STANWOOD — For weeks in the hospital, Tommy Sidick couldn’t open his eyes or move his hands.
He remembers hearing his 13-year-old son’s voice, reading him a letter.
“I love you.”
“I want you to get better.”
Sidick, 34, came home earlier this month from Harborview Medical Center in Seattle.
The Stanwood High School graduate was gravely injured March 26 while logging near Lake Goodwin. He almost didn’t make it.
Now the single father is staying with his folks near Kayak Point, alongside his son, Ethan. He is recovering from a cracked skull, a collapsed lung and a broken neck. He still wears a neck brace, and under his shirt are puckered pink scars from his injuries and surgeries. He’s been taking walks with his German shorthaired pointers and he naps a lot, waiting for his body to heal.
He’s been thinking.
He knows he was distracted at work that day and didn’t watch the tree he was felling, though he’d felled thousands before. A branch 10 inches thick smacked his head. In logging, that’s called a “widowmaker.”
Sidick’s safety helmet shattered into three pieces. He was lying in the dirt, breathing sawdust. A friend who was working with him called 911. Sidick remembers trying to stand up.
“You’re bloody,” he was told. “You need to stay down.”
He woke up briefly in the medical helicopter before passing out again. He didn’t fully regain consciousness for weeks.
He pointed to the bare patches in his hair where the doctors drilled into his skull to relieve the pressure from his swelling brain.
He wonders if the accident was God telling him to slow down in life, to spend more time with Ethan and focus less on making money, he said.
He hasn’t touched the proceeds from an online fundraiser.
People have donated thousands of dollars to help with his medical expenses. Even more sent prayers. Sidick thinks about writing each person a thank you note, when he’s able.
He likes reading the words people posted on Facebook, hoping for his recovery.
He finds strength in the love that surrounds him.
“I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for that,” he said.
The long-term effects of his injuries are unclear, said his mother, Sue Sidick.
She watches over him. The second of her three children is the joker of the family. He loves motocross and back roads. She made him steak burritos for dinner his first night home.
After a few weeks in the hospital, Tommy Sidick could communicate again by writing messages on a notepad, though he couldn’t speak. The medications made him dizzy, loopy. He didn’t like being the cause of pain and stress for his loved ones, even as they held his hands and rubbed his feet, he said.
He remembers taking tests to monitor his brain, and what it meant when he started passing the quizzes. He’d have to read something, then answer questions.
Sidick has an appointment this week to go over rehabilitation plans. He’s still on pills to fight pneumonia, a complication from his punctured lung.
He worries about his firewood company sitting idle. Ethan’s dirt bike needs a new fuel valve.
Last week, Sidick shaved for the first time since the accident. A three-inch beard had grown on his chin and neck.
He laughed about that. A favorite staffer at Harborview, respiratory therapist Brandie Webb, told him he could try waxing. Not his style.
He’s not sure he’ll go back to logging.
No matter what, it won’t be like before.
“I’m different, and life will be, too,” he said.
Rikki King: 425-339-3449; rking@heraldnet.com.
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