A reminder: buckle up

... and don't drink and drive...
I wrote this on Friday about a friend of mine. And since I have nothing new to share with you about my life, it's all you get today ...

Oh, and a big shout-out to my boy Jumbo, who turned 29 on Friday. Big up, short stack...

Anyways, here's the story...

DRIVE TURNS INTO FIGHT TO STAY ALIVE

Bruised lungs. Eight broken ribs. Bleeding on the brain. A skull fracture. A shattered leg being held together by steel rods, screws and plates.
No, this is not a sports column. This is a get-well card.
And some would say, a cautionary tale.
Scott Zummack is a gifted athlete. He was a three-year starter at wide receiver and go-to guy for the Okanagan Sun back in the mid-1990s - he ranks ninth on the team’s all-time touchdown list with 20 - but I knew him as a quicksilver midfielder in the men’s rec soccer ranks.
He was sneaky fast, and loved setting up his teammates more than scoring himself; though, when the need arose, he could do that, too. There was one four-goal game that had the 32-year-oldÕs two young sons bouncing in hysterics all over the sidelines like they’d been drinking Red Bull.
But now, Scott is lying in the intensive care unit of Kelowna General Hospital, barely concious and only occasionally recognizing the people closest to him.
Sometime early Tuesday morning, Scott was a passenger in his friend Byron Paulson’s Jeep TJ, driving down Okanagan Centre Road in Lake Country. Byron lost control, skidded across the road and flipped his Jeep into a ditch.
Neither were wearing seatbelts.
Byron ended up in a crumpled heap 30 feet down the road, later dying in hospital from his injuries. Scott survived, but was injured so extensively that doctors induced a coma because drugs couldn’t block out the pain.
Byron’s jeep, now sitting in the RCMP impound lot, isn’t the crumpled mess one would expect from a fatal accident.
Its front end is moderately damaged, but the rollbars prevented the top of the Jeep from caving in on the driving compartment.
Seatbelts would likely have protected both of them from the crash that left Byron dead and Scott in hospital.
It will be a long time before Scott is back out helping with his son’s soccer team, the U-7 Lake Country Wolf Pack, or even until visitors are allowed in to see him at KGH, as the ICU is off-limits to all but family.
Byron, who was 34, will be laid to rest Saturday at the Springfield Funeral home.
Scott faces a long road to recovery. Whether he will be the same athlete again depends on how well he responds to rehab. Doctors performed surgery on his leg on Wednesday, inserting rods into his lower leg and plates into his ankle.
If only one person reads this, I would wish that it is Scott, so he knows that he’s got friends outside the walls of the hospital who are pulling for him. The antiseptic walls of KGH and pastel-coloured suits of the hospital staff are all he will be seeing for a long time, an experience tough enough in itself.
But the scars from the accident and surgery will be with him forever, as will the emotional ones that come from a traumatic experience which could have so easily been prevented.
But as those remnants persevere, so, I hope, will his friends.
n J.J. Adams is a sports reporter with The Daily Courier. His column appears here Fridays. To contact him, e-mail jj.adams@ok.bc.ca.