TIFTON — Paul Worley was driving to work on July 30 when he nodded off. It was only for a second, but that was all the time needed for his truck to run off the road.

“I had about long enough to think,” he said. “There’s a telephone pole, and then there’s a chain link fence and the church. I decided to to towards the church.”

That meant that his truck ran through the chain link fence, hitting every fence post along the way.

“I hit the poles,” he said. “I counted 10 of them and then after that I quit counting.”

Worley quit counting because one of the eight-foot rusted metal poles came through the truck windshield, dash, then through his side, his seat, and out the back of the truck, leaving him pinned in once the truck came to a stop.

“I saw a car or two pass,” he said. “I was already in shock I guess, because I remember thinking that if somebody could just help me get out, I’d be all right. That I needed to go to work, it’s starting to get daylight. That’s what I was thinking.”

He said that he sat there for a while feeling the blood pouring out, knowing that the pole was all the way through.

“I’m holding the pole the whole time,” he said. “I caught it, or I thought I did. But I’m holding it because it felt like it was pulling on me because of the angle of the chair I guess.”

Worley decided that, the next time he heard a vehicle coming, to tap his brakes to see if he could get someone to stop and help.

“I was tapping, tapping, tapping and he was coming up behind me,” he said. “As soon as he got real close you heard the brakes, saw the lights dip. I don’t think he even pulled off the road.”

The person who stopped was a volunteer firefighter and called 911 for help.

According to a report from Tift County Fire/Rescue, the call came out about the accident at 6:21 a.m.

One ambulance, one fire engine, Fire Battalion Chief and an EMS Battalion Chief responded, and AirEvac was called at the same time.

Worley remembers everything about his extraction from the remains of his truck very clearly, since he was awake and conscious the entire time.

“I was conscious the whole time,” he said. “Believe it or not, I was very calm, very polite. You just got to deal with the pain. If you get upset, it gets worse.”

Worley said that the extraction went perfectly.

Firefighters had to cut the doors off of the truck, then had to cut the pole without jarring it too much.

“I felt the doors come off,” he said. “They’re shaking the body of the truck, they’re pulling the fence off of it. They cut the back part of (the pole) first, and that’s when it hurt.”

The firefighters then used the jaws of life to cut the pole in the front so they could leave it in his side while they got him out of the truck.

“Everything was flawless,” Worley said about the extraction. “If you had to have something perfect, they did perfect. There wasn’t a mistake, and nobody hesitated. Unbelievable. And those two crews don’t work together.”

AirEvac arrived to transport him to Macon, and Worley said it was lucky that it was the helicopter from the Douglas station.

“That one is bigger,” he said. “The bed swivels out. Because I had a pole in me, I couldn’t just climb up in there and lay down.”

Worley said that he didn’t lose consciousness until he got to the hospital in Macon.

Several surgeries and months of therapy later, Worley is almost as good as new, save a still healing wound and a wrapped finger.

“I lost a kidney,” he said. “I bruised my liver really bad, but it will heal itself… lost half my intestines, gall bladder. I broke ribs on the front and the back. When they started telling me what all I lost, I was like, ‘Well, I can still move.’ I’m fine. You’d never know, just the scars are rough.”

On Aug. 28, Worley ended up meeting up with the first responders who got him out of the truck and took care of him.

“We met at the scene, across the street,” he said. “That was amazing… That was real emotional. I got to meet all of them again.”

Worley said that he has a new appreciation for things after his accident.

“Everyday is brighter,” he said. “Birds sing louder. It’s pretty. You see things differently. You don’t realize how much influence you have.”

“I didn’t ask for this,” he said. “I’m not special, but I am. Everybody is.”