Recovering from devastation

Kody Campanella of Havre was in a car crash last month that devastated his head and upper body and landed him in the surgery room many times over.

"They had to reconstruct his full forehead, his whole nose. He crushed the bones behind his eyes - they pretty much had to go in and pull his skin forward and reconstruct his whole forehead," Campanella's girlfriend, Sherasha Wymore, said Tuesday.

Campanella also needed stitches on his neck from where glass shards were removed and "bits" removed from his brain. He said he had four broken ribs on his left side and two fractured on the right side. He lost a lot of blood and needed a blood transfusion.

He has a bulging disc in his back, Wymore added.

Campanella and Wymore both work at the Char's Family Dining. But he hasn't worked since the accident, and he said doctors tell him he shouldn't for at least the next three months.

Neither one know what the surgeries cost or what bills Campanella is going to end up with yet. Although he has an insurance provider, Campanella said he's scared to find out what will be asked of him to pay. He's yet to pay his deductible or co-pay.

So Campanella and Wymore are hoping to raise some money for medical costs.

In a fundraiser Thursday, Pizza Hut will donate 20 percent of each customer's purchase to Campanella's account if customers say they are donating to his fundraiser.

Their landlord, the couple said, had given them a month's free rent. Char's has set up a donation bucket and Campanella said there may be a spaghetti benefit dinner for him in the future at the restaurant.

There's also talk of a silent auction, but the details of that have to be worked out. The couple opened a GoFundMe account and that has brought in a little bit of money as well.

Wymore said she found out about the accident through a call from a hospital.

"He left the house at 9 o'clock. I didn't hear from him and then I got a call at 3 from his mom saying that he was in Great Falls ICU, that he drove off the road and slipped his vehicle, that he broke his neck and broke his back - which we found out later he didn't do  - but that he broke his whole face. No one really knows exactly what happened because he was the only one that was there ... they don't exactly know if he just drove off the road," Wymore said.

Campanella said he doesn't remember much about that day.

Wymore said he had told her that he was going to take the dog out to Beaver Creek Park. By the time he was found, near the first lake in the park, he was in the back seat of a truck, covered in glass and unconscious. A deputy had told him someone else was in the truck, but that person had fled, he said.

Campanella remembers coming to at Benefis hospital and seeing his family nearby.

Campanella spent four or five days in rehab.

"I had to learn how to walk, talk, eat. I was on the puree diet 'cause I couldn't swallow 'cause they put a tube down my throat," he said. "Then my tongue was swollen too. I may have not broken my jaw, but my top teeth, they all got jammed up in together, so they're all numb."

The doctors said he exceeded rehab expectations and Campanella said he attributes that to his stubbornness.

"All the doctors are pretty shocked," Wymore said. "They didn't expect him to be out of the rehabilitation center for, they told me, six weeks to a year, and he was out of there in less than a week."

Campanella said he's not out of the woods yet.

He said he still has trouble eating and swallowing and he can't smell or taste. He just had stitches removed from his head, has short-term memory loss and tires easily, which has all caused Wymore to take on most of the house chores.

Campanella has two more surgeries to go, he said. He lives with pain every day. Campanella said he tries to lay off the pain pills as much as he can because he doesn't want to get hooked on them.

What fuels him mostly, he said, were the people next to him.

He pointed to his daughter - "that little turd" - and Wymore, whom he praised for picking up the duties he's been unable to do.

"I love him. I love him with all my heart," Wymore said.

Campanella wants to be there for his daughter when she grows up.

"I wanna sit there with the shotgun and make sure that no other boys are coming along," he said laughing.

"She's going to be a cutey," Wymore added.

Campanella said he'd rather not know what doctors' projections for his health are - "I don't know. I don't ask that question."

He believes he's doing well in his recovery and has everything he needs to make a comeback.

"I got good friends and good family," he said.