Scholzen says he is happy to be alive. He just turned 19, and he has an eight month old daughter. He has a good appetite, and enjoys the huge meals he gets in the hospital. He says they are hard to chew because he lost two teeth in the accident, and he now has a titanium jaw. His face was so badly injured that doctors literally peeled the skin back to repair the damage. He injured his T-4 vertebrae, and has no feeling below the waist. It was a month before he was told that his friends had died in the accident. He says the impact of their deaths won't really hit him until he gets home.

Scholzen is being discharged from the hospital in three weeks, but he won't be going to Gateway Technical College to get his adult high school diploma as soon as he'd hoped. He probably won't be going into the service after graduation, either. Instead, he will likely be learning how to deal with his physical disabilities because he can't use his legs. Doctors don't know if he will ever regain feeling in his legs.

His days are filled with bowel management class, physical therapy, and visits from his fiance and their daughter, his parents, and friends. He was eating lunch and then in therapy when we went to interview him. The reporter and I admired his determination as he pulled himself out of his wheelchair and onto the therapy mat. We watched him work with his therapist for a half hour.

Then we finally understood just what it means when we hear that someone doesn't have any feeling from the waist down. His paralysis was no longer an abstract concept for us. There was a reality that reached far beyond those words. You see, Scholzen had apparently just finished digesting his breakfast or lunch, and had soiled himself. We saw it on the mat when the therapist rolled him over, and we saw the stain on the back of his sweatpants.

It might save a live to tell people about it, like I'm telling you about it, but the rules and mores of community journalism say we can't show it to our readers who may know David. That's like the traditional newsroom rule about photos of dead bodies...and there were some from the accident scene: you can't publish local photos of dead bodies, but you can publish them if they were taken far, far away which means that no one in your community knows the people involved.