17-year-old Kyle Deachin of Goodrich is your normal active teenager, loving sports and spending time with friends. In late February, that passion for sports changed his life. He went sledding in West Branch with his youth ministry group, when something went terribly wrong.
“When we got fast enough I just dove on top of the group head first. I realized the group in front of me wasn’t off yet and my head just took all the impact,” he said. “When that happened my neck broke,” Deachin said.
It was a stunning moment of shock for those around him. He was on the ground in pain, in little parts of his body that actually had feeling.
“From then on I just lost all feeling from the shoulders down. My C5 was ruptured and a pretty severe spinal injury,” Deachin said.
Perhaps surprisingly, he said he was not scared. His youth pastor John Scally quickly came to help but saw Kyle Deachin in faith. “All of the kids were panicking and he just asked the other kids to lay hands over him and pray over him. That was a huge picture of his trust in God at that point,” Scally said.
Deachin’s father Todd took the dreaded call that no parent wants to get but he too called on his faith.
“The moment I received the phone call a peace came over me. We have a lot of faith in God and the first thing I did was I hung up the phone and said “lord, in the name of Jesus, everything is going to be fine. My son is well. Everything is ok,” Todd Deachin said.
After spending several weeks at hospitals in Saginaw and Grand Rapids for treatment and therapy, doctors have told the family they have not seen recovery progress this fast in a patient with his type of injuries. Deachin credits a higher power.
“Probably the grace of God,” he said.” Like, everything that could have gone wrong didn’t. Everything that needed to happen did happen. The doctors were amazing and the surgeons did an amazing job,” he said.
He said “anything is possible with God,” and that “you just have to keep positive, it’s all about the attitude.”
Deachin is not wasting time while recovering. He is getting ready to graduate from Genesse Christian School and will be going to Kettering University on scholarship. We will keep you updated on his progress.
