United with Dan on a Mission

2.2. A life changing experience

It had been the best year of his life to date. Term 1’s cricket season went really well, he batted 6th in the team, scored the highest total of his cricket career and proudly wore the wicket keeper gloves. For the first time (unlike in primary school) he actually had good friends in the team, one of his best friends actually, Lomar, was with him in the cricket team. As for colour athletics, the blue team beat the red and white teams (he was part of the blue team), he had also finished second in the 1200m race. He was excelling at cross country, achieving his best time by completing 5km in 21 minutes. The blue team also won the colour swimming gala, and he had won several medals at various galas. High school was great! He was finally getting the recognition for all his hard work in sports and academics. He had friends that shared his interests. The second term began and he was nominated as the captain of the U/14A hockey team, and was even regularly pulled up to play with the U/16A’s. He taught one of his new friends from cricket to play hockey, and his team was unstoppable; he loved them all, and they had a perfect season winning all their games. He got the award of ‘Best Hockey Player’ at the end of the season (3^rd term). Some of his best memories are from that period of time. Suddenly it was the 22^nd of September 2010. The Grade 8 boy woke up after barely sleeping the night before – full of excitement for the day had finally arrived. The school-test series was over, holidays were around the corner and a cricket tour and tournament was about to begin! He couldn’t wait! He got on the bus; his mother brought him his favourite Mac Donald’s meal even though she couldn’t really afford it. The bus left. After a long drive they stopped at Swellendam for lunch and went on towards George. Lomar sat next to him and they listened to music together…

One day, I woke up in bed … I remember it as if it happened yesterday. My first thoughts were, “Was I not on a cricket tour? Did I really just dream about all that…?” I rolled over; I felt kind of stiff and my ankle was sore. It was morning, so I called my mother and asked her, “Was I not on a cricket tour? It seemed too real to just be a dream.” Then she told me stuff that at first made no sense… The summary of things would be: “You were in a bus accident; it rolled; Lomar and Grant are dead; some people thought you had died; you were airlifted; you suffered Traumatic Brain Injury, your skull was cracked, and your elbow, you may have suffered brain damage … Don’t you remember anything?” I was pretty much like: “Oh.” I didn’t really grasp the situation. I felt exactly the same… just 2 months of memory was gone, which was VERY weird. Slowly the reality of things dawned. I discovered I couldn’t taste most things, and had lost my sense of smell. I also really mourned the death of one of my best friends, and felt incredibly guilty. ‘Surely there must have been something I could have done to help him!?’ I really beat myself up over it until my mother said, “What could you expect to have done when you wound up so bad yourself!” Seeing some photos of the accident scene and myself in hospital, I slowly let go of that unnecessary guilt. People who saw me before, and after I woke, praised God for my recovery, saying it was such a miracle. One such person was Doc. van der Westhuizen, the school principle, whom I was very fond of. I grew closer to God in this environment and regained my faith in God 100%. I loved Him like never before and was so thankful that He kept me alive and gave me another chance. If I had gone then, I really don’t know if I would have made heaven.

I went back to school the following year. Despite missing the whole 4^th term, I was promoted to Grade 9, because of good academics. Everything started off well; people were caring, understanding and really supportive. Soon colour athletics came around and I entered for the 1200m (against my mother’s wish), went to run it, and couldn’t finish the race. Halfway through I got an indescribably painful headache that left me feeling like I wanted to throw up and pretty much paralyzed. The headache took several days to go away; medicine didn’t help. I was so terrified; I thought I was going to die! Finally it lightened, and after a few more days cleared, but I was left feeling pretty much at death’s door. I was exhausted – tired like nothing I had ever experienced before – physically, emotionally, mentally and everything in-between; just exhausted! When I got back to school, once again everyone was wonderfully caring and supportive. Later, the colour gala came round and I entered for the 200m IM (again against my mother’s advice). I finished the race – I won it actually – beating everyone else by quite a distance, but I couldn’t get out of the water. Again a headache overtook me, just like before. I was finally helped onto the grass bank nearby and there I lay in indescribable pain, my mom came and tried to help. Vaguely through the pain I remember the swimming coach coming over; I should swim another 8 races, if I withdraw my team will be losing points, I don’t want to let them down… I was sobbing and fighting to stay conscious, everything but the pain was a blur. Again I was off school for a number of days.

Eventually I became too scared to do anything too physical in case of another headache… slowly after many trials and failures I began to learn how to pace myself. But every time I made it back to school, I found that everyone became less and less supportive; teachers started telling me, “Get over it! It happened 6 months ago! Move on with your life!” In cricket, they promised to keep the team together as much as possible for a year, as they wanted us all to play together at the memorial tournament they were planning, but suddenly I found myself batting number 11, and never getting a chance to bat. I didn’t bowl, and even my wicket keeper gloves were taken away. Even in the field, I was being substituted. By nature I am not a quitter, but after giving it everything I had to no avail, I decided to stop playing cricket. Similar things happened with hockey. Lomar had died and I felt so alone again. My other friends seemed to fade away, many of them became strangers; some even lorded it over me how they were now better than me. I felt like I had become a burden to everyone. Everything changed and spiralled downhill from here. For a long time I remained close to God as He was my only strength in all of it, but my headaches became more and more frequent the harder I tried. They could be triggered by almost anything: a glare of light; a car going by with super heavy bass-pumping music playing; studying too hard; concentrating to long; not sleeping enough, or even just a bad night’s sleep; the list goes on… I learned from a neuro- specialist that I would have to live with these headaches for the rest of my life. Depression crept up, and somewhere between everything my faith disappeared. I had come to dislike God and everyone who called themselves ‘Christians’. These ‘Christians’ were among those that treated me the worst! I had absolutely nothing going for me anymore. The only thing that kept me from suicide was the possibility of yet worse conditions in case Hell really did exist.

These days looking back, even though I hated God it is undeniable that He still loved me, and was always with me. There are just so many things I can talk about, but for now, trust me when I say: “His angels really worked over time while looking after me.” I still struggle with headaches, and it makes me feel unreliable, causes me a lot of worry and concern, but there are two God given things that got me through it all. Firstly, a shout-out just to thank the bestest best super hero of a (single) mother who was always there for me. And along with that, a message that I believe must have come from God, as too many people with no contact with each other said to me: “God has great plans for you! The enemy knew this and thus tried to take you out, but failed!” Many have compared me to Harry Potter, as ‘the boy who lived.’ Despite all, it is undeniable that I’ve learnt a lot from the accident and gained life experience, sympathy, empathy and understanding for people that I could not have had by being ‘the best in everything.’ I have grown a lot in many ways since that day. What God’s plan is, I do not yet know, but considering everything and where I am now, I experience overwhelming excitement and anticipation of even greater things to come.