Help Tanner on his road to recovery

On Saturday, July 25th, at Quilomene Dune, on the Columbia River, Tanner Williams had a terrible accident that has left him paralyzed from the lower chest down. At this point we're not exactly sure what happened to Tanner, but what we do know is that he was found floating in the river and had to be resuscitated by bystanders on the dune. Thankfully, two of those bystanders were EMT's with CPR training. They performed CPR for 45 minutes while Tanner was transported to the boat launch at Sunland Estates. From there he was transported by ambulance to the hospital in Quincy, WA. A cat scan showed that he had fractured his neck, and would be sent via Life Flight to Sacred Heart Hospital in Spokane, WA. Tanner  was placed in a medically induced coma in order to stabilize him for transport. After he arrived in Spokane, he was sent to surgery to repair his neck fracture, but the surgeon couldn't because his core body temperature was only 91 degrees. They started the warming process and then had to reinsert his breathing tube because it wasn't properly inserted. They sent him to ICU to warm up and stabilize in hopes of doing surgery in the morning.

Sunday, July 26th. Tanner survived the night and went to surgery at 11:30 am. Dr. Jonathan Carlson is the neurosurgeon that performed Tanner's surgery. He had to go into  the front of his neck to clean out the bone fragments of the C6 vertebrae. They installed a titanium cage in place of the C6 vertebrae. The cage will allow bone to grow back and protect the spinal cord. Tanner's spinal cord was torn three quarters of the way through and 1 1/2" long. A devastating spinal cord injury that left him paralyzed. He's still on the respirator tonight and still fighting. He will have another surgery tomorrow morning at 11:10 AM, to install screws and titanium plates from the base of his brain to his mid back. This will allow Tanner to be able to hold his head up. 

Please pray for Tanner! He needs a miracle and prayers from everyone that loves him. Thank you to everyone that helped Tanner. We don't know your names, but know we appreciate everything you've done for our wonderful Tanner. He's a big olde teddy bear of a young man that would do anything for anyone. 

Thank you for anything you can do to help. Everything and anything will be greatly appreciated as we don't know what to expect.