MYRTLE BEACH, SC (WMBF) – A man had the opportunity to thank those who saved his life after a serious accident left him hospitalized for over three months.
Chris Vickers reunited with his medical team on Thursday at Grand Strand Medical Center, where everyone celebrated the progress he has made on his road to recovery.
In June 2023, Vickers was riding his motorcycle on Highway 905 to buy peaches. He said he did not remember buying peaches. The first thing he remembered was waking up in a hospital bed.
“When I woke up here in the hospital, my brother and my wife were next to me and said, ‘Six days have passed, you had an accident,'” Vickers recalled.
He woke up with seven broken ribs, a shattered finger, a broken thumb, a broken tibia and femur, and his fibula was broken in two places.
Vickers learned from others how the accident happened.
“I was nine and a half miles up 905 on Granger Road when a car, apparently a small SUV, stopped to turn left and I guess they said I was going too fast to stop and clipped the left rear bumper,” Vickers said. “I clipped it just hard enough to bend my front wheel and lock up my front brakes.”
Vickers said he was shown a picture of the accident and was told that he landed two metres from his bike after being thrown by the impact.
Doctors inserted a metal rod and performed a 13-hour surgery to begin the recovery of Vickers’ right leg. They took skin from his back and left thigh to rebuild and heal the leg.
Vickers was released from the hospital on September 22, 2023, 95 days after his initial admission.
On Thursday morning, Vickers visited all the rooms where he had been treated during his hospital stay and was also able to hug the people who had saved his life.
“A lot of people came into my room, nurses and doctors, and all, like I said, the respiratory therapists, they were constantly checking my breathing and my tracheostomy,” Vickers said. “I don’t think the entire time I was in the ICU I even had to push the button, all the nurses were constantly checking on me.”
Vickers has been married to his wife Shelley for 23 years.
She said she was numb when she learned of the accident, but the doctors and nurses at Grand Strand Medical Center changed that.
“I just knew he was going to make it with these people, with everyone by his side and the phenomenal doctors and nurses here, I knew he was going to make it,” Shelley Vickers said. “I never broke down because I knew in my heart he was going to make it.”
Physical therapists told Vickers it would take two years to walk again, but just about a year later, he is already taking short walks with a cane.
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