Living to tell his story

My name is Jon Davidson. I’m a writer, musician, mixologist, and climber who resides in The Dalles. On Monday, June 24, I was descending La Tetilla, the craggy summit pinnacle of 9,646-foot Volcán de Tequila, when a boulder dislodged from the rock face I was clinging to, knocking me off a ledge, over a precipice, and onto the jagged ground below.

After a 9-hour search and rescue mission involving only a stretcher and a long, rocky trail, first responders delivered me by ambulance to Hospital Arboledas, a trauma hospital in Guadalajara. I was diagnosed with eight broken vertebrae in my thoracic and cervical spine, a badly broken sternum, a broken knee, hand, and shoulder, a punctured lung, blood in both lungs, a concussion, and eight broken ribs. I was also covered with deep lacerations from head to toe, and was given a pleural chest tube in my left lung. I received over 30 stitches to restore the patches of scalp that had been stripped from my skull and were hanging down the side of my head.

“I have never seen so much blood,” first responder and firefighter José Alfredo Hernández Robles remarked en route to the hospital.  

After ten days in the hospital, I spent another three weeks in a Guadalajara hotel with my partner, Kathleen Royal, until my lung had reinflated to the point where doctors permitted me to fly.

While still in Guadalajara, Labrewatory, an award-winning brewery in Portland, organized a fundraiser to cover my mounting medical bills, with the help of many of my friends as well as corporate sponsors from all over Oregon. I was blown away by the amount of much-needed support I received, both monetary and emotional.

Finally, I was cleared to return to Oregon, where I immediately started seeing specialists in Portland. After over 20 more appointments, scans and hospital visits, doctors discovered that one of my broken vertebrae was a three-column fracture, extending all the way behind my spinal cord. “Don’t move, and you probably won’t paralyze yourself,” I was told. Because my sternum was also broken, doctors couldn’t put me in a back brace, so instead, they essentially placed me on bed rest.   

On Sept. 10, after two and a half months of waiting and fighting our broken healthcare system, and after spending 23 hours of each day in bed in excruciating pain, I underwent successful spinal fusion surgery. Dr. Bret Ball fused six of my thoracic vertebrae during a four-hour procedure.

Now, just over three weeks removed from the surgical knife, I’m noticing daily improvements in both my mobility and pain levels. Sternum surgery and hair transplant surgery are both future possibilities, and I have an unquestionably long road full of physical therapy and pain management ahead. For instance, I’m not allowed to lift anything heavier than five pounds for the next six months.  

 While I understand the difficult days that still lie ahead, and loathe the nonstop pain that persists, I’m so thankful for the fact that I’m still breathing. “You are crazy lucky to be alive,” said my shoulder specialist, orthopedic surgeon Jeff Mercer.

 I couldn’t agree more.  

Davidson is a travel and adventure blogger who has visited 56 countries and 50 US states. He is the author of one published book, Of Bombs and Blackberries. He is the resident mixologist on Portland’s KATU, and has designed craft cocktails for bars all across the Pacific Northwest. A former musician, he has released six albums, toured in six countries, and placed singles on 250 stations across North America. He is also an avid climber who has summited 80 peaks over 14,000’ in six continents.