Head-On Collision Changes Life In An Instant After Semester At Home, Jeremy Ruggles Will Walk Down The Aisle, Minus Crutches, And Get His Diploma

Class of ‘99 Special graduation edition

This is what Jeremy Ruggles remembers from Aug. 18: He went to work.

This is what his family remembers: The call from police telling them to hurry to the hospital.

The emergency surgery on the 17-year-old’s liver, torn up when the steering wheel rammed into it during the head-on crash.

The dire news that Jeremy’s kidneys were shutting down and that he wouldn’t make it through the night.

On that day and the weeks that followed, Ruggles’ graduation from Lakeland High School was the last thing on their minds.

“It is amazing he survived at all,” said Dr. Stephen Atkinson, who treated Ruggles at Kootenai Medical Center. “It was a question the first few days whether he was going to have brain activity or not.”

Ruggles has since answered that question. He’ll walk on stage June 9 to get his diploma and plans to attend North Idaho College this fall to study computers Walking unassisted down that graduation aisle is almost a bigger accomplishment than getting the diploma.

The crash left the towering, 6-foot-4-inch teen with a fractured pelvis and a torn-up knee that needed surgery in December. He finally tossed out his crutches a little more than a month ago.

He spent the first half of his senior year at home, visited regularly by a tutor who made him study whether he wanted to or not. If he was too dizzy to sit up and read, the tutor read to him.

Ruggles returned to school in January.

“I’ve enjoyed it… There’s a lot of people who were glad to see me,” he said. “When I was in the hospital, I was thinking I’d much rather be in school.”

It was a little before 8:30 a.m. on Tuesday, Aug. 18 and Ruggles was coming back from Sandpoint after making a delivery for his summer job at his uncle’s business.

The sky was clear and the roads were dry as he neared Hayden in the company pickup truck on Highway 95.

Police say Ruggles veered a bit left of center. He says he’s not sure what happened.

The two demolished vehicles tell the story: Ruggles pickup had slammed head-on into a dump truck. That truck’s driver walked away with minor injuries.

Ruggles clung to life.

An off-duty paramedic driving close behind witnessed the accident and pulled over to the smoldering scene to help. A church pastor also happened to be driving by and stopped to pray for Ruggles.

“God’s hand was in it all the way,” Jeremy’s mom, Bilinda, said.

Her oldest son would need 16 units of blood that day, 22 units during his several week long hospital stay. He’d have emergency surgery on his liver, and later to remove his infected gallbladder. Doctors would painstakingly piece together his tongue, chopped up after he swallowed a mouthful of glass in the crash.

He would spend 19 days in the intensive care unit, most of it unconscious, two days in the orthopedic wing and another two weeks at KMC’s rehabilitation center.

His employer’s insurance picked up just about all of the hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bills.

Ruggles walks with a slight limp now. His legs are still getting used to walking after all that time recuperating. He can’t hear well out of his right ear. He says his chest looks like a road map. He’ll likely need surgery to tighten ligaments in his shoulder thrown out of whack in the crash.

But he plays the trumpet in the high school band and says all of his respiratory therapy at the hospital has made him more able to hit the high notes.

Now that Ruggles is well, the family plans to take many camping trips this summer.

“We’re a grateful family, that’s for sure,” Ruggles’ grandfather, Bill Thomas, said. “Jeremy’s always been special to us, but this makes him even more special.”