On the Other Side of Tragedy

When Whitley County Dispatcher Mike Collier set out to mow his lawn a few months ago, he had no clue what was about to happen to him.
Collier is usually the guy on the receiving end of a 911 call, responsible for sending help to those in need when they call 911 in Whitley County.
Instead, as he was mowing, Collier said the chain on his new mower broke and that’s when his world turned upside down, literally.
“I was mowing on a zero-turn mower that I hadn’t had very long and as I was rounding a turn, the chain broke,” Collier said. “The kind of mower this is, when the chain broke, it didn’t have any brakes either.
“Before I knew it, I was heading down a hill and over the cliff I went,” he added. “When it was all said and done, I fell about 20 feet and the mower was on top of me.”
Collier said he knew he was injured as soon as he landed and at that point, he began wondering what he was going to do about the situation and how he was going to get himself out of this predicament. He said after realizing he had no way of contacting anyone, he did what any normal person would do when they needed help. Scream.
“Once I figured out what was going on I started feeling around in my pants for my phone and I realized I had left it inside the house,” Collier said. “My initial fear was that I was going to lay down there and die because nobody knows where I am and it’s pretty secluded and you can’t see it from the road.
“The next thing I did was start screaming for my wife, trying to get her attention,” he added. “I realized she was inside with the kids and we live in a brick home, so there was no way she was going to hear me. I laid there a few minutes and I really thought I was going to die because I was hurt really bad. I decided the only thing I could do was keep screaming and it just so happened my neighbor, Ronnie Moses, was outside and when he shut off his mower to talk to a visitor (Jason Price), he heard me, so those were the first two guys on the scene.”
Collier said once Price and Moses discovered what was going on, the two of them did more than their share to try and get help for him.
“I think Jason called for help and Ronnie came down to talk to me,” Collier said. “Ronnie came down and told me that the mower was leaking a lot of gas and he wanted to try and get it off of me and I told him I didn’t think he could do that.
“He proceeded and eventually rolled the mower over and off of me and after that he just sat there and talked to me and held my hand until EMS got there,” he added. “That was pretty important for him to keep me calm.”
From that point, Collier said things began to get a little strange for him, considering he is usually the guy that is doing the helping when it comes to answering these kinds of calls.
“You feel kind of helpless in a way,” Collier said. “A lot of different things are going through your mind and the first thing was that most of these guys that are coming here to help me are my friends and the guys that I work with everyday, so that was a pretty comforting feeling. I knew I was in good hands because I knew these guys take good care of people for a living. My biggest fear was just not knowing how bad I was hurt.”
Once he was cared for and loaded up, Collier said a short time later was when he got one of his biggest surprises of the whole ordeal. He said after spending the evening at the University of Tennessee Hospital, he still didn’t realize the full scope of his injuries. That is until the next morning.
“They had sent me for Xrays and stuff and told me they hadn’t found anything particularly wrong, so I never got a real description of my injuries,” he said. “I didn’t sleep much that night because the pain was so bad and I had told my wife I was really worried because I had never felt a pain like that before.
“The next morning, before I had even seen a doctor, a physical therapist came in and said they were going to start physical therapy and I told him that was going to be pretty hard because I was in a lot of pain,” Collier added. “He said, ‘well it’s supposed to be. Your back’s broken in two places and your hip is broke’, and that put me into shock because until then, I didn’t realize how bad I was hurt.”
Collier spent four days in the hospital and said he spent the majority of time thinking about what he was going to be able to do when he got out. He said he was unsure if he would be able to return to his normal activities.
Almost nine weeks later and Collier finds himself back in the saddle at the Whitley County Dispatch office. He said he still feels some pain and numbness, but he is glad to get things close to normal.
“The people that have helped me have really been a huge help,” Collier said. “That’s part of why I have gotten back so quickly.
“My family and my coworkers have been great,” he added. “I would say 20 to 25 people came by the first week I was out of the hospital and I really can’t say enough about the county and the county workers that have helped me through this all.”
The best news of all, other than Collier’s recovery, may be the fact the lawn mower survived the incident as well.
Collier said the total damage was minimal to say the least.
“It actually still works,” Collier said with a grin. “I figureg it was totaled, but after we got it up from the creek a few weeks later, all it had was a tear on the seat, a bent mower deck and a headlight knocked out of it.
“It cost about $25 to fix it, so that’s not too bad,” he added. “It’s a good thing I was down there, because everyone says I broke the lawnmower’s fall.”