NEWPORT NEWS -- Kyle O'Brien remembers just about everything about the morning of November 12, the day he left his bedroom to turn on the television to see if school would be closed because of a Nor'easter. He sat on the couch in his home, sent a couple of texts.
"All of a sudden," recalls O'Brien, "the house started shaking...like an earthquake. That's what I thought it was at first, but, then, things started hitting up against the sliding glass window, and I kind of got up, and it kind of knocked me on the floor."
The vibration was from a gigantic tree just outside the mobile home, brought crashing down because of the saturated ground and wind.
"Soon as I hit the floor, that's when everything started piling down on top of me, and I didn't know what was on me," O'Brien says. "The couch that I was laying on before I had moved, it was tilted up, and it was right where my head was, and if I didn't move, then I wouldn't be here, so that's the kind of thing I think about all time. If I didn't move, my head would be gone right now."
The 17-year-old struggled to free himself from the weight of tree, the pieces of his house. He used such force, pressure that built up in his eyes caused blood vessels to pop.
"As soon as everything was on me, it was just like my legs started tingling, and about 15 minutes or so, I really couldn't feel my legs," O'Brien tells 13News. "At one time, I heard the paramedics say, 'He's got a crush injury. His legs, we can't see,' and it kind of scared me, thinking I'm not gonna have no legs. I'm not gonna be able to run around and play football, walk, or do anything y'all do today." Now, he says, "It's hard to see, like, a fire truck or something, 'cause you just, as you're laying there, you hear everything down the street, and the loud noise, every loud noise scares me, and just going to sleep at night, you just, I see it all over again."
A week after the tree, his world, literally came crashing down on him, things look much better. All the feeling has come back to O'Brien's legs. Only his foot is giving him trouble. He started therapy to get the nerves there to "wake up," as he describes it. Doctors expect the 17-year-old to be moving around on his own, without the help of crutches he has now, by Christmastime.
"Everybody tells me I'm blessed and everything, and I feel blessed."
Because the 17-year-old and his family lost their home during the storm, relatives set up a recovery fund. You can make a donation at any TowneBank. Let branch staff know it's for "O'Brien Family Contributions."
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