St. Volkswagon

Those of you who have known us for a long time are familiar with Neighbor Bob. He was our neighbor at our old house. At the time, our eldest was very confused with there being an Uncle Bob on Hubby's side, and Uncle Bob on my side, and Bob who lived next door. So our nice older neighbor was dubbed Neighbor Bob by That. Neighbor Bob is still a good friend to us and we see him from time to time as we still own our first house and rent it out. In fact it was Neigbor Bob who found our new tenants when our old ones moved out. Even before we had the chance to list it! Neighbor Bob rocks!

Anyway, about 4 years ago, Neighbor Bob woke up one day with a belly that looked like he was 7 months pregnant. He went from being a very active, single, divorced guy to being infirm. His elderly mother moved in to take care of him. We saw Bob only rarely then, with his mom giving us the details of his condition. Things were so bad at one point that Bob ended up on the liver transplant list, wondering who was going to win the race: Death or a new liver.

It was truly a great surprise when we ran into Bob a couple of months ago at the library parking lot. Gone was the ashen pallor he had been wearing for the past few years. There was pink in his cheeks and his eyes had gone back to sparkling. Then he told us about the big dent in the door of his Volkswagon Euro Van that pretty much saved his life.

Bob had returned from his doctor's office pretty deflated. The internist had told him that his liver function tests were quite poor and that he had been moved up to first priority for a new liver. Things were looking grim and the doctor estimated that Bob only had a couple of weeks to a month to live. At that point he was walking with a cane and his nearly 90 year old mother was driving him around town. (I should add a pause here as you should all be realizing that riding around with his mom in the driver's seat was probably his best way of preventing his death from liver failure. Likely blunt force trauma would catch up with him first. But I digress...)

Bob was resting in the living room when his mother came home. She said that the van was making a funny noise and she thought she may have run over something. Could he please take a look. So Bob got out his cane and dutifully walked over to the still running van. Gripping the driver's front door, he leaned over and noticed that Mom had driven over a tomato cage which had wrapped around the front axle. He tried to dislodge it by poking it with his cane but was unsuccessful. So while he held the driver's front door, he laid down his cane and reached under the van with his other hand. He gave the tomato cage a mighty yank and somehow popped the car out of park and into neutral. It started to roll. Bob was caught under the van which rolled over his abdomen and over his legs. And because it was parked on a slope, the van started to roll back the way it had come, again over Bob's legs and his head. At this point, he knew that if he didn't get up, there was no way he was going to survive the day. So he caught the front door of the van which was still open and swinging freely. Somehow, he pulled on the door, wrenching it backwards and almost off of the car, but that move got him out from under the moving vehicle. As you can imagine, blood was streaming down his face from the headband shaped cut across his scalp. He calmly got on his cell phone and called his mother. He told her not to panic and to just turn the shower on as cold as possible. Told her that he had a little cut on his head but it was not a big deal. He was just going to clean himself up and no worries.

My thought is that he couldn't see saddling his mother with an emergency room visit since he only had 4 more weeks to live. So anyway, he walked up to the door probably looking like the Night of the Living Dead, except in real life, telling his mom not to panic and don't bother calling an ambulance. It was only a flesh wound. When he washed up and lay down with a red towel wrapped around his head, his mother did the only sane thing and called for an ambulance.

Bob was airlifted to the nearest trauma center where his head was stitched up and he was told to meet with a surgeon to assess if he had any other damage to his internal organs from the accident. That surgeon did an exploratory surgery on Bob, and like an expert Christmas Elf putting away a string of lights, the surgeon pulled out Bob's innards and replaced them back in the original packaging good as new.

After recovery, Bob was coming up close to his 4th and theoretically last week of life. He went to his regular doctor and they did the usual liver function tests. When the results came in, his doctor was flabbergasted. He said, "I don't know how you did it, Bob, but you've got the liver function of a 20 year old."

Now Bob's being asked by the University of Washington Medical Center to come in so they can figure out exactly how he's still alive. He hasn't fixed the damage he caused to the driver's side door of his van but it is a great lead in for a great story so I wouldn't fix it either.
When I tell this story, I laugh all the way through it -- only because I know it ends well. I mean, Bob told us the story after all. Either way, I am certain that that van was instrumental in a miracle. My husband likes to joke that the van only needs to cure one more person of a terminal illness and it can be canonized a saint.

Anybody out there game?