Help Travis walk again fund

I’ve struggled to put this into words & debated about whether or not I even wanted to do this, but I need help. I’m alive and the fact is that I shouldn’t be.

On May 8th 2023 I was working out of the country for the first time. Things were different than I anticipated when I got there, but we were getting it done against all odds. Aside from a huge lack of experience from the labor provided, the equipment was shockingly subpar. What they were providing would never have been allowed stateside.

They didn’t have lifts for a stage we were setting up. Myself & a local worker were over 20 feet in the air on a scaffolding pulling power cables through a truss for lighting. In stabilizing myself on the truss, I got electrocuted to the point of unconsciousness. Being electrocuted seizes your muscles. At first I was conscious & very aware of the danger I was in but was unable to do anything about it as my hands were seized to the truss. It was terrifying and I thought I was going to die. I absolutely could have. I lost consciousness & my heart stopped.

The worker in the air with me (Chappa) acted very quickly and yelled to the head electrician to cut the power, which he did swiftly (and saved my life the first time). Since I was unconscious my body would have fallen to my possible death (again) but my leg slipped through the truss & caught me from falling. I was in the air, unconscious & in cardiac arrest, hanging by my knee with my foot & shin caught in a truss over 20 feet in the air. Chappa pulled me to the scaffolding & didn’t find a pulse. In a desperate attempt to revive me, slapped me HARD in the chest repeatedly (which bruised the hell out of my chest & unwittingly performed what is called a “cardiac thump” that restarted my heart & ultimately saved my life. I regained consciousness. After a couple of minutes I orchestrated the effort to get to the ground & climbed down the scaffolding myself after being secured in a harness.

I was taken to a woefully under-equipped & under-staffed medical facility. They did a poor x-ray, deemed my fibula to be broken, and tried to put it in a cast. I knew something was very, very wrong beyond a broken bone—I have broken many bones…this was different. I refused their insistence to put in a cast. They gave me what they called a brace & sent me on my way. They didn’t even have crutches to give me—I ended up getting a set of tiny children’s crutches from one of the local labor people. We left the facility & went back to the housing we were staying in.

It took 3 more days with no support, no pain relief other than ibuprofen, before I could get home. My sister picked me up in Atlanta & drove me home where we went to the hospital. Ultimately, I learned that I fractured my fibula at the top & bottom of the bone, fractured my ankle and foot in multiple places, and tore or otherwise traumatically injured every ligament in my knee as well as a torn meniscus. Surgery would absolutely be required & my recovery prognosis is going to be a long road.

Ultimately the damage I did to my knee is:

Torn ACL, PCL, meniscus, sprained MCL, detached LCL – it pulled the fractured section of bone from the top of my fibula.

All of this required them to reattach my ACL & meniscus with multiple permanent sutures. The PCL wasn’t reattached because apparently you don’t need it (who knew? not me!), 2 screws were put in: 1 to reattach the chunk of bone the LCL pulled away, as well as more permanent sutures, the second was an anchor for those sutures. Fortunately so far I don’t have to have surgery on my ankle or foot.

Because I am an independent contractor, workman’s comp does not apply. I did not have private insurance at the time of this injury (I do now – too little too late but hard lesson learned). I have been out of work & will continue to be for many more months at least as I work hard on recovery. The physical therapy is going well so far but I still have many weeks before I can even get around without crutches. As you can imagine, the costs of this are indescribably huge, even with financial assistance. I can’t work to pay bills while I recover and although the company I was working for is helping me greatly with living expenses – things are piling up and becoming very overwhelming. My wonderful friends and family are working to create benefits for me but I’m going to need all the help I can get & not everyone can be at a show or whatnot.

So even though it goes against every instinct and my own pride to ask: I need your help. I am already thousands of dollars out-of-pocket with no real idea what expenses are yet to come. Please consider a donation (that I appreciate more than I can ever say) or share this with your people. Thank you for your support, whatever it may be.