James Tharp's Life Flight and Medical Recovery Fund

Hi, My name is Laura and I am fundraising for James Tharp. James and his wife Holli are framily to us and we are trying to help them with the expensive cost of being airlifted to a trauma hospital. James lives in Murphy, NC which is nowhere close to a trauma hospital and our local hospital could not care for his serious life threatening injuries he sustained while riding his UTV that flipped on top of him.

James had a serious back and leg injury. On-scene we had to tourniquet his leg so he didn't bleed out and carefully loaded him into a vehicle and rushed him to our local hospital. At the hospital we discovered that his back was broken, 8 fractures along his spine and his spine was only being held together by a spinal ligament.

James was air lifted to Erlanger Chattanooga in TN, 2 hours away where he immediately went into surgery. 8 pins and 2 rods were placed in his back. The deep puncture to his leg and his artery were fixed and he had 10 stitches placed on the puncture. He spent 1 week in critical care and then was moved to Siskin Rehab in Chattanooga for intensive rehabilitation for 2 weeks. Now he has 6 months of out patient rehab and his wife Holli needs assistance at home as well.

Please help James and Holli as best as you can. Even a few dollars will help as it all adds up.

Please pass this along to your friends and family to help out too. This can happen to any of us at anytime. Accidents happen. A beautiful day of exploring in the Cherokee National Forest turned into this tragedy.