pills…none of that. I didn’t indulge in anything. I was completely sober…and it [someone slipping something into my drink] was that quick. Nobody believes something like that can happen, until it happens. I don’t do anything wrong…I just stick to myself, stick to my routine.”
The doctors and EMTs fought to keep Terrence alive the entire drive. “I remember hearing, ‘Stay with me Terrence, stay with me…we’re losing him, we’re losing him!” While in the trauma room, after trying to pull himself out of the MRI machine, Terrence was taken upstairs for additional care.
“One of the first things I remember was seeing my grandmother, and I broke down crying. ‘I told her that she wasn’t supposed to know, I didn’t want you to see me like this.’ She told me, ‘I’m your grannie, I’m supposed to know what’s going on.’ I didn’t know what I looked like, but when that many people come to see you, that’s when you know it’s bad. Some people broke down and cried when they saw me, some people left because they couldn’t handle it…I couldn’t get up for 72 hours, and in a neck brace…it was bad. It was so bad. The brace was so uncomfortable, like pressed into my chest. All the time I couldn’t drink water. They had a brace around my stomach to keep my ribs tight. My body hurt, but I couldn’t feel my body. To this day, my mental state still isn’t what it was. I have memory problems, I don’t know if I’ve done something before until I do it, then sometimes I remember doing it. I used to think about my mom every day, a lot of the day. Sometimes now she feels like a stranger…I know I’m not the same. I did the speech learning at Frazier, where they test you for brain damage. I only got one thing wrong but…I know me, and something still isn't right. I’ve always been a little smarter than average.”
“In the hospital I was on morphine, oxycodone…a lot of medication. I was in so much pain that they gave me a pain button, where if it got too bad you could hit a button and medicine would be distributed. When I went to Frazier, I stopped taking oxycodone. I was mostly taking it for my face, because half my face was smashed. But I weaned off of it. I still have pain, but you learn to bear with the pain. If you take me off my nerve medication for muscle spasms, we might have a problem then, but besides that it wasn’t hard for me to get off the medication. My scapula is broken, but I still go to the gym and do shoulder exercises. My ribs were broken, but I still sleep on them…you learn to go with the flow.”
“I was so naive…it never clicked for me that I was a quadriplegic. I always thought I’d sit in this room, they’d fix me up, and I would walk out of here scratched up. But that wasn’t the case. I tried working with the physical therapists in the hospital at UofL; they were working with me, they’d try to get me up on the bed but I can’t keep balance, can’t stand up…I felt like a worm trying to stand up. It just wasn’t happening, they tried getting me to lift my legs, not happening. I’m getting frustrated, and now it’s starting to click…like I can’t walk. Just give it time…then they told me about Frazier, and once they got me in there I was excited, because it felt like I was going to the Promised Land, I thought they’ll have me walking again. But they told me straight up, ‘We don’t know if you’ll be able to walk or not by the time we’re done, but our job is to get you to adapt to your situation to get you back home.’ I didn’t like that, because I didn’t know what that meant. But that was the game plan. I didn’t like it, but I stuck with it. Slowly, I started making more progress. I was in Frazier for a month, and now I’ve been in outpatient rehab for about two months…now I’m standing up on my own. I didn’t like the plan, but I stuck with it, fought through, and it ended up being a great plan. I don’t know if or when I’ll be taking steps, but what happens, happens.”
Terrence has made remarkable progress in the months since. He has limited use of and mobility of his limbs, and is continuing to make progress bit by bit. “My doctor told me there should be no reason I shouldn’t walk again. There’s no reason my whole body would cut back on except for my leg, just give it time and take things slow. And it is slow.”
“At first, it felt like a miracle. Now, it feels like a job I need to get back to as soon as possible. I’m motivated to do the work and get after it.”
Mentally, Terrence is still processing everything that happened to him. “I’ve been depressed, very depressed. Very down…it was a very dark time for me. I remember telling my girl that if she wanted to, she could leave, because I’d understand. I was at that point that, if life was going to hurt me, let’s just bring it on. If I can't do anything for myself again, let’s sell my house before it gets foreclosed, even though I just bought it in the fall. Everything I worked for just…throw it away, if that’s what’s going to happen. That’s the mood I was in, I just didn’t care. I was also concerned, once I started getting some function back in my body, especially going into Frazier and started making progress. I was constantly concerned about my job, my bills, my credit, how I’d get around…just life in general. Now there’s just questions, like, ‘Okay, do I have to work for a call center or something?’ Because I have money saved up that’ll get me through eight months of this year, but after that, then what? Your brain is like, ‘We have to figure this out, now.’ I lost a lot of sleep over that. The routines, seeing the same things, same schedule, same routine, same people, looking out the same window, that was mental. When you’re watching TV…that’s all you can do in rehab, is watch the same thing…it low-key started driving me crazy. People coming in at 5:00 every morning to draw blood…I kept getting mad, because my go-home date was coming up, and my record time for standing was three minutes because my body wasn’t used to me standing. I’d get light-headed, blood pressure would spike…I just started trying to figure out who did something to me. I started questioning people who invited me out, I fell out with them. I had so much hatred in my heart toward the end of Frazier. Then when I came home, I was still angry. But I haven’t let my anger get the best of me since then.”
“I’m still sad. I cry a lot. I cry almost every day. Being in this chair is freaking…annoying. It’s bulky and people stare at you…you get treated differently. That’s probably the most frustrating part, is how people treat you. I get treated differently in this chair than how I used to be treated. People don’t want to step on your toes, so they treat you kinder.”
But, things are getting better. “My mental health is getting better, it’s getting stronger. Going to CFW (Community Fitness and Wellness, part of UofL Health) has given me something added to my life besides therapy and doctor appointments.”
“I never knew that there was this side of life. Wheelchairs, burn victims, gun survivors…I never knew that it got like this. You see people out in wheelchairs, you never think about how they got there. You just see them roll around to get where they’re going. You’d never know about this stuff until you live it, and a lot of people in these chairs are victims. I try not to mope or feel bad, I just try to keep moving through my day. Seeing these kids in wheelchairs already is crazy. It’s sad.”
“The best part about it is knowing you’re not alone. Knowing there’s other people like you, to talk to, that don’t treat you differently. That’s the best part about it.”
Terrence left Frazier Rehabilitation Institute February 6th, 2024. He left UofL for Frazier on January 11th, 2024.
“I want people to know, if anyone is on a liquid diet, please bring them the best milkshakes that you can. I think I did vanilla and fruit smoothies for about a month and a half when my jaw was wired shut…that might’ve been the worst part about the whole situation.”
“Over the next few weeks, I have a birthday coming up on April 13th. I’ll spend some time with my friends and family. I’ll try and do a little yardwork, as much as I can anyways. I’m doing CFW, and I’m cooking and cleaning, I can take the Tarc to transport myself to places. I’m trying to get back to normal as much as I can. A friend has an engagement party coming up, that I’m going to try and go to. That’ll be my first time being around people. I pray the muscles in my knee get stronger so I can be walking before the year is over with; by that I just mean able to move my leg to take a step. You have to break down barriers before you can try to walk on your own. I’d love to be using a walker by the summer.”
“I’d also like to write a book about this, about my experience. I started writing it in my Notes app. I may try to get it published. Whether it sells or not we’ll see. Then get back to work…driving…going to a restaurant without thinking about it. I want my confidence back.”
Terrence has a message for people who find themselves in a situation. “It’s never over. It probably feels like that, but it’s not. Some people get told they’ll never walk or do anything for themselves again. I see people like this every day…I’m in rehab with someone who is a quadriplegic in a nursing home, and now he is in Frazier Rehab in physical therapy, and he’s able to move his arms. I can stand up within three months of being a quadriplegic. It’s never over. All you have to do is keep fighting. You’ll be told things like it takes time, we can’t give you the answers, everyone is different…don’t listen to that. Listen, but know it’s not the end. No one can ever end your story but you. Don’t give up.”
Terrence Towns.
Focused, Committed.
Trauma Survivor.
