Real Miracles, Healing Stories
Jay Reinke—Off-Road Rescue
Snow was glistening in the morning sunshine as Jay
Reinke drove his snowmobile through the Magic Mountain region near Burley
on March 31, 2005. Miles of fluffy powder blanketed 7,000 foot-high mountain
peaks in the popular winter playground and Jay eagerly looked forward to
a full day of sledding as much
terrain as possible.
About 9:30 a.m., as he guided his snowmobile across a hillside, Jay was ejected from the machine and hurled into the air. The snowmobile had slammed into a rock buried beneath the snow.
"The impact popped up the back of the sled like a teeter-totter and I flew into the air, did a front summersault and landed on the back of my neck and shoulders. It folded me in half. My legs hit me in the face and I heard a loud pop."
That loud pop was a compression fracture on the T12 vertebra in the middle of his back. As he and doctors at Saint Alphonsus would discover hours later, the vertebra had crumbled after impact and caused nerve damage to his spinal cord.
"I thought I was paralyzed and I was yelling 'no, no, no!'" Jay said. "I couldn't move my legs or my hips and there was excruciating pain down each leg. I could only move my arms."
As he lay on his back with his head pointing downhill, Jay waited for the sight or sound of his brother, Chuck, who had been snowmobiling several hundred yards below. "Chuck saw my sled coming back down the hill with me not on it."
Chuck immediately drove up the hill to locate Jay, but buried his machine in the snow. He trudged on foot through waist-deep snow the rest of the way up the mountain.
As soon as Chuck arrived, Jay handed him a cellular phone from his jacket. "I told him to call Life Flight," Jay said. "I was already a Life Flight member, but I never thought I'd have to use it."
Because they could not get any cellular reception, Chuck tried to drive Jay's snowmobile to another spot on the mountain to get reception. In doing so, he got the snowmobile stuck in snow. He walked for more than a mile before he came upon Judy and Kevin Stanger and their son, Clay, of Kimberly, who also were snowmobiling.
The cell phone still would not get reception. The Stangers had a cell phone in their truck nearly 10 miles away. While Clay drove his snowmobile to their truck, Kevin, Judy and Chuck drove to Jay.
"The Stangers were wonderful," Jay said. "They talked with me, kept me warm and helped me through the pain."
With cell phone in hand, Clay still could not get reception, so he drove his snowmobile several miles to Pike's Peak, where he was able to dispatch Cassia County Emergency Services and Life Flight.
By 1:30 p.m., Jay could hear the rumble of a Life Flight helicopter coming into the valley. Within minutes, the helicopter found a landing spot and Flight Paramedic James Pennington and Flight Nurse Colleen Mullins attended to Jay. After a brief stop at Magic Valley Regional Medical Center in Twin Falls for tests and x-rays, Jay was flown to Saint Alphonsus where he was placed in the Intensive Care Unit.
The next morning, April 1, Neurosurgeon Doug Smith, M.D., performed an 11-hour surgery on Jay. "He removed what was left of my vertebra and replaced it with a titanium cage," Jay said. "At that point, I felt very fortunate to be alive and not paralyzed. About 90 percent of the time, people with injuries of this type end up partially paralyzed."
Following the surgery, Jay spent two nights in ICU, a week on the 6 West Neuro-Recovery floor and three weeks in rehab. All told, Jay spent 31 days at Saint Alphonsus.
"There were times when the pain prevented me from getting out of bed," Jay
said. The shattered vertebra injured his spinal cord enough to cause numbness
and tingling in his chest and back—even to this day. "It hurt
just to breathe. I felt busted in half. When your whole body hurts, you don't
want to move because moving means pain."
Following his discharge from Saint Alphonsus, Jay wore a clamshell brace
around his upper body for five weeks to help stabilize his spine and back.
He also underwent weekly outpatient rehab visits with Saint Alphonsus Rehabilitation
Services (STARS) for several months. Even today, he must see Saint Alphonsus
rehab doctors bimonthly to manage his progress.
Today, Jay, who lives in Meridian with his wife, Lisa, and children, Drew, 6, and Kate, 3, says the patience and support of his family and friends helped him manage his mental and physical approach to healing.
"The only way I have gotten through this is to say 'I will be better next month,'" Jay said. "Even today, I still can't pick up my boy [he can't lift more than 50 pounds]; I can't horseplay. By the time 3 o' clock rolls around I don't feel real good sometimes."
Lisa said it was a tremendous adjustment for the family. "It was very stressful on the family. Jay has always been good in taking the kids and helping out," she said. "You realize that it's a different person that what you are used to and you want the old person back. But when you have those days, you realize it could have been much worse."
While away from work as an insurance executive with Farmers Insurance, Jay had support from colleagues. Even though he still can't run, he can walk. He has gone from using a wheelchair to a cane and now walking on his own.
"March 31 was my day," he said. "That's the day that my life changed. Since then, I think more about the person I am, the father or husband that I am."
He said another constant in his life will be his Saint Alphonsus Life Flight membership. Jay plans to be just an active as he was before by skiing, riding his all-terrain vehicle and yes, snowmobiling again.
"I look at it as support for a program that helped me. It helps with better training, better equipment, better helicopters. Any way I can support them, I will. Any way I can help only makes the program better."