Stipe Brothers Benefit for Kyle Griffith

It Takes a Village!

A Benefit for our Friend and Hendersonville native Kyle Griffith!

Kyle was recently involved in a Tragic Accident when a wall fell on top of him and Crushed his vertebrae leaving him in permanent paralysis from the waist down.

We are putting together this to help his family during this difficult time with modifications to their home and other costs associated with such a sudden accident.

The Stipe Brothers will perform at 2-5 PM. There will also be silent auction items and other ways to help contribute to Kyle and his Family!

If you would like to help there is a GoFund Me that has been set up:
https://gofund.me/221f4834

From Kyle’s Wife Taylor:
My name is Taylor Griffith, I’m Kyle’s wife.

Today he was in an accident where a wall fell on him and crushed his back. His L1 vertebrae broke and pushed in to his spinal cord causing possible permanent paralysis from the waist down. We are being told there isn’t much they can do for a severed spinal cord.

At this moment we are waiting for more information and for him to go in to surgery early tomorrow morning to remove the L1 vertebrae and stabilize his spine.

I am in shock. If there is one person on earth who never deserved something like this, it’s Kyle. He is the most devoted and caring husband, father of two, friend and man in the world. I am so grateful that he is alive but we have a very, very long road ahead of us.

Please pray for his doctors, pray for him, for our kids and our family. I am in shock writing this right now. We know that God allows bad things to happen in this broken world, but I believe that he wastes no time in helping us when we call on him.

Thank you for your time and your support.

Love,

Taylor, Kyle, Hiram and Margeaux Griffith.

…update…

On January 11th, 2022 my husband was in an accident. He was working on a job with my Dad, and a wall fell on him and crushed his back. He crushed his L1 vertebrae and sustained a spinal cord injury in the T10-T12 area. His spinal cord didn’t transect (fancy medical word for tear or break) but it was badly stretched and bruised. He immediately lost the use of his legs from the waist down.

I got to the site which was right around the corner from our house just a few minutes after the incident and found my sweet husband lying face down on the second floor of this site, in complete shock and panic. Being the person that I am, I surveyed the scene as calmly as I could, noticing all of the boards lying around him and his snot and slobber still wet on the wooden floor. I didn’t know what had happened exactly, but in this moment, I didn’t care.

EMS was already on the way, so all I needed to do was keep Kyle calm. I reassured him that he was alive, help was on the way, and that no matter what lie before us in life, we would be together. I took a preemptive peek under his shirt and it was obvious from swelling that his back was badly broken. As far as I could see, there was no bruising or bleeding around his sides which gave me hope that there wasn’t any visible organ damage from the back. My fear then became what was going on underneath him.

We held hands as I laid face down on the floor in the sawdust next to Kyle. He was understandably scared, hurting and in total shock of what had just happened. All I wanted was for him to know that we would be okay. He would see our kids again. The reality of the situation came in waves during that 10 minutes. Time is such a funny thing. That short bit of time was the longest one that I have ever lived through.

Once EMS arrived, they had to very carefully flip Kyle over and get him on to this cage thing that would eventually set on to a fire truck ladder to get him to the ground. The EMS guys that were there were so kind and helpful, and really did a good job at keeping Kyle calm with me. With a lot of maneuvering, he was finally lowered to the ground and moved to the back of the ambulance.

This moment will live with me forever. They told me to say goodbye, just in case. So I did. I held my husbands hand, looked at his face and watched the doors shut behind him. Thus began the long car ride to Mission hospital and the excruciating wait in the ER for my turn to go back and see him again.

I can’t fully express the range of emotions that run through your mind and body during a time like this, but I can say that nothing ever prepares you for it. I had stayed calm and collected the whole time up until I was alone with my thoughts in the car. Fighting the urge to completely break down, I forced myself to keep it together and realize that the whole thing was out of my control anyway. All I could do was beg God that his injuries weren’t any worse and that I would see him again.

When I was finally let back in the ER, Kyle had already been through an ambulance ride, a CT scan and a harrowing MRI experience, but all of his suffering alone led to the words I had waited so desperately to hear. The ER lady told me that his back was badly broken, he may not walk again but that his other organs were fine.

A switch flipped in my mind from not knowing if he would live or die, to the fullest and most consuming determination that I will ever know: “We can do this.”

He was alive. He was going to live. He was going to go through the hardest thing either of us have ever dealt with, but he was going to be alive to see our kids grow up.

What happened next is still a blur. He has a spinal fusion surgery that went as well as it could have. I stayed awake for 6 days watching his blood pressure and oxygen numbers. I created a GoFundMe page and communicated with about 200 people to organize care for our kids, dogs, home and life. Though things had halted to a stop for us, the world kept on turning and the needs that daily living produced continued on whether we knew it or not. I fought hard to research everything so that we could make the best next steps for his care. I made a couple of trips home to see our kids and shower, occasionally.

For Kyle, he was dealing with the trauma from the incident, the physical pain from his back break and subsequent surgery, the unreal feeling of not having his legs move, and about 1,000 other things. He is and will always be the strongest and most amazing person I have ever known. This whole ordeal proved that his heart is so kind and so pure.

As of today, Kyle is in a rehab hospital doing loads of PT/OT work. We’re all starting trauma counseling and trying to figure out what will happen after his glorious and promised day for returning to home!

We have been shown unimaginable love and support from people that we know well, and people that we don’t know at all.

We are positive that God has a bigger plan for us, and that we will live the happiest life. There’s truly nothing to make you stop and take stock of what’s important like a situation like this one. We are loved, not just by God but also by so, SO many humans. We will be just fine, and I say that knowing full well that we are going to go through hell to get to heaven in this situation. None of this is easy, but we are choosing to focus on what we DO have, and what we will be able to do for others in the future as time passes and we heal from this event.

As for work, I’m more motivated than every to grow from this pain and become the best version of myself that I can be. Getting mental help will allow me to become better at balancing work and life. Needing to provide more for a while has already motivated me to push myself creatively as a photographer and web designer to achieve the highest level of work possible. I’m taking it slow, but my destination is very clear to me. This will not take the motivation and the joy out of our lives, but instead infuse them with a rare kind of appreciation and dedication for excellence. Tragedy strikes people every single day. Nobody is immune to the cost of living, and the sooner you can realize how fragile it all is, maybe the better.

I look forward to what lies ahead, and also ask for patience in the near months as we recalibrate to our “new normal.” Thank you to everyone that has shown up for us, that will show up, and we look forward to the many connections that this will bring us in life that we would have never had otherwise!

We continue to raise funds to help make necessary modifications to our home, allow us some financial breathing room while Kyle heals and is not working and also to get the equipment and care that he needs to get through this crazy situation. We can not say thank you enough for what you have done for us!!!

https://www.facebook.com/events/4800571816717610/