We arrived in Kure Beach on a Saturday to start our family vacation, the vacation that had been months in the making, heavily anticipated and quite possibly the start of a new family tradition. My wife wanted to do a summer vacation that not only included us but also our extended family, so we rented a home large enough for all of our family to come interchangeably throughout the week. I must add it was a much needed vacation for me because I had been working long hours and weekends because of this high profile project at the job. Sooooo we were really looking forward to it!
That Monday August 1, 2011 our first official day of vacation we started the day with a good home cooked breakfast then off to the beach. We hung out at the beach for couple hours then back home for lunch, naps, relaxing and play. My son Jaxon, two at the time, said he wanted to go back to the beach. I told him of course we are on vacation we can go back after dinner for a little while. We hit some local restaurant that was famous for their pork chops, where I devoir this humongous chop, that wasn’t even all that but I felt like I had to kill it.
That evening as the tide was coming in Jaxon, my then pregnant wife Yasmine and my 16 year old nephew Kyrin hit the beach. The water was kind of rough because of the tide so I was the only one really in the water, the rest of the family was hanging on the beach watching Jax play in the sand. I was having a ball, almost felt like kid again just so happy to be at the beach on vacation with my family.
This is when everything changed: I saw a big wave coming so, as I’ve done 2 point 5 million times, I decided to dive through it instead of getting toppled by it. Bad move! Bam, I hit some thing (sand bar) or something (the force of the wave) hit me. I try to swim but for only second because I realize i can’t move. I can’t believe I’m about to go out like this… Some how I knew that all my efforts needed to be focused on staying calm to conserve my air supply if I wanted a shot at surfacing before I drowned. At this point I’m praying I can hold my breath long enough; praying for my life. I Remember thinking please don’t let me drown, because it seems like a horrible way to die. I was anticipating what it was going to be like when I finally ran out of air, gagging, choking, struggling for air. It felt like I was under forever. Finally I surface. I call for help, the water is splashing around me, and my nephew appears. He thinks I’m joking at first then I guess he realizes that I really can’t move. He does his best to pull me further out the water but he can’t get me all the way out. My wife comes over to help but they couldn’t move me any further. At this time I’m worried about Jaxon, I’m like somebody get Jaxon, where is Jaxon? Once they got Jaxon I began to apologize to my wife because I knew our life was forever changed. I remember saying sorry for our future bankruptcy, ruining our dreams, etc. At some point during all this, a lady who said she was a nurse came to help. I kept asking to be moved out of the water but she said with my injury I shouldn’t be moved. It seemed like an eternity but finally the paramedics came. At some point they decided that I needed to be airlifted to Wilmington. When the helicopter arrived and they were pushing me over I remember it feeling like I was being sand blasted, once in side I thought its tight in here, why are they cutting off my shorts and then things got real choppy after that.
