Aid Joe Lawson's Path to Recovery After Devastating Accident

On Sunday March 9th my dad, Joe Lawson, was involved in a accident in his powered parachute. He was flying in a field near his house and when making a turn, a wind gust caused the machine to head towards some trees and power lines. He was launched from the machine from around 40 feet in the air before it collided with power lines. He was then in critical condition, but alert and aware of his surroundings.

He was rushed to Cabell Huntington hospital where we found out he had 3 broken ribs, a dislocated right shoulder, shattered left femur, broken left tibia, broken left ankle, shatter left heel bone, L5-T12 vertebrae are fractured with the L4 being burst. With all of these issues he was in extreme pain, the worst I had ever seen anyone in my life.

Doctors were able to repair his femur during a 4 hour surgery the day of the crash. A few days later, on Tuesday, the neurosurgical team started to operate on his back, but before they were able to begin he coded and the team had to shock his heart 3 times and do chest compressions to bring him back. He was on the ventilator and sedated for almost a week after that, until he built up enough strength come off of it.

He is now out of the hospital and healing up at a rehabilitation center but he needs to get the surgeries completed on his back and foot but none of the local surgeons are willing to do it due to what happened during the last surgery. We plan to try and get him into Cleveland Clinic or possibly Lexington, but with those places being out of network the insurance will not cover as much.

Also my mom, Ramona, who has been by his side the whole time, recently had back surgery to fix Spinal Stenosis in her L4 & L5 vertebrae. So she has been off work since Thanksgiving because of this and is still in recovery.

With both of them being off work for the foreseeable future and the medical bills piling up, they both could use everyone's help.

Thank you all and god bless.