It’s hard to talk about the four Barnes surviving a plane crash without using the word “miracle.” But their recoveries that followed while so many family, friends, and even strangers prayed are also the result of the care, concern, and expertise in the hands of dozens of medical staff and those non-medical family, friends, and volunteers. Also, in no small part, to the Barnes’ determination to return to a normal life which slowly took place over the months following the accident.
A big part of Sheryl’s recovery was “rebuilding her mind.” After they were out of the hospital, her son David made a comment to Susan, his wife, “Mom just isn’t too swift.”
Sheryl said, “I lost my cognitive thinking. When I [first] came too, I didn’t know who I was…..[and] I couldn’t do any sequential thinking at all.”
A nerve in her neck was traumatized by a blow to her head when the plane crashed. The part of her hearing she lost will never recover. Furthermore, she had lost her sight at first, and when she could see again, she had double vision. That continued long afterwards whenever she got tired.
She said, “I couldn’t put words together into sentences.” Before she could speak, she “had to think [through] everything [she] wanted to say.”
Doctors told her she had three years to “rebuild” the brain’s injuries. They told her to do crossword puzzles, to read, to do recipes. It was Mother’s Day, five months after the accident, before she was able to put a meal together.
Though she had been a math teacher, Sheryl couldn’t “do the checkbook.” Walking up and down stairs when she still had sight problems, she tried to count the steps but couldn’t count beyond three. She, however, “did not allow [herself] to get all bent out of shape.” With her checkbook and other activities she would “just do a little bit and then put it away.”
She resumed knitting for therapy and made scarves for the 15 women who debrided her for a two week period while she was hospitalized. [The debriding was scrubbing the parts of her body burned by the “gasoline, not fire, just from the chemical.” She said she was burned from her “neck down to my knees.”]
Women from the church also stayed with her 24 hours a day. Sheryl mentioned, “The first night, the pastor’s wife and her sister slept on the floor [by her bed] in [a] little, three-cornered room.”
When Sheryl started the scarves, “it took [her] three evenings to get the stitches on [the needle]…” She said, “The third night, I didn’t know how the stitches went on…… I remember, I said to Susan, [her daughter-in-law], ‘How’d I do this’? But the brain kicked in, and from my past learning, allowed me to put those stitches on the needle, and from then on I just started going.”
Another breakthrough occurred while the Barnes and some friends in Michigan were traveling together in a car. Sheryl said, “All of a sudden, I became a part of the conversation. I’m not sure what large word I used. I think it was ‘scrupulous’.
“I said to Til [one of the friends], ‘What did I just say’? She looked at me so funny and said, ‘What do you mean’? I said, ‘What did I just say now’? I didn’t think about the word before I said it. It just rolled out. I didn’t even know where it came from.”
Sheryl’s thinking had been kept simple, and she had become quiet. Some of her friends had noticed. Even so, she had never given up. She said, “I think people give up too soon.” Up to this breakthrough, she “always had to think what [she] was going to say.” The key is she “didn’t allow [herself] to become agitated.” She knew she had three years, if necessary, “to rebuild.”
Lin began with exercise equipment. He credits family, friends, and rehab people for pushing him. His physical therapy included exercises used for patients after knee surgery and a reclining bicycle which doesn’t stress the back.
Though he doesn’t remember it, he’s been told he was in lousy shape emotionally and didn’t want to live. Sheryl pointed out he was “so doped up.” He could, however, dial the telephone numbers. Sheryl couldn’t dial the sequential numbers but was able to carry on a phone conversation.
Lin was home from the hospital by February, and through March had more rehab.
By April 29, however, both were ready to leave Alaska for their home in Colorado.
Their son David had a 95% chance of having his leg amputated because it was all crushed. Sheryl was almost scalped in the crash, and her nose was just barely hanging on her face. She lost 40% of her blood.
Their grandson, Luke, who was pulled out of the wreckage first had some chemical burns. They were able, however, to change his clothes immediately – into clothes a passing motorist just happened to have in the car.
David remembers nothing of the crash. He asked Lin, “What happened, Dad?” Lin, who had tried to climb out but couldn’t, said, “I don’t know,” and passed out. David started praying and was still praying when rescuers loaded him into the helicopter.
The time between the crash and the completed rescue seemed interminable. One ambulance came from a camp just down the road, but the ambulance from Sutton took 45 minutes. The jaws-of-life couldn’t go as fast. All these teams had to wait for the power company to remove the lines downed by the plane before the rescue could proceed.
When the plane began to lose power and descend, most likely David was going to land on the highway. The plane’s engine was recalled five months after the crash. [The utility lines that downed the plane were not marked with the visible red balls required.]
Through the whole ordeal, someone was always praying. The family feels they were surrounded by the Lord. Lin called it “an inner peace.”
While they recuperated, they had sitters around the clock. Friends from Mankato, where they once lived, church members up there, David’s wife Susan’s friends from Denver, others from Castle Rock, Colorado, their winter home, and Phoenix. The turning point in Lin’s recovery was when Brett from Mankato insisted on springing him from the hospital to take him out to breakfast.
So they could be accommodated at David’s home, men from their church redid the basement. They made the bathroom handicap accessible, built two additional bedrooms, and put in wheelchair accessible doors.
While raising five boys, Susan organized much of this homecare, medications and schedules for caregivers. Hundreds of people were involved one way or the other.
A friend of Davids, an OB/Gyn doctor, came to take care of him, and a pediatrician friend from med school came from his practice in Idaho to take care of the youngest son who became seriously ill with the flu during this time.
The story in their words……..
Sheryl:
In Palmer, Alaska on January 1, 2005 it was an overcast day with plenty of ceiling for flying. Palmer is approximately 40 miles northeast of Anchorage. We flew northeast of Palmer, following the Matanuska River. We flew by the Matanuska Glacier and over Sheep Mt. (about 70 miles by road from Palmer).
We were on a search for caribou.
Our son, David, his 2 year old son (Luke), Lin and I left David’s house at noon. David started flying when he was 16 and has taught flying in the Baltimore, Denver and Dallas areas. He owned a six seater Maule airplane and stored the airplane in a friend’s hangar
We left the hangar at 1:00 p.m.
Lin and David were in the two front seats and Luke and I were in the second row. Luke sat behind his dad’s seat. David had placed a pillow between Luke and the door and between Luke and David’s seat. Luke sat next to me on my left.
We were all dressed warmly. Luke was in his snowsuit with mittens and boots.
We had been flying for approximately one hour when I became very cold. I then took off my earphones and put on my wool stocking knit ski cap. I tucked Luke’s blankets all around him. (He was asleep, leaning against my arm.) In so doing, I looked out Luke’s window and could see that we were flying just above the tree tops and at an angle to the highway. I had time to think that David never flew that low and maybe something was wrong with the plane’s engine. I then heard Lin say, “There’s the road, David.” And David said something about roads and planes. (I couldn’t hear or can’t remember exactly what he said, but it is legal in Alaska for planes to land on the roads.) What brought us down so suddenly was an electric power line which was not marked and which David and Lin did not see.
The next thing I remember was that it was so very quiet. Luke was not talking or crying. He must have still been asleep. The snow was covering my window. (We were buried in about 6 to 8 feet of snow). I then heard Lin say, “I can’t do it.” (He was trying to get out of his airplane door). David was all bent over in his seat, and I then heard him say, “What happened Dad?” Lin said, “I don’t know.” Immediately I heard David start to pray, “Lord Jesus, please stand by us. Lord Jesus, please stand by us. I then passed out, right after I heard a voice telling me that we would all be safe. I remember very little after that for about 30 hours other than being lifted straight up and a voice saying, “Stay with us, Sheryl.”
We were probably in the airplane at least an hour and a half because we had to be cut out of the airplane by the Jaws of Life which were one hour away from the accident. The highway patrol registered the accident between 2:00 and 2:30 p.m. The power company had to take care of the live wires before the Jaws of Life could assist us.
It took two and a half hours to cut David out of the plane according to the ambulance staff. They also said that our son was praying when they walked up to the crash site and that he never stopped praying even while they cut him out of the plane and loaded him into the helicopter.
The very first thoughts that I had in the hospital were “The Lord is my Shepherd. I shall not want.” I was in the hospital for two weeks, and those words kept going through my head. Gradually over time, I was able to repeat the entire 23rd Psalm. My grandmother taught me that scripture from the Old Testament when I was a little girl, and at a critical time of need, those words came to me.
Lin:
It is legal to land airplanes on the roads in Alaska.
Both Susan (David’s wife) and Bruce (our son) tell us that I was talking about a chattering noise. I don’t remember saying any of this, but the kind of noise described would go to a crank case problem. Since the accident, David’s engine has been recalled by Lycoming, the engine manufacturer. Evidently when we hit the power line, David was planning to land the plane on the road because of an engine problem.
I passed out after trying to get out of the plane. I do remember lying in the snow and being very cold.
Let me tell you about the first three cars which came upon our accident: We had first hit in a ditch along side the highway and then we bounced to our final landing in 6 to 8 feet of snow.
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-In car number one was a pilot familiar with the Maule airplane. He guided the cutting apart of the plane in order to avoid hitting metal and producing sparks. All of the gas in the right wing had dumped out of the tank. There was no fire.
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-In car two: EMTs (emergency medical technicians) traveling to Valdez to work.
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-In car three: A man and woman with clothes and shoes and blankets for a 2 year old boy.
A lady from Palmer took pictures, visited Sheryl in the hospital, and then called Sheryl to share that her photos did not include a man who was walking around the plane several times. She had tried to follow him to ask questions, but he had disappeared. She was confident that he was in some of the pictures which she had taken, but he did not appear in them when the film was developed. She said, “Did I see an angel of the Lord and I did not recognize him?”
Luke was the first to be taken out of the plane. The EMTs checked him and then gave him to the man and woman who had been the third car. They took off all of his gas soaked clothes and shoes and dressed him in what they had in their car. They were told to keep him talking so that he would not go into shock. He rode in the ambulance with me to the Palmer Hospital, and the EMTs said that when they were working to keep my blood pressure from bottoming out, Luke was all concerned. He kept saying, “What you doing, my gramps?”
Sheryl was the first to be taken to the Palmer hospital because she was bleeding profusely from head wounds. She lost 40% of her blood from head lacerations. She was almost scalped. The head was cut from front to back, going around the head. Her nose was broken and hanging on her face. She had deep cuts to her lip and hand. She had second and third degree burns to her arms and torso from the aviation fuel. She was scrubbed daily for about five weeks. At the time of the accident the right wing had bent over and come through Sheryl’s window, dumping the gas in that wing over her and some onto Luke. From the trauma, she had a head injury with loss of cognitive thinking, double vision and some hearing loss in the right ear. She had a neck injury, but no broken bones.
Luke and I were second to be taken to Palmer in the ambulance.
Luke was checked at the Palmer hospital. He had slight chemical burns from the gasoline and was scrubbed for about a week by a doctor who came to David and Susan’s house. Luke never went into shock. Today he flies his [toy] airplanes and when he crashes them into the ground, we hear him say, “Oops, crashed again.”
It was probably a one and one-half hour drive to the Palmer hospital where I was x-rayed and then sent to the Trauma Center at the Regional Hospital in Anchorage. There I had two surgeries: one for a crushed pelvis and one for a smashed lower left leg below the knee cap. I’m now the owner of two metal plates which send the airport security systems crazy. I also had a head laceration with subdural bleeding.
My system did not like the trauma. Consequently, I had gall bladder problems, blood clots to the lung, high blood sugar, and both kidney and bowel shutdowns.
I was hospitalized for five weeks, three of those weeks in the intensive care unit.
Sheryl tells me that I was non-communicative for about 3 ½ weeks, and I know that I really did not start talking much until March 1.
When I got to David’s house, I needed 24 hour care for another two weeks. I could not put any weight on my pelvis or left leg until March 1. It was then that I started walking with a walker.
Now both Sheryl and I are golfing again.
David was airlifted to Providence Hospital In Anchorage. There was a 95% chance that his left leg would have to be amputated. However, once again the Lord took care of us. He had an exceptional surgeon who just happened to be on call, and saved David’s leg. He found only 14 pieces of the knee cap, fitted them together, bone grafted to fill the void and rebuilt the leg and ankle. David had deep lacerations on his arms and a crushed ankle. He had 15 procedures done in six surgeries. Today he is walking without a cane, but with pain. He says, however, “He is just fine and that he has worked through all of that trauma with God’s help and put it all behind him.” David is lean and tall but he has taken off 25 pounds in an attempt to lighten the load on the knee and ankle. Today he is back to working 12 hour days.
Sheryl:
These were the serious side of our experience. There were some humorous parts, however. We are told that one day David was flying the space shuttle and talking about what he was doing and seeing. Lin was parking and sorting farm machinery, and I was driving a covered wagon.
Lin was fairly non-communicative until our friends from Mankato came to help. Peer pressure kicked in. Brett invited Lin to go for breakfast, and Lin said that he couldn’t possibly do that. Brett said, “And why not.” You see, Brett has had four life threatening surgeries and has been at the bottom of the barrel all four times. He always popped back to the top, however. Lin’s brain finally kicked in and out he went in a wheelchair for breakfast.
When I had to feel my way along the walls because I had double vision, the nurses told me to use the walker. When I encountered steps at David and Susan’s house, I decided that I would count the steps, and then the next time I would know how many steps. What a joke! Without cognitive thinking, I couldn’t remember how to count. However, perseverance got me up and down steps.
