»The Crash: Before telling the story for those who don't know, I just want to give many, many thanks to all of you who have already called or written with your support and sympathy. It's meant the world to me.

For those who don't know, here's the story and I apologize in advance for the length of this post:

As many of you know, I went on tour again with Oh My God this fall. We toured all summer and were scheduled to tour almost all of September and October. As part of that, MTV was gonna film us and we were going to appear on MTV as part of their new Artist of the Week promotion. So, despite a bit of the whole "I'll believe it when I see it" feeling, we were all pretty excited. Not to mention that playing music every night in a band you love to play in is an excellent way to spend the fall.

All of this, however, changed on Friday, September 21st. We had played in Athens, Ohio on the 20th and were scheduled to play in Cincinnati on Friday, 9/21. We stay with a friend of the band there in pretty comfortable settings, so we left Athens early so we could get to Cincinnati early and shower, eat, relax, etc. At about 12:30 PM, we were driving on some small, curvy, rural highway (2 lanes with 2 way traffic - just a yellow line to separate the two directions and no shoulder at all). Billy, the singer, was driving and I was in the back seat on the passenger side. Suddenly, as we came around a blind corner, Billy yelled out in surprise and alarm and I looked up just in time to see that a woman had COMPLETELY crossed over the yellow line and was in our lane. We smashed into each other head-on at 60 miles per hour.

I won't go into all the details, but the long and short of it is that I did not, thank god, get knocked out or anything (stuff that might have caused brain damage). I did however break my nose, fracture my right hand in 2 places, and break the hell out of my left leg. All the other guys in the band were miraculously also ok (relatively speaking). Ig, the keyboard player, broke his right hand really badly and it's gonna be months before he can play again. Billy broke his right kneecap, 3 ribs, and has a very slight (non-threatening) fracture on his C6 vertebrae. Brandon, the drummer, broke his wrist.

I got life-flighted in a helicopter to the Ohio State University Medical Center in Columbus, Ohio. There, I got the fully trauma treatment and they checked me for every type of horrible injury including spinal damage, brain damage, internal bleeding, etc. Fortunately, all of that came back as ok and they turned their attention to the rest of me.

In non-sequential order, here's what they did to me: For the broken nose, they knocked me out, reset all my bones, packed my nose with gauze, and put a splint on it. They have since removed all of that and my nose looks and functions like normal. The bones are still a bit delicate - i.e. no laying on it, no punching myself in the face, etc. - but it will be good as new in a couple more weeks.

My right hand had 2 small fractures - one on the thumb and the other on the side of my hand below the pinky. They put my hand in a cast for about 3 weeks and they expect a full recovery. I no longer have the cast on and I can move my hand as normal, but I am not allowed to put any weight on it until 11/21, at which point things will be healed enough that I can begin to use my hand normally again (and can finally start to play guitar again).

Finally, my left leg was broken pretty badly. The whole leg was swollen up so much that they were unable to do surgery on it immediately, so they did a smaller surgery on my first night there to install what's called an "external fixator". You may have seen these, but essentially, they insert pins into your bones above and below the injury (my knee in this case). The pins stick out through your skin and then they connect them with metal rods so that the entire leg is completely immobilized. They did this because they didn't want my unstable fractures to get worse before they could operate.

Initially, they diagnosed 2 fractures on what's called the "tibial plateau". This is the top part of the tibia and it's where all the weight of the kneecap rests. Both sides of the bone here were badly fractured and would require plates and screws to fix.

On October 3rd, they finally were able to do surgery and, once they opened me up, they realized that there was a third, very serious fracture that had not shown up in the x-rays. The front part of the tibia is where all the tendons from your kneecap attach and this is what allows you to bend your knee. The spot where all the tendons attach was also badly fractured and they had to repair it and reattach all the tendons. The surgery, originally scheduled to take 3 hours, took a full 7 hours.

Finally, they removed the external fixator on Oct 10th and replaced it with a brace to keep my leg immobile.

All told, I was in the hospital for 4 weeks. I went in on 9/21 and finally went home to my parent's house in Oklahoma on Friday, 10/19. I spent a week in rehab during my hospital stay and will continue with therapy and doctor's visits here in Oklahoma. I am not allowed, at this point in time, to bend my leg or put weight on it (which makes an immediate return to New York City impossible), but over the next 2 months, I will begin to make progress on both of these fronts and hope to be walking (or close to it) by the end of the year.

Thankfully, my parents are amazing and have been taking care of me this whole time. My mom was with me in the hospital for all 4 weeks and they now take care of me at home while I am still confined to a wheelchair and a walker (can't use crutches due to broken hand - I have a special walker with forearm pad on the right side) for the next few months.

Also, thank god, I have health care which will cover the INCREDIBLE cost of all of this.

Anyway, that's my story. I'm a little down sometimes, but ultimately extremely thankful that all of us survived what could have been an extremely fatal accident. The woman who hit us, sadly, did not survive and passed away some hours after the accident. As it turns out, she actually suffered a heart attack immediately prior to the accident*, which is why she was not in control of her car. She also, somewhat ironically, was legally drunk. It was the heart attack, however, that caused her to completely lose control.

So, as I say again, that's my story. All of us are grateful to be alive and to have avoided the most horrible injuries. I hope to return to NYC and my regular life in early January, pending my recovery proceeding as expected.

Wish me luck and drive safe!!!

--Matt

*I have just been informed that this might not actually have been the case. I had heard that she suffered a heart attack and also that she was drunk, but apparently one or both of these statements might be unsubstantiated rumors. At any rate, I have not actually seen official confirmation of either story.