Since making the courageous decision to get the lower half of his body amputated, a teenager who was involved in a horrifying forklift accident survived.
As it plunged 50ft to the ground, Loren Schauers, 19, was driving a forklift across a bridge, pinning him under the four-ton machine.
The whole time, he was awake, seeing his right arm crushed and his body’s lower half trapped under the car.
Loren Schauers in hospital after the accident. See SWNS story SWOCforklift; A teenager who lost his entire lower body in a horrifying forklift accident has defied the odds and shocked doctors who repeatedly told his family that he would die. Loren Schauers, 19, from Great Falls, Montana was driving a forklift across a bridge when he veered off, plummeted 50ft and was pinned to the ground beneath the four ton vehicle. He remained totally conscious the entire time – and look down to see his right arm had exploded and everything below his hips was completely squashed. The young labourer made the brave decision to let medics perform hemicorperectomy surgery – where everything below his waist was amputated – to save his life. Doctors told his devastated girlfriend Sabia Reiche, now 21, he wouldn’t survive, and she said goodbye to him SIX times, fearing he wouldn’t live another day. But miraculously he pulled through. The pair had only been together for 18 months when the accident happened but said the turmoil brought them closer together, and they got engaged this year.
In order to save him, the worker wanted to undergo a hemicorperectomy – meaning anything below his waist was removed.
The shocking news was given to his girlfriend, Sabia, now 21, that he would not survive, and he said goodbye to him six times, having been told he would not live another day.
However, he pulled through and the couple, who had been together for 18 months before the accident occurred, said the whole thing brought them closer together and earlier this year they got engaged.
Sabia said: “There were many heartfelt, teary, sad conversations within the span of the first month of him being in hospital.
“The first time we said goodbye was before his surgery but he still had his intubator in so he was writing to us as he couldn’t talk.
“The night before his surgery, he wrote ‘I love you’ on a piece of paper as it could have been our last night together. I still have that piece of paper today.
“The doctors would say he was going to die, we’d have a goodbye conversation and then he wouldn’t die.
“It sucked, to put it blatantly, we hated it. His health was teasing us, like ‘haha we’re fine now but going to die soon so you’ll all be sad’, but then he lived.”