274: What if you were crushed by 10,000 pounds of stone?
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This Is Actually Happening features real experiences that often include traumatic events. Please consult the show notes for specific content warnings on each episode and for more information about support services. I entered the bathroom and I finally look in the mirror and all I can think of is the horror. The lowest moment in my life was looking at that mirror. I kind of just felt dead. From Wondery, I'm Witt Misseldein. You are listening to This Is Actually Happening.

Episode 274 What if you were crushed by 10,000 pounds of stone?

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This season, Instacart has your back to school. As in, they've got your back to school lunch favorites, like snack packs and fresh fruit. And they've got your back to school supplies, like backpacks, binders, and pencils. And they've got your back when your kid casually tells you they have a huge school project due tomorrow.

Let's face it, we were all that kid. So first call your parents to say I'm sorry, and then download the Instacart app to get delivery in as fast as 30 minutes all school year long. Get a $0 delivery fee for your first three orders while supplies last. Minimum $10 per order. Additional terms apply. Both my parents were born in Boston. My father grew up in Dorchester, my mother in South Boston. Shortly after my parents got married, they had my brothers, John and then my brother Steve, a couple years later.

I fall in as the third child and then I have two younger brothers who are a set of twins four years behind myself. My mom was a small framed little Sicilian woman who can cook like no other. I was her favorite most likely because I mostly resembled her dad. I was also small and looked a lot like him. My mom didn't work. She was a stay-at-home mom back in the days when dad actually worked for family financially.

My dad, also just a very loving person, very supportive of us kids, loves watching us do our sports. We played in every sport possible growing up. He's a very hardworking man to help provide for us. Is it a perfect home? No home is, but it was as perfect as I was going to get it. I think I was a pretty happy kid growing up. I was a middle child. I have five boys.

I was a little bit more independent, I think, than my brothers. You know, kind of had to figure out things on my own, play on my own. You know, I was a little bit smaller than my brothers. I was kind of like the runt of the litter.

As I got older, my dad kind of looked at me one day and kind of said to me, you know, Mike, you're going to be a small person. You know, you're just not a big guy. So we need to make you stronger and faster than the other kids. So I think I was in fifth grade. My dad put together a workout routine and every single day I'd run two miles and every night sit ups and push ups and working out with barbells.

Sure enough, that did help me, and I played football, and I fell in love with it. And my coach put me in there figuring, hey, nobody's going to expect a little guy in there against a big guy. And he was expecting me to be able to break into the offensive line and make a play. Well, sure enough, it was working. So football ended up being my favorite sport.

My senior year of high school was tough because that year we had a new defensive coach come into play and the first game comes and goes and I sat on the sidelines. Very frustrating since I made first team for junior varsity team and I was getting no play time. After the fourth game, I kind of spoke up to the defensive coach asking to play and he insisted I was too small to play.

So, I went to the head coach and kind of complained to him. So, he made me a deal. You come into tomorrow's practice. I'll put you against my fastest kid. If you beat him, you can start the next game. Well, he put me against the whole team and had us running, I think, three or four races. And each time, I kept on winning. So, he kept his word. Fifth game comes along. I start the game. I have a great game. I get my name in the newspaper for my performance. It was great.

Come the next game, I'm back on the sidelines. I didn't want to sit on the bench my senior year, so I ended up quitting. And I regret that for 22 years. Being insecure of your height when you're a man, when you want to be six foot tall and you're barely five feet seven tall on a good day. And I always felt the need to prove myself because people say, oh, you know, you're a small guy. Oh, look at the small kid. Oh, you can't play this game because you're too small.

Once I got older, dating scene comes along, you're trying to talk to a woman, and she's looking down at you going, how tall are you anyway? And kind of giggles, and nothing takes you down a notch more than feeling that you're a short person in a tall world. I needed to prove to them that this size person, this size man can be just as tough as you can, just as good as you can in anything.

After high school, I ended up going to study electronic engineering at Wentworth Institute. I ended up taking two years of electronic engineering and switched over to industrial design. After college, I went into the kitchen home design business. My boss's son had opened up a granite importing business. Once in a while, I'd be asked to go help him unload a crate from overseas of granite slabs.

Sometimes it would be operating a forklift or help rigging stone with a crane. The stone is actually shipped standing straight up rather than laying down, which to me didn't really make much sense because it just seemed very dangerous. Right before I turned 30 years old, I met this girl, Cece, seven years younger than me.

You know, we hit it off pretty quick, pretty strong. But after a couple months, things were kind of just up and down in the relationship. I think both of us, maybe maturity levels, you know, two very stubborn people. Nice person, very insecure herself, very jealous, being constantly on and off, you know. I'd say we loved each other at different points, but that created lots of issues in our relationship for the next few years.

It was October 2003, 32 years old. Apparently, we decide, well, maybe we should give it another go. And we went out for dinner and a movie and went to go see Mystic River. And she came back to my house, spent the night. And next morning, I take my two boxer pups out the door and go for a walk. As I'm getting back to the house, my phone's going off.

It's my friend David who owns the granite importing business. And he's asked me to please help him. He has a shipment of granite coming in and needs help. I told him right off, no, I really don't like doing it. I've helped him multiple times now. And each time I keep saying, I don't want to do this again. It's very dangerous work. It's something I've never been trained to do. It's something I never did for a job or anything. It was just more of a helping a friend out.

I start eating my breakfast and his father calls, who is the person I actually work for. He is this nicest, greatest man, like a second father to everyone. And he asked me, hey, Mike, can you help out one last time? I promised this would be the last time. I have somebody else's son helping out that day. So you won't have to do all the hard work and I'll take good care of you.

So, I couldn't really say no to him because, once again, he's just a great man. I remember shaving and just staring at myself in the mirror after I shaved for whatever reason, I couldn't tell you. But just gave one extra long stare at my face for unknown purposes. Took my shower, got dressed, and headed off to the granite location.

The other helper that he got for the day, Anthony, he's the son of the office manager. Real nice kid. It's his birthday. So, of course, we're like, okay, birthday lunch. Happy birthday. You know, we don't know who you are. But, you know, very nice man. Finally, a tractor trailer shows up with a stone. The cargo container the truck is carrying looked like it was pulled out of Boston Harbor. It is so run down, crumpled.

rusted up, banged up looking and we're all just looking at each other going where the hell did you pull that out of? Like we just couldn't believe they would show up with such a container. So now the crane operator, he shows up. This crane operator is a new one to us. We've never had this operator before. So he sets up kind of perpendicular to the tractor trailer.

We kind of questioned him, like, why would you want to be behind the tractor trailer so you can see where you're unloading from, you know, see us working inside the container? Because being parked perpendicular to it, it's kind of a blind spot. And he let us know, hey, I'm in charge here. If you don't like it, I'll leave. So, of course, we gave in and said, okay, well, you're in charge.

I still remember us trying to open up the rear doors of the container. And we had to take a sledgehammer to open up the pins. And once we opened up the top pin, the walls just bowed out and doors popped open and we almost fell out. We're all sitting there going, geez, we really shouldn't be messing with this thing. This thing seems structurally not well. But David insisted, nope, it should be fine. There were six bundles of stone in the back room.

Each stone is 7 feet tall, 11 feet long, and an inch and a quarter thick. Each one weighed up to 9,600 pounds. We got the first four bundles out, but as we were taking them out, we could see that the floor was buckling up and down. And we were kind of getting a little nervous, like, oh, wait a minute. We've never seen the floors bouncing up and down like a trampoline before. But at this point, David's like, well, there's nothing we can do. We have to continue on.

We get to the final two bundles. I get back in the container and grab the straps. I'm to put the straps around one end of the bundle, and Anthony's to do the back end of it. As I'm knelt down, and I have the straps set in place, waiting for David to tell the crane operator to start lifting the stone, David happened to be walking by the back door of the container, and he could just start to see that the bundle was starting to fall towards me.

It was moving silently and you don't really notice when you're knelt down next to a wall of something moving towards you. And I just remember him screaming and I'm just thinking, "What the hell is he complaining about? What's he screaming about now?" And Anthony runs over to me and grabs hold of my shoulder and tries to lift me to get up and run.

I look up and I see the wall of stone coming at me and the feeling was, "Holy shit, this is really happening." And literally there's no other time to have any other thoughts. I didn't have time to even have my life flash in front of me, so to speak, when you think death is upon you and there was no time to even have that moment. All I can remember is just run. You have 11 feet to run and

I made it just barely five feet because it was at this point falling so fast and it collapsed and pins my head by my temple up against the other bundle of stone and crushed my head up against it. The whole tractor trailer went up on its side and then slowly fell back down to the ground. It hit with such tremendous force because it was nearly 10,000 pounds falling over. The impact noise itself must have echoed for miles.

I felt no pain. I don't recollect that moment. It happened so fast. I didn't get a chance to think about my family. If I had died at that moment, it was such a flash. AJ comes running out of the building. His father comes running out of the building. David's there, and all he's doing is screaming, raging, screaming no, crying and just distraught.

He and his father get back up on the steel container, undo the straps to free me by my head because I'm pinched, like, you know, laying there lifeless and crushed. So they redo the straps and David turns to the crane operator and starts screaming, you know, lift, lift. Crane operator looks at him and just puts his hand up and says, nope, let's wait for the fire department to get there. And they're all freaking out going, well, what's the fire department going to do with 10,000 pounds of granite on this guy?

So there's a granite fabrication shop next door to the accident scene, and about eight employees come running out, and they start climbing up on the crane, and they were just going to yank the guy out of his seat and lift it themselves. The crane operator, realizing he's about to get his ass kicked by these guys, he finally lifts the stone up just enough to release my head, and I fall, they said, like a sack of potatoes in just a huge, gigantic puddle of blood.

Anthony now jumps underneath the stone that's kind of resting just over me at this point and pulls me out and flipped me upside down to clear all the blood. And they said I started kicking. So like, okay, they knew they had me breathing again. So the three of them are taking turns holding my head together and they said that the blood was just pouring out and they can see right into my skull. My mouth is sideways, the eyeball's down whereabouts my chin would have been. Ambulance finally shows up.

They drive me over to the helicopter, and I was still holding somewhat of a pulse, but they knew I was starting to shut down. So the med flight crew takes over, and they go to fly off. Got me to the hospital within minutes because we're at this point, I think, about 30 or 40 miles away from a level one trauma center in Boston. That was the only hospital that can take care of me.

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Hi, I'm Angie Hicks, co-founder of Angie. When you use Angie for your home projects, you know all your jobs will be done well. Roof repair? Done well. Kitchen sink install? Done well. Deck upgrades? Done well. Electrical upgrade? Done well. Angie's been connecting homeowners with skilled pros for nearly 30 years, so we know the difference between done and done well. Hire high-quality, certified pros at Angie.com.

The next thing I do remember, I'm kind of like in a dream. I had recently lost a friend of mine, an old colleague of mine, and he had passed away. He got stung by a bee while working on a job, and he was driving on the highway when he got stung and didn't have his EpiPen with him.

So he had passed a few months before my accident. And the next memory that comes into mind is I'm walking through a forest and he's sitting there on a log. I start talking to him and he looks at me and says, Hey, you shouldn't be here. It's not your time. You're going to be fine. If you can, just check in on my family's doing well and if they need anything. But you're going to be fine, Mike.

Next thing you know, I wake up and I'm in a hospital bed. I can just barely see my brother Steve sitting by my feet. I remember I can see all these cables running along me. I could hear machines going beep and whatnot in the background. I have a trach tube going towards my neck. So I'm feeling all these wires and cables and whatnot all along the front of my body and I try to sit up.

And that's when my oldest brother, John, kind of places his hand on my shoulder and says, you know, hey, Mike, you were just in an accident. We're in the hospital right now. They're going to take good care of you.

And he grabs hold of my hand and I start, you know, holding his hand. And my youngest brother Mark is there in the room and he's getting kind of excited that I just had wakened up. And the nurse says, oh, well, no, he's not waking up. That's just reflexes and whatnot. No, there's no way possible that he's coherent. So my brother John says to me, Mike, squeeze my hand once for yes, two for no, if you understand what I'm saying.

So I clench his hand, squeezed it tight once, and next thing you know, he starts asking me questions. And the nurse is like, okay, well, forget everything I just said. And my brother Mark goes running down the hallway to get the rest of the family because they were instructed by the surgeons to go in there and say their goodbyes because at this point they were only giving me a 2% chance of surviving. At that moment, mass confusion, but also massive amount of pain,

The pain I was feeling was my entire body just screaming all at once. And there's really not enough words to describe the pain all at once you're getting.

Any talking in the room was extremely loud to me. Even my brother whispering to me was very loud. And that the lights above me were like burning me. The feeling of heat on my skin was such an amazing, insane sensation that lights felt like they were just like heaters right on top of me. And next thing you know, it had to be eight doctors come running in the room as well as my parents. And

the amount of noise overstimulating me and it was quite horrifying to me of just all the reactions all at once. So now I went from being confused for what's going on to, okay, I'm feeling a ridiculous amount of pain and the feeling of fear because I didn't quite understand the seriousness of my situation.

When you're confused, like, how the hell did I get here? Like, I don't remember, you know, you just don't remember how you ended up there. And somebody's trying to describe to you what happened. But at this point, my head's the size of a basketball, bigger than a basketball. My entire body was swelled up. Next, you know, the lead surgeon, he raised his voice and just screams, I need everybody out of this room now.

The room cleared, and the doctors want to ask me questions, so they let my parents stay. At this point, I can't talk. I have no mouth. I didn't realize I didn't have a mouth and that I have a trach tube. But I just remember I couldn't do anything with my face because I don't feel my face. And my mom and dad sit there, and they took turns holding my hands. And, you know, they would ask me questions, and my parents would say he said yes or no.

Doctors are sitting there quizzing me and asking me all these questions, and I am so exhausted and in pain, and I don't understand why they're asking these questions.

I do remember, though, the nurse coming over and handing me a controller of some sort with a push button on it. And she starts to explain it to me. This is for morphine injection. If you're in any pain, press this button. And I just remember pressing that button like I was a kid playing, you know, the Atari 2600 Space Invaders game, not realizing that it would only do one dosage, but the amount of pain it was in, the morphine just was not doing enough.

They put me into another room in the ICU. Finally, somebody got me a pen and paper and I am kind of writing to everybody what I can. I can't really see the paper, so I'm trying to write blindly, so to speak. David comes in to see me and AJ, his brother. I just begged him to tell me more of what happened because I just felt I was being left out of the dark. You know, he was reluctant to tell me too many details.

But once I found out that it was actually his quick thinking that helped rescue me, I still have this sheet of paper and I wrote hero and drew an arrow pointing to him. He kind of looked down and looked away. He obviously felt some remorse and guilt that, you know, he felt it was his fault for my accident. But once again, I still did not realize how bad I really was.

My family made sure all the staff, nurses and whatnot kept mirrors away from me and made sure I didn't enter the bathroom and made me use a hopper next to the bed. They did not want me to see what I looked like. Finally, the swelling has gone down enough for a plastic surgeon to come in and start reconstructing me. And I wake up and I'm in a different ICU or recovery room and the lights are somewhat mostly off and they left the radio going.

And the radio station they had on was playing a radio story, the old 1960s Night of the Living Dead. And I am toked up on morphine listening to this story as I'm just waking up. And I think now that everybody here are zombies of some sort and they're trying to eat me. Next thing you know, I am trying to rip off all the bandages, all the needles plugged into me and whatnot, and I'm trying to escape.

Two nurses come running in, and I just remember them holding me down and talking to me like, you know, Michael, you don't want us to have to restrain you. You know, we just had surgery. You've got to keep these bandages on. And next thing you know, I'm taking swipes at them. I end up getting restrained. Every 45 minutes, they're coming into the room to take my vital signs.

And mind you, I'm not sleeping. I'm starting to get a little delirious. I'm starving and I can't eat because I don't have a mouth. So they're feeding me through a G-tube, which is not pleasant at all. They get me my own room. And as I'm laying there, I start having another new hallucination. And I wake up.

And I realized they were feeding me through the G-tube, but they had me recline too far back. And it had flung back up into my trach tube, and it was blocked. I'm trying to call for help, but I have no mouth. So I'm pressing for help. Over the loudspeaker, I hear, Can I help you? It's the nurse's station. I can't respond back to her. I don't have a mouth. So I start smashing the controller against the bed rail.

Because at this point, I'm starting to lose consciousness. And finally, nurses come running in, and I'm pointing to my neck and throat. And all I remember is them pulling off the trach tube and seeing red just shoot across the room. The two of them start screaming at the top of their lungs. And all I can think is, oh, great. Is that my jugular just burst? I had no idea what was going on.

My parents are going to come to the hospital and find me dead. And how awful and horrific that felt of just like, okay, I've made it this far and I'm going to die. I'm writing on the pad of paper to my parents saying, you need to get me out of here. I'm going to die. Everybody's trying to settle me down and say, Mike, you're in the best hospital in the world. You're going to be fine. I've choked twice and almost died. If you leave me in here tonight, I will be dead by tomorrow afternoon.

And at that point, my mother, all I remember is her taking off her jacket, throwing it across onto a chair and said, okay, I'm staying here. She looked at my dad and my brothers and said, when you go home, bring me some spare clothes and some toiletries. And my mother slept on a chair for almost two weeks, helping taking care of every need of mine. And she saved me.

My body was trying to go through the healing process. So one moment I'd be freezing, and within a couple of minutes I'd be overheating. I'd point up, meaning I was hot, or cut my hand for a C to say I was cold, or point to my mouth for water. I kept on having more hallucinations, and they were just getting more and more real and horrific that I finally pleaded with my family to, can you make them take me off the morphine?

life improved from that point on. Now I'm just really tired, but I'm a lot happier not going through these horror dreams. A nurse comes in to give me a shave. He's lathering up my face and he's just using not the sharpest, you know, disposable razor possible. He's just going over the same spot over and over again. And I get started to feel the pain on the side that was not hit. So I'm like, okay, that's a new pain. And

Can you please stop? And he's like, okay, I'm almost done. So he kind of cleans it up. And next thing you know, he kind of put out a mirror and realized that, okay, you don't need to really look in it and kind of put it away and took off kind of abruptly. Well, my curiosity was kind of getting to me at this point because I've not looked at myself in the mirror in now probably nine days. My mother had just entered back in the room and she sees me getting up. She's like, where are you going? And I point to the bathroom.

and I point to my face in my eyes. I want to look in the mirror. I enter the bathroom, and I finally look in the mirror, and all I can think of is the horror. If you've ever seen the movie Goonies, I look like Sloth, but just a little bit uglier. My head is gigantic. It's misshapen, kind of dome-like on top. My jar had ripped off and broken in three, and my palette had ripped off and broken in two.

So the reconstructive surgery I had, they went into my mouth and pulled back my lips. So my lips now are oversized and disfigured. My left eye had blown out of my head and it was down below my jaw. Once I put that back in, that eye is kind of moving on its own in different directions. My right eye, all the blood vessels in it were blown out and looked like the devil's eye. You know, my face is extremely swelled up because it was reconstructed and

I have a bunch of stitches all around my left side. And I just remember looking in the mirror saying, "Guess I'm never going to have children. What kid's going to go near me once they see this horror? And then, you know, what woman would want to be with me? I'd look horrific." Before the accident, I always assumed that someday I'd meet the right girl and grow old together, have a family to raise. And looking in the mirror, I assumed all that was out the door.

and how I regretted not doing something sooner in my life. Maybe I shouldn't have been so stubborn. I felt like I was way behind in that aspect of my life, and now I'm having immediate regrets. Your mind wanders of what could have been, you know, my on-off relationship with Cece, you know, should we have already been married and had a family? These are the regrets I started wondering. Well, it's too late. It's over.

I probably wouldn't have a wife and family of my own. I'd probably be a recluse, be hidden away. I wouldn't want people looking at me and staring at me. I'm a short, ugly, disfigured man. Everything was over for me to potentially be a father and a husband. The lowest moment in my life was looking at that mirror. I kind of just felt that...

I made my way back, and instead of sitting in the bed, I sat in the chair next to the bed and looked out the window. Boston's really pretty at nighttime to look out. And I just started staring out the window and started to weep, and I realized I got my mother crying. Any mother who is a mother of five boys, you know they're tough and can handle anything. My mother is like a pit bull, but also a very caring and sweet woman. And I got her crying, and that's when I felt terrible.

I can't see and watch my mother cry over me. Both my parents looking at me, I was aging them rapidly from this accident. You could just see it in their face. They're exhausted. They haven't slept. They're going through a different pain than I am and how guilty I felt that I was putting this pain to them, this burden. That's why I was so determined that I just need to get out of this hospital. I'm going to prove everybody wrong. I'm going to prove the doctors that I'm going to be able to do everything I used to do.

I point to my mom and I write on a pad of paper, grab hold of the machine, whatever machine. I was connected up to so many different things. Grab hold of that. Let's go for a walk. We go down the hallway, maybe 20 feet down the hallway and back. And said to myself, that's it. Every day let's start doing some more exercise. I don't care what I look like at this point. I just need to get out of this hospital.

I was a pretty active person, and I overheard the doctors talking to my brothers and some friends out in the hallway, of them asking, would Mike be able to do any of this stuff? And them saying, no, he's going to be here for a long time. But I was convinced that I was leaving sooner than they think.

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The swelling was actually reducing at what the doctors were saying, remarkable speed. They'd never seen such great healing. Finally get to the point that the hospitals said, okay, well, I don't think there's much more you can do here. So they finally released me to the rehab hospital. That was just the most unbelievable moment ever. I guess it goes back to me always wanting to prove people wrong. Don't let the size fool you. I'm getting out of here.

So once I reached the rehab hospital, I'm getting a steady stream of visitors, which is amazing. At this point, you know, AJ and his brother David are visiting me every single day. I'm begging them to tell more stories and I'm writing to them more, pleading for more answers. After I was crushed, I was pinned by my head and dead for about five or six minutes.

The granite, when it had fallen over, had enough force and weight to it to cut my head clean off when it hit me in the temple and put me up against the other wall of stone. But what stopped it from cutting my head clean off was a piece of 2x3 Italian pine wood. A piece of wood stopped the granite from cutting any further, and my head was wedged in between that piece of wood, and that piece of wood was 2 7 8ths of an inch in thickness.

So that's what the maximum width of my face was at the time of impact. The person my size only has 9 or 10 pints of blood. Going by the accident scene, photos, and the investigative reports and whatnot, I lost over 6 pints of blood. The surgeons still don't understand how I survived living with only 3 pints of blood in me, for one, not being paralyzed, two,

and surviving a traumatic brain injury that should have been far worse. They simply just don't understand how I made it, and neither do I. The other helper, who almost got crushed as well, Anthony, he came in to finally see me, and very emotional, which essentially made my eye now finding out through David and AJ that the three of them were taking turns holding my head together as I was pouring out pints of blood all over them.

Anthony visiting was just a cry fest and how appreciative I was. Because if he didn't pull me by my shoulder to get me running, we probably wouldn't be talking right now. I'm forever grateful of what he did for me. 31 days after the accident, I'm back home. Meanwhile, still being visited every single day by AJ and David.

Now that I'm able to talk more freely, I'm getting a lot more details about the accident. But I'm also watching their faces and what the impact of my accident had on them. Me, I had it easy. I got knocked the hell out. I don't remember much of that day at all, except for waking up out of the coma. But I do worry about everybody I impacted from my accident. After I saw myself in the mirror for the first time,

The nurse that was in the room that had left, she had returned. She knew I was going to go through a difficult time after seeing myself. And she kept on reassuring me, you're going to be fine. You had the most amazing doctor in the world reconstruct you. I'm arguing with her going, how? Prove to me that I'm going to be fine. And all she can do is just look at me and assure me that you have to trust me. You're going to look a lot better than you think.

So finally, I get to meet this surgeon, and you know what? He is amazing. What he was able to do in three surgeries reconstructing me would have taken probably over a dozen surgeries with different doctors. He went in and reassembled my jaw and palate and rebuilt all my cheekbones and used parts of my skull to rebuild my left eye socket because that was completely destroyed.

All in all, he used 110 titanium screws and 20 titanium plates to reconstruct my face. Every few months, as I'm looking at myself in the mirror, not seeing the massively ugly guy, but I'm seeing a less ugly guy every few months in the mirror. But at the same time, when I go out in public, I do anything, I am getting stares, and I kind of was afraid to go back out in public.

And it got to the point that I was having a tough time leaving my home. Yeah, I'm starting to look better. But now, unfortunately, mentally, I'm now dealing with new issues. Anxiety, depression, and now fear of leaving my safety zone. I didn't really find out until months later, seeing a psychiatrist, that I have agoraphobia. I can't work. I'm getting paid by workers' comp. And, you know, pay a mortgage...

A car payment, insurance, dog food for my two dogs, and trying to survive off less than $500 a week. Now I'm big time depressed. Can't go anywhere. Can't do anything. I can't leave the house. And now I'm getting anxiety because every time I leave the house, I have up to six private investigators following me around.

Get this, while I'm in the rehab hospital, I get notified by workers' comp that they identified that I was injured by a third party. And therefore, if I choose not to go after the third party, that they would be going after the third party to reclaim my medical bills and the payout to me, and that I would not be able to go after them afterwards.

So now I have to go after all the companies that created the accident. So I have literally 24 hours a day, seven days a week, the five different private investigators following me around. I have people jumping out of the bushes with cameras watching me. Now I have people making me feel guilty that I'm getting healthier and better and healing. I dealt with that for almost three years.

The agoraphobia made it difficult being on and off with Cece before and after the accident. I give her a tremendous amount of credit for being by my side.

during this whole ordeal, but it didn't change the fact that the foundation of our relationship just was never good. And she doesn't understand now that I'm suffering anxiety. She couldn't understand why I felt like that. I myself did not understand why I was so difficult on being away from my five mile happy safety zone. It was a tough couple years.

Dealing with PTSD, it wasn't easy. I can be watching a TV show and they'd have a hospital scene and just hearing the same noises I heard in the hospital can kind of set me off. Shaking, anxiety, crying. It comes on you and you have no control over it. But it's taken me years and I have control of it now.

I got laid off from doing kitchen home design from the 2010 housing collapse and needed to take on a new job. So I went back into telecom and the job required that I actually travel every single day. And I thought, well, this is my moment to make it or break it. And I was traveling literally every single day to the point I was traveling 1,500 plus miles a week and faced my fears. You do have to kind of believe you can talk yourself down on anything, but

But it takes a long time. It took almost eight years to put my life back to normal. There's a few different things that helped me get to where I am today and heal me the most. Mentally, I had an amazing support system. I had family and friends every single day, anytime I needed. Six years post-accident, Cece and I finally decide, okay, let's move on.

I needed to do more self-improvement for me to be able to be with anyone. You know, you can never really love somebody unless you love yourself. I, at this point, was making some strides in my own insecurities and saying to myself, you know what, you're looking pretty good for a guy who got his head crushed. And I started just doing some self-help. At this point, I started dating again.

It got a little weird at first. A couple of the dates, they look at the side of my head and the little ugly monster inside of me saying, oh, they're looking at your face. Oh, but then I kind of faced it and said to myself, no, no, no, no Brad Pitt here. But I'm not exactly, you know, sloth anymore. So I got back out there. My height. You know, one thing amazing to me is I learned that my height actually saved my life.

When I went to visit Dr. D, he and I are the same height. And he kind of explained to me, going by the point of impact on the side of my skull, and he explained, Mike, if you were any taller, that granite actually would have decapitated you. If you were any shorter, it would have crushed your brains. So I was literally the perfect height. And of course, him being the same height, we had a nice smile with each other, like, okay,

For once, my height was a good thing. From that moment on, I was no longer insecure about my height. In fact, I felt invincible. Nothing could take me down. And I still find it amazing to this day that it took it and my head crushed to actually feel good about myself. So now, it's eight years post-accident. Everything the doctors told me I would never be able to do, I have done.

I started working out with the football team and after, I think, a third or fourth week, the season was ready to begin. One of the coaches comes over to me. He goes, okay, enough of this shit. Go get some pads and dress for this week's game. And I kind of looked at him like, are you serious? At this point, I'm 40 years old.

I have 110 screws and 20 plates holding my face together. And he's asked me to dress for a semi-pro football team, a AAA football team, no less. He's like, yeah, you could be the backup to the backup. You can help mentor. It would be good for morale. Good to have more guys on the bench. So I'm like, okay, great. Maybe if I, whatever, help on special teams. I kind of looked at it as I am literally twice the age of some of these kids on the team. And obviously reconstructed in half the size.

But I got the equipment and I showed up for the first game a couple hours before the game, all just hanging out at the field. And coach is sitting there. He always gets my last name wrong. And, you know, he looks at me and says, hey, Wongo, how much you weigh? I'm like, I'm down to like 174. He goes, I might need to help on the line today. I'm like, yeah, I'll do it. He goes, OK, well, we'll try for the first series or two and see how it goes.

My first game doing full contact in 22 years since my senior year of high school. I line up against a guy they called Weeble. And I think the stats showed he was 360 pounds and like 6'2". And he was just this gigantic wall. Ball gets hiked and I run right through him, run right by him. He doesn't even get a hand on me. And I flush the quarterback out of the pocket. And he ends up throwing the ball away.

So I do this for two more plays in a row, and then they punted. Next series comes, same thing starts happening, and they're kind of getting pissed at the other team. So now they start swapping out players and have me go out against this gigantic, even bigger dude. And he looks at me, he goes, what the fuck are you, the water boy?

And I say nothing. I don't trash talk. But after, I think, two or three plays, getting by him, they're respecting me and not giving me any crap. And come halftime, we get to the locker room and the coach is calling out for me. Hey, where's my little guy? He goes, that's your position. You've earned it. It's yours.

I ended up playing for two full seasons and was able to hit a milestone, check off a dream that I never thought would ever come true after going through the hell I've been through and actually making right a regret I've carried for so long of quitting my senior year of high school football and end up playing semi-pro, triple-A football. Life is really good.

Working out, getting ready for the second season, I'm going for a jog through the neighborhood and I come across my old neighbor. They had moved into my town in 1987. They had a younger sister, Becca, that was 10 years younger than myself.

So I run into him and he says, hey, you know, my sister Becca is moving back to town. Just went through a breakup. And a couple weeks later, I happen to be driving by the house she had just bought and saw her out front and pulled up and started talking. And she brings me through the house, showing me the new house she just purchased and wished her a good day and said, hey, you know, we should grab a drink sometime soon.

About a week goes by, she messaged me through Facebook saying, "Hey, when are we going to grab that drink that you mentioned?" So I said to her, "Well, hey, we're going to Red Sox game." We end up going to Red Sox game and she and I, I don't think, watched more than an inning because we talked all night. Two years later, we were married and a year after that, first son was born and two years later, second son's born and life is amazing.

Who would ever thought looking at myself in the mirror for the first time in the hospital thinking that all my dreams are gone. Having a family with a wife and having children and there'd just be none of that in my future. And then after eight years of being patient and self-help, who would have ever known that I would now be the most secure I've ever been in my life.

Never, ever can I have imagined this in my wildest dreams or hallucinations. And I have to give out a shout out to AJ, David, their dad, Anthony, his mom. You know, she's the one who had to call 911. And I've only heard that recording once. It's something that will haunt me for life. Feeling and hearing the pain in her voice calling in the accident.

all the doctors and nurses, PTs, OTs, my friends and family, everybody who helped me get to where I am today. I thank them. And I still find it amazing to this day that it took it my head crush to actually feel good about myself.

Today's episode featured Mike Wolo. You can find him on Instagram at titanium underscore Mike one one zero. You can read more about his story and see photos on his website, the other side of the rock.com. And you can email him at titanium Mike one one zero at gmail.com.

From Wondery, you're listening to This Is Actually Happening. If you love what we do, please rate and review the show. You can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or on the Wondery app to listen ad-free and get access to the entire back catalog. In the episode notes, you'll find some links and offers from our sponsors. By supporting them, you help us bring you our show for free. I'm your host, Witt Misseldein.

Today's episode was co-produced by me, Jason Blaylock, and Andrew Waits, with special thanks to the This Is Actually Happening team, including Ellen Westberg. The intro music features the song Illabi by Tipper. You can join the community on the This Is Actually Happening discussion group on Facebook or follow us on Instagram at ActuallyHappening.

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She struck him with her motor vehicle. She had been under the influence and then she left him there.

In January 2022, local woman Karen Reid was implicated in the mysterious death of her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O'Keefe. It was alleged that after an innocent night out for drinks with friends, Karen and John got into a lover's quarrel en route to the next location. What happens next depends on who you ask.

Was it a crime of passion? If you believe the prosecution, it's because the evidence was so compelling. This was clearly an intentional act. And his cause of death was blunt force trauma with hypothermia. Or a corrupt police cover-up. If you believe the defense theory, however, this was all a cover-up to prevent one of their own from going down. Everyone had an opinion.

And after the 10-week trial, the jury could not come to a unanimous decision. To end in a mistrial, it's just a confirmation of just how complicated this case is. Law and Crime presents the most in-depth analysis to date of the sensational case in Karen. You can listen to Karen exclusively with Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.