The Road to Recovery
Dave Blum doesn’t remember the accident.
A swath of his memory from that August night, erased in a blur of light and smashing metal.
The scars, however, remain.
Blum, his wife Chris and son Ryan were driving home to Glenwood following a football game Aug. 28. The Rams had just won their season-opener 35-0 and the drive from Red Oak along a dark, traffic streamed Highway 34 that night was slow. A vehicle driven by Brent Jack of Emerson was not. Jack’s Dodge Caliber crossed the centerline, hitting the Blum’s Ford Taurus head on.
Jack, 48, was killed in the crash.
Blum, 46, and his family were lucky. Christine suffered some bumps and bruises, Ryan, sitting in the back seat behind his dad, suffered a broken tibia. Blum’s injuries were devastating. A broken pelvis. A crushed knee. A fractured right hand. A cracked sternum and ribs. A lacerated liver. He underwent multiple surgeries and spent three weeks in the intensive care unit at Creighton Medical Center and then another six weeks at the Madonna Rehabilitation Hospital in Lincoln, Neb.
“We didn’t see it coming,” Christine said of the head-on collision. “We were driving back to Glenwood and there was car after car on the road after the football game and the car drove right into us. I blacked out and Ryan blacked out for a minute but we came to right away. Fortunately there were a lot of cars that came on the scene and helped.”
Just short of three months later, Blum, is home. Last week he was able to attend Ryan’s basketball game – his son’s first since being medically cleared from his own injury a week ago.
“It’s been a long road but I couldn’t ask for a better support team,” Blum said, adding he has no memory of the crash that night that nearly killed him. “It’s been great to be home. Physical therapy is going great. My left leg just needs more time so we’re getting there. For a guy just driving home from a football game and having a car cross the center line, it’s been a long road for sure.”
Blum admits he’s not 100 percent – “I think a month or two more of rehab and I’ll be putting my full weight on my leg,” he said – and walks with the aid of crutches but he said the distance he’s traveled health-wise is light years from where he was he first returned home Oct 30. He has yet to return to work at the contracting business he owns with his brother Bob, Blum Brothers Construction, but he said he talks to clients and has visited a few job sites.
On Nov. 6, Blum returned to his other “job,” on the Glenwood School Board. A two-term school board member, Blum, made a return appearance at the monthly board meeting, albeit electronically. Using a device called an iRobot provided by the Area Education Agency, Blum attended via an iPad mounted on a mobile segueway he controlled from his laptop at home.
“I’m not there, but I’m still here,” Blum told the board that night.
“I’m very appreciative of being on the board and it’s a board I’ll be a part of until the very end,” Blum said last week. “I am dedicated to the school. I appreciate everything this district and the City of Glenwood has done for me.”
Glenwood Superintendent Devin Embray said the board could not have been happier to see their vice president out of the hospital and voting on school issues as mundane as clinical practice agreements with the College of Saint Mary’s and the rental of the Morrison Soccer Stadium in Omaha for a Glenwood soccer match this spring.
“They (the board) have been waiting to get him back so it was nice to see him there,” said Embray. “When something as traumatic as this happens, you don’t know if things will change or if the priorities are different but Dave’s priorities are the same as they’ve were before the accident. The board is excited to have his leadership back. It was good to have him back and joking around.”
Blum recalls discussing the iRobot technology at previous board meetings; never did he think he would be the one using it some day.
“I talked to Devin (Embray) and I think it’s such a great idea. It’s great for students and it’s great for board members to be able to attend meetings they might not have been able to attend otherwise. I truly believe this is a great option and I think this board wholeheartedly is into being on the board.”
Blum’s body was battered and broken by the accident but the husband and father of three still feels he was the lucky one. He’s alive and his family was left relatively unscathed by the accident.
“I’m so glad it was me (who was hurt) and for my wife to be able to step up and take care of things. My son Ryan was hurt a little bit but they bounced right back and took control of everything. I was very fortunate with that.”
Blum could deal with the pain, the surgeries, the agonizing physical therapy, the uncomfortable hospital room and the doctors and nurses poking and prodding him. Easily the hardest of his post-accident recovery, he said, was being away from his family.
“You wake up in a 12-by-12 room at 6 a.m. and look out the window and know until you fall asleep that night you aren’t going any further than physical theraphy down the hall and its tough,” he said. “If it hadn’t have been for Chris telling me it’s for the family in a bunch of different ways it would have been harder.
“That was the hardest part, being in the room and saying goodbye to my family every night and watching them leave and not seeing them until the next day. I missed a lot.”
Blum has been overwhelmed by both the responders that night and the outpouring of support of the community.
“There’s so many people on the list that helped at the accident and afterward bringing my family food, and the cards to phone calls. It was huge for us and I really grateful for it.”
It’s that support, he said, that has helped him get through a trying ordeal that has also changed his outlook, he thinks, forever.
“I truly believe through God and through family and friends praying for me I’m still here. It was that and a little luck. I’m just appreciative. I think from here on out I might be looking at things a bit differently. I’m trying to get back to normal and I don’t walk around thinking I’m a lucky coin by any means but I think the prayers I’ve gotten is why I’m still here.”