Twin Falls musician walking his dog survives car crash

Jan. 30—On a cold evening in December, Twin Falls musician Jordan Thornquest took his dog, Jess, for a walk. The 6-year-old Welsh Corgi had been restless all day.

Thornquest, 24, and Jess walked down Locust Street to Harmon Park, taking the same route they walked every evening. The sun had set and the lingering light was fading away into darkness.

The man-dog duo had become comfortable — maybe a little too comfortable — with the nightly walk that could easily have ended their lives.

As they started to cross the street at the park, Jess veered into the center of the intersection. A car was approaching, so Thornquest tried to wave down the driver.

The next thing he knew, he was flying through the air.

"I've never felt that level of force before," Thornquest said. "It's that sensation of blunt force and getting the air knocked out of you, but magnified incredibly. It was beyond anything I knew I could experience.

"When I landed I was upright facing the car," he said, "and it was probably three feet from my face."

Thornquest landed on his butt and slid across the ice. His eyeglasses were gone and Jess was nowhere to be seen — not that he could see anything without his glasses.

His first thought was of his dog. Motorists stopped to check on him and when he heard them talking about the dog running around in the park, he knew Jess was OK.

Next, he tried to assess his injuries as best he could.

"I wiggled my toes and wiggled my fingers and felt my legs," he said.

Thornquest knew he couldn't stand up, so he lay on the road. The ice helped numb some of the pain in his back.

"People came out and were checking on me," he said. "One of them put a coat over me."

Adrenaline kept him focused on what he needed to do next.

Thornquest called his housemate to ask if she could pick up the dog. His housemate then called Thornquest's mother in Boise, who notified his sister.

He called his boss to explain why he would be missing work for a few days.

"I had to figure out how everything would be taken care of so I could focus on going to the hospital," he said.

Then there was nothing to do but wait. Because of the pain, Thornquest couldn't move. All he could do was look up at the sky and whatever blurry faces entered his field of view.

He knew he wasn't paralyzed, so he figured whatever damage was done could probably be fixed. He recalled the experience of lying on the ice after the crash as being relatively calm. He knew others were with him, the paramedics were on their way, and whoever needed to be notified had already been called.

"It was very sudden, and then very quiet," he said.

The full extent of the pain began to register once Thornquest was loaded into the ambulance.

"That's when it started to become apparent that when you break your back, there's not a comfortable way to sit," he told the Times-News. "Any pain you feel, you'll feel everywhere."

Any position puts stress on the spine, Thornquest explained. Whether you're standing, sitting or lying down, there's pressure on the back. In the case of a spinal injury, the pain cannot be escaped because there is no position that relieves the pressure on the spine.

Thornquest was rushed to St. Luke's Magic Valley Medical Center. A doctor evaluated his injuries and based on Thornquest's responses to where the pain was, scheduled him for an x-ray of his sacrum. His sacrum, the bone that connects the spine to the hips, was fractured in the S3 and S4 areas.

The doctor ordered an X-ray of his spine, which revealed compression fractures in the T11 and T12 vertebrae.

"According to the X-rays, the biggest concern was the fracture in my spine," he said. "The bone was protruding towards my spinal cord and was a couple inches away from it."

The damage to his back was too severe to be repaired in Twin Falls, so Thornquest was flown to Saint Alphonsus Regional Medical Center in Boise. Because of weather conditions, the hospital flew him in an airplane instead of a helicopter.

He remembers being wrapped in a blanket and placed on a soft bed. The doctor gave him morphine for the pain.

"Since getting hit, it was the first moment where I couldn't feel anything," he said.

Thornquest was hit at 6:30 p.m. on Monday, Dec. 14. He spent roughly four hours in the emergency room in Twin Falls. Early the next morning he was flown to Boise where he waited 18 hours to get a room.

"With it being trauma season and COVID-19, the hospital was full," he said.

The doctors at Saint Alphonsus let him rest for a day, but, on Dec. 16, Thorquest was in the operating room for back-to-back surgeries.

"The sacrum surgery — they put a giant metal screw through one side of my sacrum to the other. It took less than an hour," he said. "Then the second doctor came in to do the spinal surgery. They put six bolts up my back near the T12 and T11. That took about six hours of work."

The next day, a Thursday, Thornquest was sitting up and being fitted for a back brace.

"On Friday I was walking," he said. That's when they discharged him.

Four days after breaking his spine, Thornquest walked out of the hospital. He still wears a back brace, and will for a few more months, but his overall recovery has been swift. He cannot lift heavy objects or put weight on his shoulders, and it will be a full year before he can run or jump again because both activities put pressure on the spine.

"All things considered, it was the best-case scenario for getting hit by a car in terms of how my body is doing," Thornquest said. But it easily could have ended in his death.

Unfortunately, the physical recovery is only a portion of the problems he now faces.

"When you get into the hospital system in America, everything is an expense," he said. "It's a mental load on top of being hit by a car."

Thornquest's bill for both hospitals was $102,000. That's more than he makes in four years, he said.

Two weeks before being hit, he signed up for health insurance, one saving grace in his financial situation.

His health insurance brought the bill down to about $15,000, which Thornquest hopes will be covered by his auto insurance. His biggest frustration is the inability to find out if the driver that hit him had insurance of her own.

After calling the police station, attorneys and the Department of Motor Vehicles, Thornquest hit a dead end.

"Due to the gray area of this new computer system, there's nobody who is responsible for helping you," he said. "While the doctors took very good care of me within the system that was provided, the system for everything else was just so unwilling to assist."

At this point, Thornquest's only hope is that his own insurance will zero out his bills.

"Cars are giant weapons that if we didn't need them, I'd prefer to not have them because they are incredibly dangerous," he said.

He now takes more time to look both ways, especially when he's driving because he understands how quickly circumstances can change for a pedestrian.

Thornquest's advice for motorists is simple. Pay attention to the road. Be wary of intersections because people are more likely to cross at them. Most importantly, slow down. The chances of hitting someone — and causing serious injury if you do — are lower the slower you go.

They two continue to walk every night, although Thornquest says he and Jess are a lot more cautious.

"We're more careful, even than before, with what conditions we take for granted when we're out walking."

___

(c)2021 The Times-News (Twin Falls, Idaho)

Visit The Times-News (Twin Falls, Idaho) at magicvalley.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.