Nolan Arbaugh
speaker
265 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Aug 2024
last heard Aug 2024
Nolan Arbaugh’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
It was sort of a freak thing that happened. Imagine you're running into the ocean. Although this is a lake, but you're running into the ocean and you get to about waist high and then you kind of like dive in, take the rest of the plunge under the wave or something. That's what I did. And then I just never came back up. Not sure what happened. I did it running into the water with a couple of guys.
And so my idea of what happened is really just that I took like a stray fist, elbow, knee, foot, something to the side of my head. The left side of my head was sore for about a month afterwards. So must have taken a pretty big knock.
and then uh they both came up and i didn't and so i was face down in the water for a while i was conscious um and then eventually just you know realized i couldn't hold my breath any longer and i keep saying took a big drink um people i don't know if they like that i say that it seems like i'm making light of it all but um this is kind of how i am and i don't know like
i'm a very relaxed sort of stress-free person i rolled with the punches for a lot of this i kind of took it in stride it's like all right well what can i do next how can i improve my life even a little bit um on a day-to-day basis at first just trying to find some way to heal as much of my body as possible
to try to get healed, to try to get off a ventilator, learn as much as I could so I could somehow survive once I left the hospital. And then Thank God I had my family around me. If I didn't have my parents, my siblings, then I would have never made it this far. They've done so much for me, more than I can ever thank them for, honestly. And a lot of people don't have that.
A lot of people in my situation, their families either aren't capable of providing for them or
honestly just don't want to and so they get placed somewhere and you know in some sort of home so thankfully i had my family i have a great group of friends a great group of buddies from college who have all rallied around me and we're all still incredibly close people always say you know if you're lucky you'll end up with one or two friends from high school that you keep throughout your life
I have about 10, 10 or 12 from high school that have all stuck around and we still get together all of us twice a year. We call it the spring series and the fall series. This last one we all did. We dressed up like X-Men. So I did a professor Xavier and it was freaking awesome. It was so good. So yeah, I have such a great support system around me.
And so, you know, being a quadriplegic isn't that bad, but, I get waited on all the time. People bring me food and drinks, and I get to sit around and watch as much TV and movies and anime as I want. I get to read as much as I want. I mean, it's great.
Yep. I was face down in the water. Right when I, whatever, something hit my head, I tried to get up and I realized I couldn't move and it just sort of clicked. I'm like, all right, I'm paralyzed. Can't move. What do I do? Um, if I can't get up, I can't flip over, can't do anything, then I'm going to drown eventually. Um, and I knew I couldn't hold my breath forever.
So I just held my breath and thought about it for maybe 10, 15 seconds. Um, I've heard from other people that like look on liquors, I guess the two girls that pulled me out of the water were two of my best friends. They are lifeguards. Um, And one of them said that it looked like my body was sort of shaking in the water, like I was trying to flip over and stuff. But I knew. I knew immediately.
And I just kind of... I realized that... And that's what my situation was from here on out. Maybe if I got to the hospital, they'd be able to do something. When I was in the hospital, like right before surgery, I was trying to calm one of my friends down. I had like brought her with me from college to camp. She was just bawling over me, and I was like, hey, it's going to be fine. Don't worry.
I was cracking some jokes to try to lighten the mood. The nurse had called my mom, and I was like, don't tell my mom. She's just going to be stressed out. Call her after I'm out of surgery because at least she'll have some answers then, whether I live or not, really. I didn't want her to be stressed through the whole thing. But I knew.
And then when I first woke up after surgery, I was super drugged up. They had me on fentanyl like three ways, which was awesome. I don't recommend it. But I saw some crazy stuff on that fentanyl. And it was still the best I've ever felt on drugs. Medication. Sorry, on medication. Yeah. And I remember the first time I saw my mom in the hospital, I was just bawling.
I had like ventilator in, like I couldn't talk or anything. And I just started crying because it was more like seeing her. Not that, I mean, the whole situation obviously was pretty rough, but it was just like seeing her face for the first time was pretty hard. But, yeah, I never had like a moment of, you know, man, I'm paralyzed. This sucks. I don't want to like be around anymore.
It was always just, I hate that I have to do this, but like sitting here and wallowing isn't going to help.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, sure. I mean, there are days when I don't really feel like doing anything. Not so much anymore. Like, not for the last couple years, I don't really feel that way. I've... More so just wanted to try to do anything possible to make my life better at this point. But at the beginning, there were some ups and downs. There were some really hard things to adjust to.
First off, just like the first couple months, the amount of pain I was in was really, really hard. I mean, I remember screaming at the top of my lungs in the hospital because I thought my legs were on fire. And obviously, I can't feel anything, but it's all nerve pain. And so that was a really hard night. I asked them to give me as much pain meds as possible.
They're like, you've had as much as you can have. So just kind of deal with it, go to a happy place sort of thing. So that was a pretty low point. And then every now and again, it's hard, like realizing things that I wanted to do in my life that I won't be able to do anymore. I always wanted to be a husband and father, and I just don't think that I could do it now as a quadriplegic.
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