Lanny Thomas, a former mayor of Trion, Georgia, received the phone call every parent fears: The one from his child in trouble.
It was near midnight on Aug. 18, and Thomas’s 27-year-old son, Christian, was on the line saying: “Daddy, I’ve had a wreck and I’m hurting.”
That was scary enough. But then, said Thomas, he heard his son say to a state patrol officer who had just arrived: “‘Can you get me out of here?’ And I’m like, oh my gosh, do they have to bring out the Jaws of Life?”
But neither of the Thomases knew the call was just the beginning of their trauma involving a rainy Chattooga County North Georgia night, a skidding and airborne car, a fractured spinal lumbar, a four-hour surgery, nearly a week in the hospital, a painful recovery and COVID-19.
That last bit of trauma – COVID-19 – shouldn’t have been a part of this saga, but it became a big factor.