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Monday, April 8, 2013

2nd Update from Saturday, April 6th, 2013

About Ben's accident: Ben went long-boarding with a friend up near Snow Canyon, a scenic place with lots of rolling hills. They had never been there before, and Ben's friend, Tyler, went down a steep hill and thought that it was too difficult for Ben's board. He turned around to warn Ben, but by then Ben had already been thrown from his board. 

Apparently, Ben was thrown forward and rolled head-over-heels several times. That's why he crushed his skull (down near the hind brain), and then hit his back hard enough to bruise his lungs, then broke his pelvis/crushed his vertebrae, and so on. Beyond that, he has bad "road burn" on his knees, shoulder, back, hips, and so on, and a split lip. With the concussion, his ear drum broke, and he lost a lot of blood through his left ear and again through his nose.

An ambulance reached him quickly, and stayed with him until a helicopter got there to evacuate him at about 45 minutes. It flew him to the hospital in Saint George, but they don't have the equipment/staff to handle severe head trauma cases, so they administered meds and flew him to Las Vegas.

Ben is still in a coma, but his vitals are stable. They tried feeding him some solids through a tube yesterday, and he held it down well, so they're now starting him on more food. However, he hasn't moved since about 4 hours after the accident. We'll just have to hang on and see if he wakes up.

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