Has' story goes like this:
Has graduated from high school in May 1999. He registered to start college at SLU in Hammond which is close to our home. A new theater opened in Hammond and he applied for a part time job there so he could work around college. He started his job as soon as he got out of high school. In July he came to his dad and I and ask if he could go out to Portland, Texas to spend a week with his best friend , since 2nd grade, Jeremy. Portland is right next to Corpus Christi and is 10 hours from home. Their plans were for Has to fly to Portland and stay a week and him & Jeremy were going to drive back home because Jeremy was coming to live with his mother and start college, also. On Tuesday July, 27th I put Has on an airplane to Corpus Christi. On Friday night they crossed the border into Mexico to celebrate Has' 18th birthday early. His birthday is on Aug. 5. They had a good time and came back to Jeremy's dads house on Sat. afternoon. Has called me to just check in but we were out so I missed his call. He talked to Tricia, his sister. We had been out in his car "playing" (we bought Has a 1999 Z28 Camaro for graduation). We arrived home around 7:00. At around 8:30 Tricia came flying thru the door saying Jeremy's mother was trying to get in touch with me. She had tried to call me but I was in the shower. She said Has has been in an accident, he is in critical condition. Has & Jeremy were only 5 miles from his house on their way to play basketball with some other guys. They came to an intersection with a red-light. Jeremy had a green light but didn't have an arrow to make a left turn. They were in his Honda Civic and Jeremy just turned in front of a Z71 pickup truck with a big grill on the front. The truck plowed into Has' side of the car. The "jaws of life" had to extract Has from the car. There was a woman who immediately jumped into the car with them and started administering help to Has. I believe she was an angel as no one knows who she was or where she went. I woke Has' father up and we had to charter an airplane to Corpus Christi. WE arrived at 2:00 a.m. Has was in intensive care. He had a severe traumatic brain injury and his left arm was broke. They had a probe in his head to monitor the pressure on his brain. He was on a ventilator and was in a coma. We were told that he may not make it and if he did he could be a vegetable. We were told to expect the worse & hope for the best. The doctor told us he should come out of the coma with in 3 days. That didn't happen so on the 5th day they trached him and put a stomach peg in. They never touched his arm. He was in a sleep coma for 2 weeks. After 2 weeks he started opening his eyes but was non-responsive. We spent 18 days in Corpus and then had him flown to Baton Rouge which is only 30 mins. from our home. I was with him every moment that they would let me be with him. He stayed in the hospital in B.R. until Sept. 20 and then was transferred to Health South rehab where he would stay off and on until the week before Thanksgiving when we decided he didn't need that place anymore, that we could take care of him ourselves. Has didn't speak until the first part of Sept. He had his trach & peg tube removed before leaving the hosp. He had to learn to walk all over again. That is about the only great thing Health South did for him. Has was on several antidepressants and had gotten very violent. Before the accident Has was always a gentle, laid back person who never got mad about anything. The neuropychologist told us before we left Health South that Has' memory was severely impaired and that he needed to be put in a home where they could teach him to live on his on. I told him I wanted to bring him home that I could take care of him. The doc said he would be too much for me to handle and I wouldn't have a life of my own. I said Has is my life. I told him I was taking him home that I had my faith in God and I believed his dad and I could take care of him. I got him home and I gradually took him off of all his medications. Has gradually turned back to the gentle son we had before. He gets a little angry at times now but it is short lived. His long term memory is great but gets better each day. His short term memory is better than mine sometimes. Has still sees the neuropychologist who saw him at the rehab and he says we definitely proved him wrong. He says we have done a remarkable job with Has. None of the doctors he sees can believe how well he is doing without taking any medication. The neuro doc says he gets all the brain injured patients in the area and that out of all his patients Has has had the best recovery in such a short period of any he has ever treated. Has is still seeing doctors. His arm is still broke and will stay that way because it is too risky to try to fix it now, that should have been done in Corpus. He has excess calcium build up so the doctor is going to chip that excess out in 2 weeks. He uses his arm but he just doesn't have full range of motion. Chipping away that excess will give him a little more range. Has was a basketball star in high school and had dreams of being a player in college. He has always wanted to be a coach and he still says he does. Right now he is not doing anything special but I can still see improvement in him all the time. I am hoping that within the next year he will be ready for school or work. He has been through so much. He went thru different stages of his recovery that I won't talk about here but if anyone is going thru something like he has been thru and they want to talk, I will be more than happy to share his whole story to help anyone. Any questions that I may be able to answer, I will be glad to. I've never been through anything like this before but I put my faith in God and I know that all of the prayers and our faith is what has brought our son back this far and I believe with all my heart that God will continue to heal Has.

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