Reading trucking magazines wide eyed as a child, Matt Gantry was certain that he wanted to drive a truck one day. Matt lives in England and has always thought that the Norwegian trucks were much more impressive than the ones in his home country. He realized his dream of driving a truck when he was 22, and it was only one month later that his dream turned into a nightmare – and nearly killed him. Having a terrible accident, his twenty six ton lorrie (truck), a Mercedes Axor, crashed into a tree, forever changing his life.
One of the first vehicles on the scene was a fire engine carrying four part time firefighters. This is the least number of firefighters allowed on a truck dispatched from the station. Had they not met that number they wouldn’t have got to Matt as quickly as they did. One of the risks for the firefighters when turning out at local scene is that you might know the person involved, and the crew immediately realized they knew Matt from the village. One of the firefighters said, “It was one of the most technically challenging incidents I’ve been to in 20 years on the job.”
It was a very complex rescue operation which involved winching the huge vehicle free of the tree so the paramedics and doctors, who worked in the dangerous conditions, could get Matt out. The rescue crew had up to forty five emergency service personnel, four of whom Matt knew personally. After three hours, during which he had his heart restarted by the ambulance personnel at the scene, he was finally extracted from the wreckage and flown by air ambulance to the hospital where he underwent a five and a half hour brain surgery. He was in an induced coma for a month, as his broken bones and a blood clot on his brain could begin to heal.
At the time of the accident, he had a chest infection, and his body temperature got dangerously high. Matt’s red and white blood cell count was at near fatal levels. The doctors didn’t think he would make it through the first night, but he did. After 101 days in the hospital, he was discharged in a wheelchair. The next 18 months were filled with outpatient physiotherapy sessions so he could learn to walk again. He progressed from a wheelchair to a Zimmer frame, to crutches, then a walking stick, and finally, to walking very gingerly on his own.
Police thoroughly investigated the crash and found no fault with the truck, Matt’s driving, or his hours. But he was to blame because he hit the oak tree. Eventually they found the reason to be a rare condition (not known until after the accident) called Cough Syncope. This is a well-recognized syndrome in which loss of consciousness usually occurs immediately after a violent cough or episode of violent coughing lasting for a prolonged period of time.
In my research about this rare condition, I found that if you suffer from syncopal episodes to the extent that you are limited in your ability to perform daily tasks or work, you may quality for disability benefits here in the United States. Although it’s rare and infrequent, cough syncope can be a serious and potentially life-threatening complication of chronic cough, which can have a major impact on sufferers, and treatment should be focused on the underlying cause or causes.
It’s been fifteen years since the accident, and Matt will never be able to return to the job he loved, due mostly from a partial loss of eyesight. He has attempted many jobs over the years, both office work and manual labor, but they have all proven too much for him. The doctors said the accident inflicted about 60 years of wear and tear to his body in a matter of seconds. He’s been affected by constant painful irritation from right knee ligament damage, and he often struggles with the pain in his left foot, caused by the pins they put in there to fix it. Matt also suffers with the effects of the head injury, which is very similar to post traumatic stress disorder. Despite all of this, the Department of Work and Pensions recently revoked his disabled entitlements.
However, there is one thing he could do – research and write a gripping, edge of your seat, fast paced novel. He feels one positive change that came since the life-changing accident was an unexpected surge in creativity. In school, he was pretty good in English, and got an A for a story he wrote called “The Confessions of a Paperboy.” He was actually a paperboy at the time, and he watched the bawdy comedies on Channel 5, but his story was much tamer than the type of things he saw on his tellie (television).
The right side of your brain is the creative side, and after the long surgery on that side of his head, it’s really easy for him to come up with ideas and scenes. His book is about a teenage video gamer in a hostage situation, and it tells the story of how he fights back using the skills he learned while playing first person shooter video games. The concept is “teenager meets Die Hard” in the most general sense.
The setting is a beach-front hotel in Florida where 500 people have been taken hostage by sixty terrorists. Many are world leaders and government officials, including the President of the United States. A video gamer is working at the hotel and now uses his gaming skills in a world where bullets really kill. The police are helpless, and this 17 year old is the only one who can alter the hostage’s fate. The terrorist’s hidden agenda is finally revealed, and Harry takes the fight to the terrorists, attempting to take down the world’s most wanted man.
Once Matt finished the novel, he submitted the manuscript to about one hundred and fifty literary agents and was pleased to receive around thirty responses. A book has to be in the top few percent of that week’s deluge of up to five hundred submissions to even get a reply. The agents praised Matt for his innovative concept, but this type of story had never been told, and they had no way of knowing if it would appeal to the masses. But the feedback from readers has been incredibly positive, and the book currently enjoys a 4.6 out of 5 star rating on Amazon.
The book was released December 2021 via Amazon in paperback form, and on Kindle in English speaking countries. The audio book is virtually done, less a little final editing. I can remember listening to audio books while trucking, and they definitely helped make the miles go by faster. Matt is looking to launch the second edition of “The Gamer” this month.
None of us know when something life altering could happen, and those few seconds could change life as we know it forever and force us to search for a new way to make a living. I hope that never happens to you, but if it does, I hope you do like Matt did, and find your strengths. Matt Gantry may never get to drive a truck again, but he is enjoying his new career as a writer, and his novel, The Gamer, is gaining popularity and proving you are never too old to learn something new or to start over again.
