I’m not one ever to be short on words, but today is definitely an exception. All I can say is WOW! Instead of trying to put my thoughts into words I reverted to technology to express my gratitude.

I’ll post a thorough update on everything later in the week. Until then, just know that we are doing well and really do appreciate all of the support and encouragement we have received.

As many of you may remember I made a conscious decision a number of months ago to separate out the personal aspects of my blog from the professional. I did it for a number of reasons including the ability to maintain a clearer delineation between my personal and professional lives and to add some focus and clarity to what I was trying to do with this blog. I am going to cross the line between personal and professional briefly to share a personal story, one that I am actually still living through, because it has taught me a lot of things in a relatively short period of time.

This past Monday, I decided to take a day off. I’m not one to do so “just because” so it was a bit out of the ordinary for me. Normally, my days off are taken with a purpose and usually as part of a larger vacation or extended holiday weekend. I guess I had a lot of reasons for doing so like putting in extremely long days and weeks due to an organizational project that I am playing a key role on and the fact that I really haven’t stopped to smell the roses. Regardless of the reason, I decided that the time was right and I took the day for myself. I really didn’t have anything planned other than catching up on some reading and doing some work around the house. In essence I had a day full of nothing and was totally looking forward to it. I even decided to sleep in and woke up at 6:30 AM as opposed to my customary 4:45 AM.

For once it was going to be a day for me and about me.

After getting up, I went through my customary morning routine: let the dog out, glance at the paper, check my feeds for any activity that may have happened over night and then finally checking in on my work email. I know I said it was a day off, which typically means no work, but I always feel the need to check in on what’s going on. In someways I think it helps me relax knowing that there is nothing happening that I need to be concerned about, in others I know it’s the fact that I have a tough time letting go of work even for a few hours. Regardless, it is what it is.

I was just wrapping up reading my email when I noticed my Motorola Q phone sitting next to the computer. I had turned the ringer off the night before so there was no audible notification, yet another way that I was trying to distance myself from my work on that Monday. But the phone managed to catch my attention. I guess it was the fact that the screen was lit up, which normally means I am either getting a call or an email. Knowing that I just checked all of my email I knew it was a call. I decided to see who was calling and noticed it was my wife Laura. Again not out of the ordinary, but I noted that it was exactly 7:39 AM, which was nine minutes past when she starts work. Laura is a teacher at a local school district and they have a pretty rigid time schedule for teachers and also a no cell phone rule so as I answered the phone I was pretty interested in why she’d be calling.

I had figured that she had forgotten something at home or needed me to drop something off at our son’s daycare so I had no initial concern and answered the phone. The second I did, I knew something was wrong. Instead of hearing her cheerful voice saying “Good Morning Honey”, I instead heard a pregnant pause. The pause was followed by a man’s voice asking me: “Is this David Sabol?”, to which I answered “Yes it is”. Now, I still had no idea what was going on but when you get a phone call from your spouse and hear a voice that isn’t who you think it’s going to be it is alarming.

From then on, my recollection of the exact conversation are fuzzy but somehow strangely etched into my memory. The remainder of the call went something like this:

“Mr. Sabol this is Officer So-and-So from Such-and-Such police department. I wanted to inform you that your wife was involved in a serious car accident. She is conscious and coherent but the rescue squad is currently extracting her from her vehicle. The plan is the moment they get her out of the car to rush her to XYZ hospital. She is injured but we don’t know the severity yet.”

Well, lets just say that it knocked the wind out of my sails for a few moments until everything sunk in. I spent a number of years from high school through college as a volunteer firefighter and first responder and was trained on vehicle rescue among other things. Whenever you hear “extracting from a car” that normally means hydraulic equipment (Hurst tools, Jaws of Life, etc.) which is another way to say that the situation is pretty bad. However, hearing that she was conscious and coherent I knew that she was probably more ok than not.

Needless to say, I got on the phone called my parents and asked my father to meet me at my house. Then I called her school to let them know that Laura wasn’t going to be there and explain why. I guess I took my time because (a) I knew that she still wasn’t out of the car and by the time I would get to the accident scene she would already be on the way to the hospital and (b) the ride between the accident scene and the hospital at rush hour was at least 15 minutes on a good day. Since we live only 2 miles away I thought better of rushing and followed the advice of my manager who once shared a martial arts principle with me: “When someone is moving at you fast, react slowly and when someone is moving at you slowly, react quickly” This was a time for measured movements and thoughtfulness even though I was pretty shaken up.

Despite my slow pace, my father and I still managed to make it to the hospital a solid 10 minutes ahead of the ambulance and the wait for it was excruciating. I managed to calm myself pretty as much as possible, but I was still on edge. The moment the ambulance arrived I was calm but anxious to see Laura. The triage nurses gave allowed me to access the section of the ER where only ambulance crews, doctors and nurses are allowed and I met the stretcher as it entered the shock trauma unit.

One of the paramedics pulled me aside and said: “give us a few minutes to do an initial evaluation and then you can come in”. He then went on to describe the scene to me, what was done, and how she was doing. Thankfully, those years of training long ago paid off because we spoke the same language and I knew exactly what he was explaining to me. Translated he told me:

Laura had been making a left turn onto a rural road about a 1/2 mile from work. There was a slight turn and hill to her left (west) and a straightaway to her right. She was pulling out from a complete stopped, had apparently cleared herself in both directions and went to make the turn. She no sooner entered the turn that she was struck by a vehicle from her left which was a direct impact to the drivers side front of the car. The front-end of the car received terrible damage, the windshield was blown apart and Laura was pinned between her seat and the newly relocated dashboard. It took the rescue crews 30-minutes to cut her out of the car. There was no signs of internal injuries based on their preliminary assessment.

The good news to me was the fact that she didn’t impact the windshield because that is that cause of most major head traumas resulting from car accidents. She also had her seatbelt on and the combination of that and the airbag in the car kept her in a pretty safe position. They were very concerned about her legs because of how they were pinned beneath the dashboard. The doctor in the shock trauma unit invited me in to see Laura and began to apprise both of us of the situation. The long and the short of it was the fact that her injuries were severe but mainly limited to the legs. Both of her ankles were broken (actually shattered but I’d learn about that later) and she would need surgery immediately to see how much they could repair at that time and how much would have to wait. Thankfully, she wasn’t hurt worse.

I spent the remainder of that morning moving from waiting room to waiting room as she underwent CT Scans, MRIs, and a barrage of other tests in advance of surgery. Finally, after meeting with the doctors once again I had a pretty good assessment of how the next few hours would play out and could finally contact her family. I didn’t intentionally withhold the information but I wanted to have as much accurate information as possible to help minimize their concern. I knew they were going to be upset, so I simply wanted to let them know that things were ok.

Laura was taken to her room at the hospital where she would be until she is discharged later this week to await surgery. I took it upon myself to have her give me as many “to do’s” as she could to help notifying everybody that had a need to know. Laura is not only a teacher at 5 different schools within her district but also gives about a dozen students private violin lessons out of our home and is also a professional violinist, not to mention the fact that she comes from a large family so the list of calls was enormous. I also had to get the insurance situation under control which only added to my telephonic burden. I began dialing the phone and talking to family, friends, principals, colleagues, students, insurance adjusters, social workers, etc. and don’t think I’ve stopped for more than an hour since I made the first call.

Somewhere in the midst of all of the chaos, the first of many blessings came into our lives in the form of a talented orthopedic surgeon. I had heard from one of our family friends (he is a fire inspector and his wife is an ER nurse at the hospital) that if given the choice take this guy as he is one of the best anywhere. Well fate had it that he was on duty that day and we didn’t even have to ask for him. He walked me through the procedure and was upfront about the risks and challenges, but also confident that he could get everything done in one surgery as opposed to multiple surgeries. He didn’t want to rush it or put Laura at risk but also didn’t want her to have to suffer through more than one surgery unnecessarily. He wasn’t going to be certain until he actually started the surgery, but he had a confident air about him.

After the initial consultation he disappeared and a short while later Laura followed. A few short hours later (it actually seemed like forever) he emerged out of surgery and immediately came out to update me. He said that the damage was pretty extensive and the right ankle was broken into four pieces he was able to fix it all at once, the left he commented was pretty simple and he fixed that as well. He said Laura would be in recovery for another hour or so, but wanted me to know that everything went ok. She’d have a long road to recovery but should be able to recover fully.

That evening I was able to say my first real hello to my wife and have a nice conversation with her and my son who joined us at the hospital. The time since then has been a blur. I have been playing mommy, daddy, supportive husband, son, son-in-law, family business manager, etc. and still managed to work from the hospital while my wife was resting. We have received so much support from our family, friends and sometimes even people I’ve never met. In all honesty the support has been pretty overwhelming.

We have a long road ahead of us. My wife will be confined to a wheelchair for at least 10 weeks and won’t be fully recovered for up to 4 months. My father and his cousin had to build a wheelchair ramp this evening so I had a way to get Laura into the house when I am finally be able to bring her home from the hospital. Doing simple things are going to be a huge challenge for all of us for a long time. I guess in many ways life as we knew it are over for a while…but in the grand scheme of things it could be worse.

What have I learned so far through all of this?

1. I mused about this on twitter a few weeks ago but it rang true this week: the only things we really have control over in life is our attitudes and how we respond in and to situations that we confront. I chose to stay positive and respond slowly…it paid dividends.
2. We all have life but sometimes forget to live. I realized that I take a lot for granted and have so much to be thankful for but don’t often say it enough.
3. Help can come from some extraordinary and unexpected places. I ended up getting a free meal pass to the hospital cafeteria because Laura’s mom worked with the wife of one of the dietitians at the hospital. I have never met this guy but the gesture will be remembered forever.
4. You really don’t know who your true friends are until something like this happens. I found out that I had more than I ever imagined
5. We all have unlimited ability if we choose to tap into it. I managed somehow to keep everything together this week and balance my family, other commitments and work, and while challenging it was also effortless.
6. Progress is measured in inches not miles. Laura is already able to move herself between her hospital bed and wheelchair which seems pretty trivial but with no use of your legs it is pretty monumental.

These are just a few of the many things so far and I suspect there will be a lot more to come. I wanted to share this detail so I wouldn’t forget what I have learned and so I could also update all of my friends out there on what’s been going on. I may be hit and miss with my posting for a while, but at least those who read this will understand why.

Thanks to all of you who have already reached out to me and the countless others that will likely reach out. It’s great to know that I have surrounded myself with people that really do care!

More to come soon…I promise!

Read/WriteWeb is doing a feature series on non-profits and web this week.

In 2007, with the enormous popularity of social networks, non-profits have even more ways to reach their target audience. Change.org, a social network for social activism that we profiled at the beginning of this year, is one example of the current generation of Web enabled non-profits.

They are going to take a look at how non-profit organizations use the Web and the tools available for them. Today they did a nice write-up on how non-profits are profiting from social media services Facebook and Myspace.

Amid all the hoopla over social networks Facebook and MySpace, both major social networks have prominant sections for non-profit activity. Facebook’s is called Causes and MySpace’s is Impact. In this post we’ll take a closer look at how Facebook and MySpace cater to non-profits.

They plan on doing a follow-up on smaller non-profits. If you are interested in learning about how non-profits are making use of the web this is a series worth keeping an eye on.