Biker recovering

By JERRY SCOTT/Staff

With all the negativity in the news anymore, be it the war in Iraq to domestic violence to child abuse to gas prices, what’s needed every now and again is a feel-good story.
The following is simply that, the story of a former Bland County Bears football player whose life God chose to spare in a violent motorcycle crash a couple of months ago.
Zach Perkins was enjoying a day with friends, riding for a cause. He and several of his ‘biker buddies’ were returning home on May 26 after participating in the Ride for the Wall Memorial. A brief moment in time quickly changed the young man’s life as well as anyone whom he called family and friends.
Exit 73 off of I-81 was the scene. As Zach was going through the turn of the exit ramp, his foot peg made contact with the pavement. The peg grabbed the pavement, causing the Rocky Gap native’s bike to ‘high side’ and throw him through the air and into a rock wall.
It was then that God intervened. The 2000 graduate of Rocky Gap High School, despite very, very critical injuries, would live to see another day.
“He had severe bleeding in all areas of the brain,” his mother Maggie Harless stated in a recent email. “He also suffered a fractured orbital socket, severely bruised lungs, a broken rib, broken ulna and radius. He also aspirated.”
Clinging to life, Zach was transported to the hospital where doctors worked for nearly three hours to get him stabilized enough for the flight to Bristol Regional Medical Center’s trauma center. There he spent the next nine days before being transferred to Health South in Princeton for what his mother labeled ‘heavy duty rehab’ once his condition was tremendously upgraded.
“Zach spent five days in a coma on a ventilator in Bristol,” his mother wrote. “While there he also had two surgeries, one to insert a piece of foam into his face that propped his eyeball up and another that saw two plates and some 13 screws put his arm back together.”
Zach doesn’t have any recollection of the accident or its aftermath until the day before he left the rehab center. Once released from there, he was under constant supervision due to the possibility of seizures. His physical therapy is intense and he does it several days a week.
He never let things get him down on the football field and it is obvious things aren’t getting him down now. According to his mother, a recent visit to his neurosurgeon and the results of a CT scan revealed that the bleeding on the brain had lessened considerably and he was allowed to return to his job. However, he will be in physical therapy at least twice per week for at least six more weeks.
Zach has had the support of his close-knit family through this entire ordeal. In addition to his parents, Skip and Maggie, sister Kara and twin brother Zane have also stood by faithfully in aiding their brother’s recovery. With mounting hospital bills, it was Zane who devised a means to help his brother financially.
A few weeks back, the West Virginia Bench Press Federation held a competition with all the proceeds going directly towards Zach’s expenses. The event, held at Rocky Gap High School and appropriately pinned ‘The Push for Zach’ was a huge success, netting some $1,100. Items donated by GNC in Bluefield and Max Muscle in Christiansburg were raffled off.
“We truly thank all the lifters, monetary donations, and the businesses for their help,” Zane Perkins stated. “It all made for a huge success.”
Winners in their respective classes included Jonathan Sweet of Bland; Scott Gordon, Zane Perkins, Mike Compton, Duwayne Duncan, Jeff Keene, Walker Suthers and Jonathan Turpin of Wytheville; Brandon Quesenberry of Hillsville; Brandon McClaugherty of Giles; Steve Perdue of Bluefield, Robyn Blankenship of Roanoke, Derek Wingo, Brandon Falgiani, and Joseph Price of McDowell County (W.Va); and Brad Gabbert of North Carolina.
Maggie Harless is truly thankful for her son’s life. While Zach and Zane were growing up, she probably experienced the normal anxiety’s a mother has during childhood rearing. She probably never envisioned having to experience the past two months. But she’s coping.
‘To look at Zach, you’d never know that he was ‘gone,’ she stated. “The plastic surgeon did a great job on his face and the journey back has been an extremely tough one. Currently he is experiencing some short-term memory loss that should improve with time. The prognosis for total recovery is good. His doctors have all expressed how they’ve never seen anyone with the injuries he had heal the way he has.”
What a miracle!