Owen Thompson and Family
Donation protected
On Friday evening, January 29th, 2016 a cold, wet day was dwindling down to darkness. What was to have been a family dinner for Mike, Mary Louise and their two sons Owen and Ethan, had been postponed while Mike made his way home from work. Temperatures dropped below freezing making the roads slick and dangerous, black ice forming wherever the coldest touch of frost was set upon the earth.
Rambunctious boys, Owen and Ethan decided that they’d “kill some time” by visiting friends and sixteen year old Owen, having just received his permanent drivers’ license was anxious to drive. Taking his sister Megan’s truck, they went to a nearby friend’s house, or at least what passes for nearby in rural Ontario, some miles away.
He also agreed to go to the local store for some provisions, after dropping off Ethan off at their destination. At 7:45 pm Mary Louise’s friend, a retired policewoman, came into the house and told Mary to get “your coat, we need to go to the hospital.” Her first question was “Is he dead?” All mothers must have this question running through their minds, waiting to breach the surface of thought like some sea monster from the deeps.
But he was not dead. Although he was definitely in a bad way. He had lost control of the vehicle approaching a small creek, slid sideways into the ditch, and rolled the truck until the cab was crushed against the trunk of a tree. The truck itself was bent into angle that would have brought the steering wheel to Owen, so wearing his seat belt did not provide as much protection as it might otherwise have provided.
He was found almost 30 minutes after the accident, less than a mile from home, and first responders took 45 minutes to extricate him from the vehicle. He was rushed to the local hospital in Campbellford, his injuries too extensive for them to do much more than prep him for transfer to Toronto’s Sunnybrook hospital. Mary Louise and Mike caught up with him there coming from different directions. Apart from the severe trauma of the accident and his unconscious state, he had broken his neck, fractured a bone in his back, crushed his trachea, had internal bleeding in his thorax and head, and although breathing when the first responders arrived at the scene, his lungs had collapsed by the time he had reached the hospital.
After being stabilized there he was taken to Sunnybrook with Mary Louise and Mike following by car. Admitted, he was placed in the Critical Care Unit and began what we all hope to call his “odyssey of recovery”. We cannot avoid the storms in life and sometimes we cannot even find shelter from them, but we can survive them; we can fight our way through them and that is what this 6 foot five inch 16 year old boy is now doing. One week in and he has been confronted with many challenges but he continues to fight the good fight. “He is young and he is strong” has become the mantra by which the rest of us place our hopes in his recovery, it is the marker which we lay down every minute of every day to place our faith solidly behind him, from wherever it is derived. We will see him smile again.
In the meantime, Mary Louise and Mike are entrepreneurs, independent business people who make their living in service to their community. This event abruptly changes the locus of their attention and activities. Their life in a quiet, rural location two hours from the hustle and bustle of Toronto is far removed from the environs of Sunnybrook Hospital and it’s Critical Care waiting room. Understandably, they want to be near their boy and this is going to be a long and expensive proposition. Family is reorganizing to pick up what obligations they may but there are a myriad of them, small and large, that cannot or should not rightly, be borne by others.
This GoFundMe Project is meant to assist Mike and Mary Louise in covering the myriad of incidental expenses associated with moving their life to be near their boy, Owen. From accommodation to gas, from meals to parking, from therapy to medicine, this project will help make this overwhelming challenge into something that can preserve the sanity and sanctity of a family we all care so much about.
Rambunctious boys, Owen and Ethan decided that they’d “kill some time” by visiting friends and sixteen year old Owen, having just received his permanent drivers’ license was anxious to drive. Taking his sister Megan’s truck, they went to a nearby friend’s house, or at least what passes for nearby in rural Ontario, some miles away.
He also agreed to go to the local store for some provisions, after dropping off Ethan off at their destination. At 7:45 pm Mary Louise’s friend, a retired policewoman, came into the house and told Mary to get “your coat, we need to go to the hospital.” Her first question was “Is he dead?” All mothers must have this question running through their minds, waiting to breach the surface of thought like some sea monster from the deeps.
But he was not dead. Although he was definitely in a bad way. He had lost control of the vehicle approaching a small creek, slid sideways into the ditch, and rolled the truck until the cab was crushed against the trunk of a tree. The truck itself was bent into angle that would have brought the steering wheel to Owen, so wearing his seat belt did not provide as much protection as it might otherwise have provided.
He was found almost 30 minutes after the accident, less than a mile from home, and first responders took 45 minutes to extricate him from the vehicle. He was rushed to the local hospital in Campbellford, his injuries too extensive for them to do much more than prep him for transfer to Toronto’s Sunnybrook hospital. Mary Louise and Mike caught up with him there coming from different directions. Apart from the severe trauma of the accident and his unconscious state, he had broken his neck, fractured a bone in his back, crushed his trachea, had internal bleeding in his thorax and head, and although breathing when the first responders arrived at the scene, his lungs had collapsed by the time he had reached the hospital.
After being stabilized there he was taken to Sunnybrook with Mary Louise and Mike following by car. Admitted, he was placed in the Critical Care Unit and began what we all hope to call his “odyssey of recovery”. We cannot avoid the storms in life and sometimes we cannot even find shelter from them, but we can survive them; we can fight our way through them and that is what this 6 foot five inch 16 year old boy is now doing. One week in and he has been confronted with many challenges but he continues to fight the good fight. “He is young and he is strong” has become the mantra by which the rest of us place our hopes in his recovery, it is the marker which we lay down every minute of every day to place our faith solidly behind him, from wherever it is derived. We will see him smile again.
In the meantime, Mary Louise and Mike are entrepreneurs, independent business people who make their living in service to their community. This event abruptly changes the locus of their attention and activities. Their life in a quiet, rural location two hours from the hustle and bustle of Toronto is far removed from the environs of Sunnybrook Hospital and it’s Critical Care waiting room. Understandably, they want to be near their boy and this is going to be a long and expensive proposition. Family is reorganizing to pick up what obligations they may but there are a myriad of them, small and large, that cannot or should not rightly, be borne by others.
This GoFundMe Project is meant to assist Mike and Mary Louise in covering the myriad of incidental expenses associated with moving their life to be near their boy, Owen. From accommodation to gas, from meals to parking, from therapy to medicine, this project will help make this overwhelming challenge into something that can preserve the sanity and sanctity of a family we all care so much about.
Organizer
Nicole Lazure
Organizer
Stirling, ON
