Bill Lewis was convinced that he would have died if no stranger had come to his aid.
“I don’t even know his name,” said Lewis, an 84-year-old widower who lives in Langley.
Now, he wanted to say thank you.
Lewis fell and broke bones during a snowfall on Halloween night while he was living outside his home at Livingstone RV Park, 23141 72nd Avenue, Langley, where the widower had lived for six years.
He described how he drove home on Oct. 31 and got out with his dependent walker because both of his knees and both of his hips had been replaced.
“It was snowing when I left,” Lewis told the Langley Advanced Times.
“When I left, it was fine, but when I came back, it was about an inch.”
Just before he reached the access ramp to the front door, one of the walker’s wheels hit an invisible rut, and Lewis tripped and broke his hip.
“It stuck and I went back and the whole thing [walker] over my head. It threw me on the ground,” he described.
He couldn’t call for help because he left his phone at home.
“I forget things easily,” Lewis admits.
Dressed in dark clothing, Lewis lay on the ground between two trailers in the snow one dark night, out of sight of most passers-by.
“I couldn’t move that much after that because the pain was so bad,” Lewis said.
“I was yelling and waving but only one or two cars drove by and they didn’t look at me because it was snowing.”
He remembers his teeth chattering and his back freezing from the snow and humidity.
“Honestly, I thought I was dying. I was just shaking, shaking, shaking.”
He estimates he was on the ground for about an hour until a passerby spotted Lewis and offered him help.
“He kept me from getting too cold,” Lewis recalls.
“He got in my trailer, took the blanket and came out and covered me so I wasn’t so cold.”
His rescuers called 911.
Paramedics arrived, loaded Lewis into an ambulance, wrapped him in warm blankets and rushed him to hospital, where he spent more than two months recovering.
“It still hurts a little bit,” Lewis said of his injury.
“I’m not saying I’m used to it, because I’m not.”
He wished he had thought of asking his good Samaritan for his name.
“I was out of my mind, right?” he explained.
He recalls that his rescuers did tell him he lived across the street from Lewis, but when Lewis returned to his house, they appeared to have moved and took their trailer.
He hoped that those who saved him would see the story and know how grateful he was.
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“I’m grateful he found me because I was like, okay, is this the way to go? I don’t know because I’m so cold,” Lewis said.
“I risked dying there because I said to myself, if no one comes, I can’t move, I’m done.”
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He also wanted to publicly thank the paramedics on the ambulance, as well as the hospital and rehab staff.
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