Mar. 30, 2006 - 19:10 MST

HEARTWARMING

Bickering and dissension is afloat on our seas of state it would seem. But now and then something happens that gives me faith that all is not lost. An article in the Rocky Mountain News this morning by Vicki Smith of the Associated Press is encouraging to me, anyhow. In full:

MINER BURIES FRIENDS' DEATHS AS HE RECOVERS LIFE

West Virginian still amazing docs, cant explain being alive

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. -- "The sole survivor of the Sago Mine disaster would prefer to forget the few fragmented images he can recall from the 41 hours he lay trapped deep underground in toxic fumes."

"And when Randal McCloy Jr. thinks of the 12 friends and co-workers who slowly succumbed to carbon monoxide poisoning after the Jan. 2 explosion at the mine, he pictures them elsewhere."

"I try to leave out all the gory details and stuff like that because I don't like to look at them in that light and that way," he said Wednesday, a day before he was scheduled to be released from a rehabilitation hospital."

"I just like to picture them saved and in heaven, stuff like that," he said in one of his first interviews. "That's really the best way you can remember somebody."

"Doctors say McCloy, 26, was perhaps minutes from death when he was pulled from the mine Jan. 4 with kidney, lung, liver and heart damage. He was in a coma for weeks, suffering from severe brain injuries."

"On the eve of his departure, he sat on a hospital bed with his wife, Anna, choosing his words carefully."

"Two of his co-workers daughters have come to visit, and McCloy said he hopes to meet with all 12 families in the coming weeks and months."

"It's a delicate situation, and it should be handled delicately. It's not something you definitely want to dive right in," he said. "I am going to choose to be careful about what I say and how I word things for the familites' sake. I just feel I should show them great respect."

"Doctors have repeatedly called McCloy a miracle, unable to explain why only the youngest of the 13 miners survived. He is a fitness buff who ate well, lifted weights and rode bicycles. He doesn't smoke."

"But McCloy himself remains mystified."

"It's just crazy how that ended up being like that," he said."

"Some people speculated McCloy was deeper inside the mine, farther from the poisoned air. But he says he was "pretty much in the same area all the time."

"Nor does he believe a crushed lung helped limit the amount of carbon monoxide he inhaled. "In a way, if you've got a crushed lung, you'd be in pain," he said. "You'd probably inhale more."

"What he does know is that his wife and two children have motivated him through painful and challenging therapy, and he is going home months earlier than doctors first predicted."

"McCloy is about 5-foot-10 and thin, down from 160 pounds to just 135. HIs throat still bears a deep purple mark from a long-since-removed feeding tube, but his voice is clear and soft."

He smiles often and seems frustrated only by his limitations, mainly a right arm that remains weak."

"My hands, my grip, is not as good as I want it to be, but I'm going to try to exercise and stuff like that," he said."

"In the pool at HealthSouth Mountainview Regional Rehabilitation Hospital, he tosses a beach ball with a therapist to work on agility and reflexes."

"When he gets home, he will continue to use weights to help speed his therapy. Hew also will return to the hospital three days a week, four hours a day, for a few more months."

"Someday he will start to think about work again. He's considering attending a vocational school, maybe to study electronics."

He will not be going back underground, he said."

+++++++++++++++++++

As near as I can gather from what I have read, the air down in the mine was totally lethal, and it may well be a miracle that McCloy survived.

As has been said before by many different people, for as many different reasons, I also say, "There but for the grace of God, go I."

I think that young man has a strong will to live and thrive. I do hope his rehabilitation efforts put him back to the wellbeing he had before the tragedy at Sago Mine.

The article didn't say just how he is being taken care of, financially -- who is paying the bills and how much longer they will pay them. I pray that mercy be shown to that married man with two children and that he not be saddled with ferocious hospital and doctor bills for the rest of his life.

At one time or another in my life, there are blank spots in my memory, there was a year of rehabilitation, I guess I can understand much of what he is going through and what he is facing. I do hope he continues to get the support and encouragement as well as financial aid to enable him to enjoy fatherhood, husbandhood and will have a decent job to work at and provide for he and his family.

Things like this in our paper are so very HEARTWARMING . . . . . . . . .

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