CASPER — Life-changing events can lift souls or crush them, but it’s not always the event that decides.
Gavan Bethel, 21, of Casper, learned this lesson firsthand after a devastating crash with a truck left him with only a 3% chance to live.
And even after beating those odds and spending much of last summer in hospitals making a recovery doctors and family call a “miracle,” his life will never be the same.
Many experiencing a life-changing event like Bethel’s would react with anger and bitterness.
Bethel still struggles to recover. He’s blind in his right eye and deaf in his left ear. And his face droops a little.
Yet he’s thankful, and hopeful.
“I find myself adapting a little better every day,” Bethel told Cowboy State Daily. “It’s still not as good as it used to be, obviously, but today is going to be better than yesterday and tomorrow is going to be better than today.”
Thankful For First Responders
It was the night of May 28, 2023, that Bethel was partially thrown out of a truck when it crashed and rolled down a hill, landing in some water. The truck had been traveling down an unimproved back road between Casper and Alcova.
Bethel and his dad, Richard, recently met with members of the Natrona County Sheriff’s Department and Wyoming State Police who responded to Bethel’s crash to thank them for saving his life.
Sheriff’s Sgt. Brad Legler was the first on the scene. He and the other officers took Bethel up the hill and helped stabilize him before EMS arrived on the scene.
Richard Bethel said it was also Legler who called him from the hospital at 1:15 a.m., telling him to come down to Banner Wyoming Medical Center where Gavan had been taken.
“Initially, it was very grim,” Richard Bethel said of the outlook for his son. “They told us he probably wasn’t going to survive.”
The then 20-year-old’s brush with death came as he sat in the middle in the back seat of a crew cab pickup being driven by a friend.
He and four others were going to celebrate a couple of those in the truck getting new jobs. The intent was a bonfire. No alcohol or drugs were in the mix.
There had been a little rain that day and the unproven dirt road was slightly slippery. The driver lost control of the truck and it rolled down the hill. Gavan was partially ejected and suffered a traumatic brain injury.
He credits two of his friends for saving him from drowning by pulling him out of the water where his body lay unconscious.
His buddies were all transported to the hospital, but none had a significant injury.
Gavan was near death.
Ten Days In Coma
After two days in a coma in Casper, Gavan started to experience what doctors thought could be seizures, and they sent him by air ambulance to Swedish Medical Center in Engelwood, Colorado, Richard Bethel said.
After about 10 days, Bethel began to show signs of consciousness and respond to verbal commands. In another week he was able to open his eyes.
Bethel said the first thing he remembers after the crash is waking up in the ICU “positioned weird.”
“The only thing that came into my head was whatever painkillers they had me on were doing their job to say the least,” he said.
A ‘Miracle’
After doctors initially gave him a 3% chance of survival because of the injury to his brainstem, Richard Bethel said his son’s recovery has been a “miracle.”
In the ICU, Bethel was unable to communicate verbally. His dad said he used hand signals and wrote with his finger on his hand to communicate.
Gavan made slow progress. He was taken off the machines keeping him alive and eventually rehabilitation was ordered.
He was transferred to nearby Craig Hospital, where he would stay for two more months.
There, he relearned how to “walk and talk and live a normal life again,” his dad said.
Doctors initially predicted Gavan would have a limited quality of life. But eight months later, he continues to make giant steps toward recovery.
“His memory, his personality, his sense of humor are all intact,” Richard Bethel said. “Except for the physical limitations he has now, he is the same kid he was before the accident which is, what we’ve been telling people, a miracle.
“There was no surgical intervention, there was nothing they could do for him other than medications to control seizures and things like that. It’s nothing short of a miracle.”
Following his return to Casper at the end of August, Gavan has maintained a schedule of physical therapy and doctor visits on his road to recovery.
Richard Bethel said that through his job in construction he met a former sheriff’s department employee who helped them set up the meeting with the officers who helped his son that May night.
Appreciation
Both father and son are now going back to thank everyone involved in Gavan’s care. They have already done that in Colorado, have spoken by phone with local hospital nurses, and plan to meet with the fire department and EMS teams.
At Natrona County Sheriff’s Department, the pair reunited with Legler, Deputy Chris Mikels, Deputy Dan Beal and Wyoming Highway Patrol Lt. Clint Christensen to show their appreciation for helping save the younger Bethel’s life.
“They were appreciative of what we were doing because they really see the worst parts of the accident all the time, but they never get that sense of closure,” Bethel said. “They were appreciative of the fact that I was willing to come back in.
“They really genuinely cared, and that was really special to me.”
A post from the Natrona County Sheriff’s Department on Facebook called Bethel’s return special.
“For us, it’s a heartening reminder of how precious life can be and of the pride we take in serving the citizens of our community,” the post says. “Gavan, we are cheering you on and we can’t wait to see what your future holds.”
About That Future
Gavan agrees with his dad that a “miracle” is the reason he is alive and regaining function. He points to the “selfless” acts of his friends for pulling him out of the water and fast response of first responders to the scene as evidence of “guardian angels” at work.
“I do see this as a bit of divine intervention, if you will,” he said. “Where we were (isolated area), there is no other explanation in my eyes.”
He continues to push himself toward independence and when he can go back to his job at Home Depot, and an eventual goal of becoming a physical therapist.
“I want to give back and show the appreciation that I was shown, that loving care and communal help,” he said. “Eventually, in the future, what I am really striving to do is find a way for caring for the greater community who cared for me.”
That’s because while life-changing events can lift souls or crush them, it’s not always the event that decides.
Dale Killingbeck can be reached at dale@cowboystatedaily.com.
