‘I’m still here’: SWCC grad reflects on survival and perseverance

Just six days before graduating from Southwestern Community College, elementary education student Tucker Knox of Mount Ayr was in a major car accident. On his way home from the final track and field meet of his SWCC career, Knox and his father were hit from the side.

“We were driving down HWY 34 around Stanton, heading back toward Creston, and me and my dad were having a good conversation, and then the pickup just popped up out of nowhere,” Knox said. “We got hit in the side and I remember we did a full 360 turn, and then I remember us rolling into the ditch.”

The truck hit the passenger side of the vehicle, where Knox was sitting. While his father was able to quickly get out, Knox was having a little more difficulty.

“When we came to a stop, it was weird because at first I couldn’t see anything. I don’t know why, but like I couldn’t see very well, and I tried moving my feet and honestly, I thought I was paralyzed for a second,” Knox said.

While he soon gained his sight and movement back, Knox knew something was wrong.

“I was having a really hard time trying to breathe,” Knox said. “I told [EMS] I was struggling to breathe and they had me sit down. They were holding my neck and then next thing I know I’m being loaded onto a backboard to get onto a stretcher and they carried me out of the ditch.”

Knox said he was originally taken to the Stanton Viking Center, where Life Flight picked him up and took him to a hospital in Omaha. His father, meanwhile, was taken to Montgomery County Memorial Hospital in Red Oak, where he received four staples.

“They rolled me into the helicopter and that was an experience I’d never had,” Knox said. “They told me it’d be about an 18-minute flight to Omaha, and during that time I was just praying that God would save me and that he would help heal me. I was really focused on my breathing during that time because it was a real struggle to breathe at that point.”

Once at the hospital, Knox was put under sedation so a breathing tube could be inserted. Family arrived a couple hours later, and though he can’t remember it, he was told he was in good spirits.

Recovery

Despite being positive, Knox said that evening in the ICU was scary.

“It was really overwhelming. That night I didn’t really get great sleep, but I was stable throughout the entire night,” Knox said. “I had a great nurse checking in on me and reassuring me that I was going to be OK, but my breathing was very panicky.”

Despite the chaos of the day before, Knox woke up the next day with determination to recover quickly.

“I had my eyes set on making graduation. I told my mom, ’I’m going to walk the stage on Friday,’” Knox said. “I had it in my mind that I was going to make it out of there in time. I had a really good doctor, Dr. Gillaspie, and she and her team were really encouraging.”

Three days after the accident, Knox was able to eat solid food for the first time and was allowed to take a walk through the hospital halls. While the initial walk left him shaky and short of breath, walks quickly became a common occurrence.

“A couple days later they were having me walk around the ICU unit and kind of doing hot laps around there,” Knox said. “It felt really rewarding to be able to practice, I guess, just working slowly toward it.”

Knox was originally told he would be released Friday morning, giving him just enough time to get back to Creston in time for graduation. However, to do that, doctors needed to wean Knox off his pain meds.

“I told them, ‘I have graduation on Friday, I would really like to make it out of here by then.’ They’re like, ‘OK, we’ll try and get that done,’ and they slowly started taking me off of the harder pain meds, like the oxycodone,” Knox said. “I was walking more, and I went outside on Wednesday and came back in and my doctor was there, and she had told us that she was actually going to get us out on Thursday.”

Home for graduation

Knox was able to go home to Mount Ayr Thursday, with his family and friends working together to move him out of the dorms later that day. Meanwhile the college was working to make accommodations for Knox to be able to walk at graduation.

“Kim Bishop, the dean of students there, I talked to her about it and she said that she had made accommodations for me if I needed to leave early because I couldn’t breathe or I was getting hot,” Knox said. “She made it really easy to be able to participate.”

The day of, Knox felt great. He was able to participate in everything he wanted, including walking for his diploma and being part of the class photo. Knox said he also had help from one of his best friends, thanks to accommodations from Bishop.

“They put me in line next to [Preston Fleharty] for him to be able to stand behind me in case I fell down those stairs walking up the stage,” Knox said. “He was a really big encouragement because he’s been my day-one best friend, since preschool. Seeing him there and seeing him encourage me really helped me.”

Attending graduation was everything Knox had imagined. While he said that some people look down on community colleges or two-year degrees, Knox is proud of all the work he put in.

“A lot of people from the outside kind of look at community colleges as like, ‘Oh, you’re like halfway there. It’s not really like the entire thing,’ but I put in so much hard work over the past two years to be able to get that diploma,” Knox said. “Walking up on that stage and seeing Lindsay Stoaks, the president, there, I don’t know, just a wave of emotions came over me. I was really grateful that I was still there to be able to get my diploma because that accident was really serious.”

Knox also credited these emotions to the work put in by his professor Salina Chesnut.

“She wants to see the best out of her students and from the first time I got there back in August last year, I felt very challenged, but it felt very rewarding and awesome to be able to learn all these techniques that she was giving us,” Knox said. “There was obviously a lot of work that came with that and a lot of late hours and a lot of studying. I felt determined to give myself the chance to be able to reward myself or feel accomplished for doing those things by walking the stage.”

Though now back at home and continuing his recovery journey, Knox is excited for what’s ahead. He said the day before the crash, he’d finished orientation for the University of Northern Iowa. There he plans to continue his elementary education studies.

Looking back at the past two weeks, Knox said he’s grateful for two things: God and his seatbelt.

“I feel like my seatbelt saved my life, that without that seatbelt I probably would have been ejected and not be on the phone with you today,” Knox said. “The second would be just to have God on your side, to have a relationship with God. He’s my savior and obviously he has bigger and better plans for me in the future.”