A West Memphis, Arkansas, pastor is counting his blessings after his 18-wheeler wrecked back in November, trapping him under water before emergency crews arrived.
“The trailer came over on top and crushed me down in there,” said Pastor Jerry Faggett. “Crushed the whole hood, busting glass and everything.”
Faggett’s truck hydro-planed into a water-filled ditch near Hayti in Missouri. The truck driver was headed back home to West Memphis from St. Louis.
“Totally submerged under the water,” the survivor recalls. “I was probably there about an hour and a half, almost two hours.”
The father and husband amazingly had a heartbeat when help arrived.
When asked what was going through his mind during the wreck, the pastor replied he had doubts.
“That it was over,” Faggett answered. “That I couldn’t get out I couldn’t move. I just went to praying.”
The former firefighter and military veteran went to three hospitals during his recovery with his wife always by his side. At Mercy Hospital in Springfield, Missouri, he was in a coma for 10 days.
“I had mud directly in my lungs, directly in the back of my throat, my nose. So they had to pump it out.”
Doctors used an ECMO pump, or Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation. It’s designed to pump blood outside the body while the heart and lungs recover.
After learning to walk again and surgery on his shoulder, Faggett is counting his blessings. The pastor says he’s coming back to the pulpit with a fresh testimony.
“They call me the miracle man. God is still doing miracles and you’re talking and looking at a miracle.”
Pastor Faggett will be preach again the last Sunday of this month at New Bethel Christian Church in Proctor, Arkansas.
