Image credit – dailymail.co.uk
When life gives you lemons, you make the tastiest lemonade out of them. This proverbial phrase rings true in the case of Loren Schauers from Great Falls, Montana, USA. Loren was only 19 when a freak forklift truck accident happened to him at the construction site where he worked. As a result, the entire bottom half of his body as well as half of his right hand had to be amputated.
If this were to happen to you and you were asked by doctors to make a quick decision to choose between life and death, which would you choose? Choosing to live would mean living with only half a body and one functional hand.
It wasn’t a difficult decision for Loren to make and he chose to live, even if he only had a head left on the plate.
It was truly miraculous that despite the extent of Loren’s injuries, he survived. His girlfriend Sabia Reiche, said goodbye to him six times, fearing he wouldn’t live another day.
How It All Happened
It was September 2019 and Loren was working as a laborer at a construction site during a bridge rehabilitation job. Cars were passing illegally on the one-lane structure over a highway bridge outside Wilsall when Loren was driving a forklift.
As one vehicle passed him, Loren veered too close to the bridge edge and the ground beneath him crumbled. He tried to jump from the falling forklift but his leg was trapped by the seat belt. Loren plummeted 50 feet down a steep hill together with the massive vehicle and the machinery rolled three times down the hill before it landed on top of him, instantly crushing the lower half of his body.
Loren was fully conscious throughout the ordeal and his eyes were wide open. He saw the forklift rolling down and landing on his hips and right forearm. He looked to his right with the forklift on top of his body and saw a big, old piece of muscle from his arm lying on the ground next to him. His arm was blown apart and everything below his hips was completely squashed.
An air ambulance landed on the bridge and air-lifted Loren up the hill on a stretcher before flying to a hospital in Bozeman, Montana, where he met his loved ones and underwent massive surgeries.
To Live With Half A Body or To Die?
While Loren was in a coma, his family had to make an agonizing decision – to let Loren die or allow the surgeons to amputate everything below the waist. The rare and radical hemicorporectomy surgery (also called trans-lumbar amputation) was the only way to save his life but his family did not know if Loren would rather die or live but lose half of his body.
Loren’s sister fought hard for him to be taken off the breathing tube so he could make the decision. When the doctors woke Loren up, he was immediately aware that something horrible had happened to him. The surgeons asked if he wanted the radical amputation, warning him that he was going to lose everything below his belly button and he may die in the surgery.
Loren looked at the doctor “dead in the eye” and told them he didn’t care if he was just a head on a plate. He was going to do the surgery and begged the doctors to keep him alive. He said that it wasn’t a hard choice to have half of his body cut as it was just a choice of living or dying. Loren’s decision brought much hope to his family and girlfriend as they already knew that he was a fighter.
Unconditional Love
Loren and Sabia had only been a pair for 18 months when the freak accident occurred. He said that the life-changing accident brought them even closer together.
One and a half years later on 28 February 2021, Loren and Sabia were married in a simple wedding ceremony. The pair share details of their life together on YouTube and have half a million subscribers and fans who cheer them on.
Sabia has been God-sent to Loren. Being a devoted girlfriend and now wife, she has to perform many daily tasks for Loren including changing his colostomy bags, cleaning his wounds, cooking his meals, and showering him. Recently they got a service dog to help guard and watch over Loren.
Image credit – New York Post
One thing that peeves Sabia and Loren is when people pester them and ask how they become intimate and have sex. They have replied that this is a very personal question and affirmed that they will never answer or allude to it as it’s very disrespectful. Sabia said that just because their life circumstances are different, this doesn’t give people the right to ask something so personal.
Before the removal of Loren’s genitalia since the pelvis had been completely crushed, the doctors tried to salvage his sperms but later found out that they were not viable. While Loren and Sabia will never be able to have any biological babies of their own, he still wishes to raise children with Sabia.
Image credit – mirror.co.uk
Moving On
After the life-altering accident and surgery, Loren now leads a very simple life compared to what it used to be. About three months after the accident, it finally dawned on him how crazy and miraculous it really was for him to be alive.
Loren and Sabia want to travel the world first and then have children. Loren’s best advice to anyone going through grave adversities in life is to not focus on the things you can’t have but instead to live your life to the fullest with what you do have.
Health Freak Mommy is a content writer under Headliner by Newswav, a programme where content creators get to tell their unique stories through articles and at the same time monetize their content within the Newswav app.
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