This isn't updated, I'll update it as the days go by..

On April 7, 1995, my whole life changed. I never thought it could change so quickly, but it did. I went home that day and asked my Mother if I could go stay with my friend, Holley. As usually, my Mother said I had to ask my Daddy. When I called my Daddy, he told me to ask my Mother, so they finally agreed to let me go. Holley, Candace (one of my other friends), and Holley’s cousin Kelly came to get me in Holley’s Father’s truck. When they arrived, I hugged my Mother and told her that I loved her, and told my puppy goodbye, then we were on our way. We were going down highway 17 just like any other group of teenagers would. I asked Holley if she could unbuckle her seatbelt because the buckle was sticking me in the behind, so she unbuckled it, needless did I know that it would save her life. Kelly asked us if we wanted to go faster, Candace was up for it, but Holley and me weren’t so sure. She did it anyway..then Holley and me got used to it so we turned the radio up really loud and was singing and dancing, but then Kelly started to swerve over the road, turning the steering wheel side to side, I was getting scared. We was screaming at her to stop, but she did it anyway. Then as we were going down the road, we heard a loud bang, like a gunshot, so we turned around to look, when we turned around, we saw tire parts on the road and Kelly got scared, so she let go of the wheel, panicking, we crashed into a tree, we were all thrown out, but then I heard a loud explosion and all I felt was heat, I tried to get up but something was on me, flames...they grew higher and higher, and the higher they got, the more I screamed in pain. Holley was screaming at me, telling me to “shut up, everything’s OK,” but I knew everything was not OK. Candace got up, started walking off and I could see her take her shirt off, because it was on fire. As I was laying there, I thought I was going to die, and then I looked and saw Kelly, her lifeless, burned body, all I could do was scream. A woman came by and was rolling me on the ground to get the flames out, she left to get help, and more people came by. As they put me in the ambulance, I was conscious enough to tell them my name, phone number, and my parent’s names, but that’s as far as my memory gets. I was told that I almost died, twice because my heart stopped beating, but in a matter of minutes, they revived me. The ambulance crew transported Holley and me to Greenwood Leflore Hospital, Holley stayed there, but in a matter of hours, I was taken to Mississippi Memorial Firefighters Burn Center in Greenville, MS. My Mother, Father, sister, friends and relatives were all there to talk me through my time there, to give me support, to keep me going and alive. I was there for three days, during my stay there, a social worker told my parents about the Shriners and the Shriner’s Burns Institute, and gave them a number of a shriner who could help me. The next day, a flight crew from SBI flew to Greenville to get me, but they noticed I was bleeding internally, so they told my parents that they would try to come again the next day because the doctor in Texas told them to get me there, because I had a better chance of surviving. Then that Sunday, I had my spleen removed. That Monday (I’m not sure of the exact days), I was flown to Galveston, TX to the Shriner’s Burns Institute. Two months passed after I was taken there, I endured many skin grafts, unbearable pain, I practically had to learn to do everything again, I had to learn to walk, get up, move, everything. It was a horrible experience. Then my day of triumph came, after 80 days in a strange place, I got to go home. I was surprised to see all the people who came just to see me when I got home. It was the happiest day of my life. Although, I was in a wheelchair, I didn’t care, I was home. Things were different, but I adjusted. Just when I thought I was homefree, a problem occurred, when I was doing physical therapy at home, my foot was steadily contracting, I had what the doctors at SBI called a “foot drop”, in reality terms, my foot was not in a 90 degree angle, it was slanted and it was painful to walk on, it was like I was walking on my tip-toe. So I had to go back to Galveston. While I was there again, I had an extraordinary surgery, I had a huge contraption on my foot, I called it an erector set, because it was similar to an erector set, but it had pins going through the bones in my foot and leg and we had to “click” these little buttons to slowly bring my foot to normal position. It wasn’t the best thing in the worl, but I had to live with it. After a month or so of wearing it, I had it removed and a cast was put on my leg. After the cast came a brace, I’m still wearing the brace though. As of now, I’m walking, driving, running, everything like I used to. I’ve learned something from my experience, to never stray away from God, because I did, and I never want to do that again.