Enterprise-Journal
In the pictures his family still keeps from his hospital stay, LaDarius Jackson is always smiling.
His eyes peek out from a mummified body, singed flesh concealed in a sea of bandages.
In one shot, his leg is grotesquely spliced open to relieve swelling that he said was so severe the limb “looked like an oak tree” before the incision. The cut is so deep that one of the bones in his leg is clearly visible.
In another photo, he lies propped up in a hospital bed, tray of food in front of him, barely able to move. Yet the grin is still there, just above two fingers weakly raised in a peace symbol.
The 17-year-old South Pike High School senior doesn’t remember much about the one-vehicle accident that almost took his life on July 8, but the pictures are a chronicle of what followed:
Three and a half weeks spent in a coma, with doctors unsure if he would ever recover. Broken leg bones, including a femur crushed from top to bottom rather than fractured horizontally. Months filled with surgery after surgery — 35 so far, with about five more to go.
And after that, a seemingly endless string of rehabilitation and physical therapy exercises that rebuilt his strength but sapped his energy.
He lost close to 100 pounds at one point. And bathing and cleaning his wounds, LaDarius said, felt like “being burned all over again.”
But LaDarius isn’t the only person in the pictures. Also visible are dozens of doctors and nurses who attended to him, plus cards and gift baskets on bedside tables and a billboard at South Pike High School announcing a blood drive.
The shots tell the story better than any words could.
Somewhere between the flames that burned 22 percent of his body as he was trapped in the cabin of his car, and the crutches that helped him walk unassisted back into a classroom in January, LaDarius found himself at the center of an outpouring of support, with his own optimism seeping through the community, touching and inspiring his newfound fan club.
He spoke at a dinner for burn victims in Baton Rouge on Dec. 12, returned home eight days later in time to avoid missing Christmas, and hopes to shed his crutches entirely this summer.
“It was just something (I) had to do and there was no way around it,” LaDarius said of his recovery. “It’s no use asking ‘Why me?’ because it’s already happened.”
That outlook was present from the start, said his mother, Jerolyne Jackson.
“When he came to, he asked a lot of questions, and we showed him pictures of the car,” she said. “But when he started rehab, the nurses said he just had that gleam in his eye to really do this. They said, ‘Normally, they (patients) will ask you how to take a step.’ ”
There was no such hesitation from LaDarius.
“He just started,” Jerolyne said. “He may have started with the wrong leg, but he wanted to walk.”
And almost immediately, friends were walking by his side.
The regular communication kept continuity in his social circle: He started dating his girlfriend Dominique Brumfield in September and credits her for much of his motivation. His family’s visits, meanwhile, gave him smaller goals to look forward to during recovery, like tickling his younger brother or going fishing with his cousin.
“I’m the same person,” he said Tuesday, with his cousin, Edward James, on the same couch teasing him as if to prove the point.
“He don’t be working out like I do now,” Edward prodded.
But those types of changes are skin-deep. Unable to play football like he used to, LaDarius watches his younger brother Charles Magee and gives him pointers.
“He thinks he’s the referee. He instructs like he’s coaching a team,” Edward jests.
Off the playing field, LaDarius is just as much of a mentor as ever, asking his sibling about school and testing his vocabulary.
Call it a down-to-earth attitude based in faith: LaDarius was headed to Pleasant Valley Methodist Church the morning of the accident.
It took a bit longer than expected, but he’s been back plenty of times since.
“I know everything happens for a reason,” he said. “Hoping and praying and keeping the faith, that’s how I made it this far. Whatever His will, let it be done and I promise I’ll face it wholeheartedly.”
If anything, the ordeal changed his family as much as it did him. LaDarius was supposed to be at a family reunion later in the day after the accident near the church.
Instead, his mother Jeroylne was being comforted by family members as she prayed a bed in a burn center would come available.
LaDarius was taken to Southwest Mississippi Regional Medical Center immediately after the accident. Doctors weren’t initially sure whether he’d go to Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee or Louisiana next.
Jerolyne said it took everything she had not to scream and plead for the help she knew could only come by waiting.
“I used to be very outspoken,” she said, calling herself more capable of patience and prayer now. “He’s really made me proud. … They didn’t think he was going to make it. To see him progress and to have the drive and the spirit — it was just a blessing and a miracle from God.”
LaDarius, who is busier eyeing college than battling to survive medical procedures now, couldn’t agree more.
“What I do remember of the accident is I saw the light,” he said. “I always thought that was kind of fake and made up. … But I was begging God, ‘Please don’t take me away from my Mama.’
“That’s basically it,” he said. “I made it through the worst part.”
