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Oregon Road Conditions & Cams Email Story to a Friend March 19, 2006 Mark Robustelli holds an X-ray that shows the plates and screws in his left leg between the knee and ankle. Bones in both Robustelli�s legs were shattered when the car he was riding in was struck by a drunken teenager driving 90 to 100 mph. Mail Tribune / Jim Craven Rebuilding a life 13 months after a horrific crash, the pain continues for Mark Robustelli and his family By BILL KETTLER Mail Tribune Mark Robustelli has had plenty of time to think since the fiery crash that nearly took his life. "It’s truly amazing how things happen," he said. "How someone else can change your life so fast. It’s crazy." The 28-year-old walks with a cane these days, but he knows he’s lucky to be walking at all. Metal plates and screws hold his right foot together, and his left shin, and his right hip, and his left wrist. "I’ve tried so many times in my head to process the accident," he said. "I knew how it happened, but why?" He has no memory of the crash that killed his best friend and changed his life. He nearly bled to death before firefighters could cut his body out of the mangled Chevy Blazer that he and Charles Ashley Bench were riding in that night in February 2005. Advertisement "My last memory is Charles and I getting in the car and joking about how I had recently got a seat belt ticket, and how we’d better buckle up," he said. "We both clicked in our seat belts." The two friends were crossing the intersection of Riverside Avenue and Jackson Street in Medford when a Jeep Cherokee speeding at nearly 100 mph up Riverside ran a red light and smashed into Bench’s Blazer. "It looked like a bomb went off," Medford police Lt. Tim George said soon after the crash. Bench died instantly. The Jeep’s drunken driver, 17-year-old Kevan Thatcher-Stephens of Ashland, died later that night in the hospital. The impact hurled the Blazer 150 feet and shattered bones in both of Mark’s legs, his right foot and his left wrist. Hot oil and antifreeze burned his flesh while rescue crews worked frantically to extract him from the wreckage. "He was white as a ghost when we saw him," in the hospital emergency room, said his dad, Robert Robustelli. "They gave him 11 units of blood before they stabilized him. They’d put it in and it’d come right out his leg." "They didn’t have high hopes for Mark," said his mother, Christy. "They couldn’t put the blood in quick enough." Surgeons worked for six hours to staunch the bleeding and save his splintered left leg. He learned later that doctors and nurses were so busy tending his leg wounds that they didn’t notice his broken wrist until something made him move his arm and the wrist flopped over backwards. A few days later a surgical team put his broken bones together with screws and metal plates. There were compound fractures in his right thigh and left shin. Most of the bones in his right foot were broken. The surgery lasted 11 hours. In his left leg alone, just between the knee and the ankle, physicians set three plates and 23 screws and pins. A month passed before doctors released Mark from the hospital. Normally they would have sent him to a skilled nursing center for several months, but they allowed him to go home because his wife, Tabitha, was a third-year nursing student. Mark and Tabitha moved into a modest house in west Medford with their 3-year-old son, Conner. The doors were wide enough for his wheelchair. Mark’s dad and his brother, Jason, built a ramp to get his wheelchair in the house. They tracked down a hospital bed and moved it into the house. "It took four big guys to get it in there," Robert Robustelli recalled. Robert and Christy sat down with Tabitha and figured out a plan to take care of Mark. He couldn’t move without assistance. Somebody would have to be with him 24 hours a day and care for Conner. Robert and Christy took shifts with Mark and Conner while Tabitha, 25, went to school. Nurses came every day at first to tend his wounds; physical therapists came three times a week to start him down the long road to walking again. "There were people coming and going all the time," his mom recalled. Tabitha eventually took over cleaning and dressing his wounds. "Even for someone who’s into nursing, it was hard," she said. "I’d come home (from school) and bathe him and do wound care and make dinner and clean the house. Friends and family would come by and give me a break so I could have an hour to myself. "There were times when I didn’t know how I was going to make it through another day." Forced confinement didn’t sit well with Mark, who grew up in the outdoors and made his living building garden landscapes. "He’s used to doing things for himself — like any other 28-year-old man," his mother said. "He’s used to doing . You take out the trash. You go to your job. You take your kid to school." There were times when Mark couldn’t help but think about why his friend died and he didn’t. "What did I do differently than (Charles) did? I have no clue. The only logical answer is the doorpost." Mark’s body slammed against the doorpost when the Jeep smashed into the Blazer. "Had it not stopped my momentum ... Charles didn’t have anything to stop his momentum." News accounts of the crash made the Robustelli name suddenly familiar to thousands of people in Southern Oregon, and struck a chord with every motorist who’s had a narrow miss. "We got flowers from people we didn’t even know with notes that said, ‘We’re praying for you,’ " his mom said. "People knew it could have been anybody in that intersection at that time," his dad said. "It brought a kind of weird status to our name," his brother said, "and we know a lot of people. I was answering questions about Mark almost daily. "I tried to explain just a little bit, like ‘He’s out of the hospital and he’s doing much better,’ but there’s a lot more to it than just getting out of the hospital." Take the medical bills, for example. Mark was enrolled in the Oregon Health Plan, but the state health insurance program won’t begin to cover all the bills for hospitalization, surgery, physical therapy, skilled nursing care and all the rest. "I don’t want to look at the numbers," he said. "How can I?" The bills go to his attorney’s office, where they’re being handled as a lien against whatever settlement he may eventually receive from the $2.5 million lawsuit he’s filed against the estate of Thatcher-Stephens. "The bill for one visit to an orthopedic surgeon was $2,600," he said. "The last time I checked, the bills were something like $500,000 or $600,000, and that was before the last surgery." The "last surgery" wasn’t supposed to happen. One day last fall when Mark stood up, one of the plates in his left leg snapped, and the leg folded back on itself. Surgeons had to replace the broken hardware. "It’s a long battle," he said. "Just when you think it’s getting easier, it doesn’t." Now there may be another surgery. "They’re talking about taking a bunch of the hardware out," Tabitha said. "There’s so much hardware in his leg that there isn’t room for the muscles to expand." There’s also the matter of the rest of Mark’s life. Doctors have told him he’ll probably never be able to do the physical work he did before. For months he couldn’t pick up his son. "It’s definitely changing everything about what I was before," he said. "The most disturbing thing to me is how he’s had to sit out a lot of our son’s life," Tabitha said. "He can’t teach him how to ride a bike. We can’t go camping like we used to." He’s contacted a vocational rehabilitation specialist to start looking into what kinds of work might suit him, and he plans to return to school in April as the first step toward training for a new job. "He can’t sit for a long period of time and he can’t stand for a long period of time," Tabitha said. "He has pain if he sits, and his leg swells if he stands." "I’m going to do everything I can to make it better," Mark said. "Disabled? That’s not me. If I could go to work right now I would, but no one’s going to have me." Maintaining a healthy attitude has been a challenge, he said. "I have my times, but I don’t hold on to them. It’s not worth it. "If I get frustrated and really angry it takes three or four days to get out of that zone and that’s three or four days I’ve lost in my recovery and I can’t afford that. "I can’t change that night," he said. "All I can change is forward." Reach reporter Bill Kettler at 776-4492, or e-mail Rebuilding a life ">[email protected] . How you can contribute Contributions to help the Robustelli family can be made in two ways: By check, payable to the "Bench-Robustelli fund" at Washington Mutual Bank. Contributions will be shared equally by the Robustellis and the family of Charles Ashley Bench, who died in the crash. Contributions can be made at any Washington Mutual branch or mailed to Kathy Drake, P.O. Box 531, Eagle Point, OR 97524. By check to Grace Community Church, 1123 E. Jackson St., Medford, OR 97504. Checks should be made payable to Grace Community Church, with a notation in the "memo" area of the check for Mark Robustelli. Mail Tribune Home | Local News | Sports | Business | Obituaries | Life | Opinion AP News | Archives | Site Map | Community | Classified Copyright © 1997-2006 Mail Tribune, Inc. All rights reserved. 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