A New Day Has Begun

Mike Lubberden is the Director of Facilities at Central College. You may have seen his picture in the Town Crier last week, thanks to his wife Sheryl, who wanted everyone to remember his fiftieth birthday. Mike was posing on his Harley...in another time.

On November 14, 2007, Mike left Central College on his Harley to go lap swimming, traveling east on University Ave. At the intersection of Broadway and University, he was T-boned, thrown into the gutter, and began a new life.

Mike had his helmet on. Speed was not a factor, yet the airbag deployed and the car was totaled. His left leg was hanging by a thread below the knee, his pelvis was hyperextended, and he fractured the vertebrae in his lower back. Central College First Responder Craig Roose and Paramedic Tom Hostetter heard the page of a bicycle/car accident and immediately went to the scene. Mike was conscious, and asked Tom how bad his leg was. "It's bad," Tom told him, and at that moment Mike starting preparing himself for a long journey.

Dr. Matt Doty at Pella Regional determined that his left foot could not be saved, and Mike was life-flighted to Iowa Methodist Medical Center in Des Moines. "That was a bizarre ride," Mike said. "I felt like I was kidnapped by aliens. The nurse was in full flight headgear, her face covered somehow, a flashlight on the side of her helmet, leaning over me, telling me she was going to give me something to take away all pain."

His leg was amputated about half way between the knee and foot. "Then the dark days began," said Mike, "and I was continually lifted up by my friends and family." Mike describes becoming a Christian on Aug. 26, 1999. "Prior to that, I 'thought' I was a Christian, but I didn't really get it. I didn't understand the gift of grace and redemption," he said. "This experience has been somewhat of an epiphany for me about the spiritual world that lives in the hearts and minds of individuals, of my wife, my family, my church family, and my Central family." His sister, an RN at Iowa Lutheran, would not leave his side. "I had what I call a Dream Team of nurses," he said, "and humor kept me going." His Pastor came to visit - with an eye patch and inflatable parrot to sit on his shoulder.

After just one week he was sent to a rehabilitation unit where physical and occupational therapists worked him over constantly. "I had no time to feel sorry for myself," he said "They were always there. They kept me going. It was a little bit like being in a retirement home. I'd be in a wheelchair at the dinner table with all these little old ladies in bibs. And I fit right in!"

For two hours for twenty days, Mike was placed in a hyperbaric chamber and "taken down" to the equivalent of sixty feet below sea level. This forced oxygen into the fine capillaries within the wound and greatly speeded healing. He described his bruises healing almost instantaneously. The added oxygen of course didn't affect just the leg; Mike noticed that his eyesight greatly improved too, but slowly went back when he was no longer getting such concentrated oxygen. The hyperbaric chamber was made from Plexiglas, and was equipped with microphone and speakers. He and Sheryl (sitting outside) watched movies together every day for those two hours.

"That's about when I started coming to grips with reality," he said. "I knew God cared about me. Humor remained my best ally."

Every other day the wound dressing had to be changed, and that was the worst. The surgeons had left as much bone as possible, leaving the stump about half covered with skin. It appeared the remaining wound would require skin grafting in order to close it. "Every time I prayed that God would help me get through it. The pain was much worse than the actual accident. Praying gave me the strength I needed to tell the doctor to just stop, that I wasn't going to go through that anymore." The doctor negotiated, and thereafter put Mike completely under for the dressing removal and wound debridement. With Mike anesthetized, the doctor was allowed the surgical time to be creative in the way the skin was pulled together, and closed the wound without skin grafts.

Mike was also helped by wearing a wound vacuum, a device which sealed the stump with plastic and was attached to a portable vacuum device. It promoted healing and helped pull the skin down to cover the wound.

On Thanksgiving, Mike was alone until his family arrived later in the day, and "I felt that God started me thinking about the person who hit me. I knew who she was and got her number from information and called, just to see how she was doing. I mean, I know how terrible I would feel if I had been in her shoes. I'd much rather suffer the pain of being the victim than the emotional pain of having caused the pain of another.

I have a personal relationship with Christ," Mike continued. "His faithfulness will always inspire me. I just have to learn to remain in his presence, and that presence has awakened me. I'm reminded of the choral composition by Joseph Martin titled The Awakening:

I dreamed a dream.
I dreamed a silent dream of a land not far away.
Where no bird sang, no steeples rang, and teardrops fell like rain.
I dreamed a dream, a silent dream.
I dreamed a dream of a land so filled with pride
That every song, both weak and strong, withered and died.
I dreamed a dream.

Awake! Awake!
Awake, awake my soul, and sing!
The time for praise has come.
The silence of the night has passed; a new day has begun.
Let music never die in me!
Forever let my spirit sing!

Life has changed for me. I've gotten help from God, from God in the form of friends and strangers that He sent into my life. Their love lowered me to the hands of Jesus." Mike described how friends built outside hand rails to assist him with getting into his house, installed grab bars around the house, erected snow fence, picked up fallen branches after the ice storms, fixed the well, and did some rewiring in the barn. This is not even mentioning the visits, cards, letters, emails, plants, meals, and gifts from a host of others.

Just before Christmas Mike went back to work. He believed it would help keep his mind off the phantom pain. It was then that it dawned on him that he didn't have his keys and had no idea where they were. He checked with doctors and nurses everywhere. It weighed heavily in his mind, because those keys would open anything - everything - on Central's campus. "It must have been a God moment," said Mike, "that inspired Tom Hostetter to go back to the accident scene where I'd been laying by a storm sewer intake, open the manhole and go down to search through the leaves and debris until he found those keys."

A second "God moment" he described was with his surgeon during one of his checkups. Mike was relating how his coworkers at Central had made him, as a joke, an artificial leg out of PVC piping. His surgeon stopped, startled, then told Mike how he was searching for a way to make an affordable prothesis to use in Third World countries, where the typical prosthesis was made of rope and boards. He asked Mike to bring him the plastic prosthetic so he could see how it was constructed, to obtain ideas.

Mike has been navigating from his wheelchair and crutches, but has been fitted for a prosthesis and will get his new leg on Friday. The prosthesis distributes the weight all around the leg and under the knee, not on the stump. On Saturday, he intends to go back to lap swimming. There is a swim leg available, a leg that allows you to walk into the water, and on releasing will kick to help the other leg swim. Will he ride a motorcycle again? "Yes, by myself. I don't think I will ever let Sheryl ride behind me again."

Mike says "I still have anxiety. I haven't had weight on my left leg or hip for a long time, and it hurts trying. I am concerned about any other injury that might be there to the knee, or my hip. I still experience phantom pain, and I worry about the drugs I'm on. I'm trying to wean myself off them."

And there is the insurance to wade through. "Sheryl has been dealing with all that. Insurance isn't given," he says, "You have to ask for it. Anything above what is simply medical has to be negotiated. For instance, the prosthesis is covered (at a cost that ranges from $5-10,000 or more), but to get the swim leg covered, even though that was my life style, will require a lawyer to go after her insurance company. I'll go after the insurance company, but I won't go after her. Never.

I know that God will provide the strength and courage I need to remain positive in the face of all future adversity. I'm confident that he will continue to send the people into my life who will challenge, strengthen, and encourage me, as well as remind me of the bigger picture than what's just happening to 'me.' Christ has never failed me, nor will He in the future. I'm going to jump at the opportunity to be a friend who is willing to lower a friend into the hands of Jesus, as per the Gospel of Mark 2. I want to be that person for someone else."

Marty Racheter 022708