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"I saw a funeral. I saw a coffin."South Dakota teen survives harrowing silage accident HUTTERVILLE COLONY, S.D. (AP)--Five days before Father's Day, a message no dad ever wants to hear benumbed Tim Waldner. "Your son Justin is dead." A fellow member of the Hutterite Hutterville Colony near Stratford rushed to Waldner to deliver the words after finding Justin, 13, buried under a pile of silage on June 10. "It can't be. He can't be dead," Waldner said he told the messenger. But when he rushed to his son's side, Waldner saw nothing to bolster hope Justin was alive. "There he was lying, all blue, with blood running out of his ears, his mouth and his nose. I saw a funeral. I saw a coffin." Justin was not breathing. His eyes protruded out of his head, and no pulse could be found, his father said. Another son of Waldner's stood by his father. "I told him, 'What you need to do is say a prayer.' " As the boy prayed, Dad did what he had to do: Administer cardiopulmonary resuscitation. "Justin began to gurgle and snore," Waldner said. Then he felt the precious pulse of his son. A Groton ambulance arrived to take Justin to meet an Aberdeen ambulance near Ferney. The Aberdeen ambulance rushed him to Avera St. Luke's Hospital in Aberdeen, where he was placed on a ventilator and flown to Avera McKennan Hospital in Sioux Falls. Silage had entered his lungs. During recovery in Sioux Falls, Waldner said he and his son spoke their first words to each other following the near tragedy. "I love you, Justin." "Dad, I love you, too." What happened On the afternoon of June 10, Justin and other colony boys were playing on top of a truckload of silage being unloaded from the semi. The semi driver told the boys to get off the truck because they might get hurt. The boys complied. "I jumped off," Justin said. But after he jumped, a pile of silage fell on top of him. "I struggled. I tried to get out. But I couldn't." That's where his memory stopped. The next thing he remembers is medical personnel in an ambulance cutting off his pants with a scissors. The semi driver looked around after the boys got off the truck and saw none of them and assumed they had all left, Waldner said. About 10 minutes later, a man pushing the unloaded silage into its storage area noticed what he thought was a piece of plastic in the silage, Waldner said. Realizing cattle should not eat plastic, he pondered whether he should remove the plastic immediately or wait until he had pushed more silage. Fortunately, he decided to pull the plastic immediately, Waldner said. It turned out to be the pants Justin was wearing. Recovery Justin's ventilator was removed June 14 in Sioux Falls. He returned to Avera St. Luke's in Aberdeen one week after the accident and came home on June 24. He has no damage to his brain or lungs, his father said. His lungs were filled with fluid, but now they are totally clear. Doctors are amazed at the speed of his recovery, Waldner said. "He was so determined to get home," Waldner said. "And he had such a good time with the nurses. He was so happy." At one point, Justin informed his dad he was going to check himself out of the hospital if authorities didn't. Justin normally works with calves at the colony. But these chores are off limits temporarily because he needs to work in totally clean air for a while, his father said. For the time being, Justin is helping make vertical blinds inside a climate-controlled shop. An irony When the news of Justin's possible death first reached his father's ears, he was in the colony school working on plans for the Progressive Agriculture Safety Day at the colony. After the accident, Justin was added to the agenda as a presenter, along with Marilyn Adams of Des Moines, Iowa. She lost a son in a farm accident and founded Farm Safety 4 Just Kids. In the safety-day invitation letter that he composed before the accident, Waldner wrote, "All of us love our children and want to do everything we can to keep them safe and unharmed as they grow up." Justin is now grown up, his father said. "There's a change in his personality. Before the accident, he was a kid. When he came home, he was a young man. He grew up." 8/4/08 Date: 7/25/08
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