His dream is to get behind the wheel, despite his amputated leg

Photo Vincent Larin
Sylvain Martel (left) is going to support his son, Alexander, in the steps of his rehabilitation.

Vincent Larin

Monday, 4 September 2017, 06:30

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Monday, 4 September 2017, 06:30

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After losing his leg in a serious road accident, Alexander Martel is doing everything in his power to get back behind the wheel of its heavy weight as soon as possible.

“I could be me dwelling on my fate, but I don’t want to,” he said. I was so lucky, all I want now is to be able to drive again. “

There is a little more than two weeks, the young man of 22 years almost to perish in the carcass of his truck when he crashed into a viaduct after hydroplaning at the height of Rivière-Beaudette, in Montérégie. Now he sees himself as “saved” even if he has left in his left leg, he wants at any price to regain his wheel.

Five times a week, Alexander made the round trip between its home city, Drummondville, and Kingston, Ontario, passing through Montreal to deliver the goods.

Covered with gasoline

But on the morning of 18 August last, he was caught in the rain and very dense while he was returning home, on the road 401.

His truck has made a bet in the portfolio. “I was pushing through my trailer, I was in control of nothing “, he remembers.

At 105 km/h, he then hit the full force of the concrete beams of the viaduct.

“If the door of his truck had not pulled away, he probably wouldn’t be here to talk about it, since it allowed him to be ejected from the truck,” says his father, Sylvain Martel.

But Alexander was found covered in gasoline, since the damaged tank was leaking. To save himself, he pulled off his own pants, which is still attached to a part of the carcass of the truck.

“By chance, it was raining, because it would have been able to take fire quickly,” he explains.

Three operations

He then dragged several meters up to a wall where motorists immobilized by the accident came to his rescue.

“A gentleman told me to keep my eyes open, to stay with him, but I couldn’t, I had a face covered in gasoline and it burned,” says Alexander.

He has had three surgeries, two to remove the gas still in his thigh.

“Sometimes I have phantom pains, and I still feel that I have two legs,” he said.

But all this did not prevent him to keep the morale up and progress very quickly in his rehabilitation.

When The Newspaper was met with yesterday, Alexander operated with skill his wheelchair in the corridors of the Institut de réadaptation Gingras-Lindsay-de-Montréal. “My cousin is a paraplegic and she showed me to do in wheelchair basketball,” he said.

A morale of steel

The young man hopes to be able to return to his family the next weekend. He wishes more than anything to find his daughter of 5 months and his wife, who are back and forth from Drummondville to Montreal to see it.

“I’ll still be able to play sports and drive trucks, pursues the young man with aplomb. I prefer to think of it, rather than my leg, and I hope to be able to show my daughter how her father is strong. “

The young father does not lose its purpose. His boss is even the first person he phoned after his first operation.

“I wanted to apologize for having destroyed his truck, it was so much a machine,” he said with a smile.

The father of Alexander has launched a campaign sociofinancement to allow his son to have money for his treatment. He also hopes to be able to cover the expenses generated by the movement of the family between Drummondville and Montreal.

Other steps before driving

Alexandre Martel will have to wait several more weeks before using his leg to press the accelerator, even if it can already stand on only two weeks after his serious accident.

But everything suggests that the young man would be able to actually drive again.

“There is the adaptation of the vehicle as possible, but this is a case-by-case basis. It should be really that this kind of thing to be analyzed, ” explains Mario Vaillancourt, spokesman for the Société d’assurance automobile du Québec.

Prosthesis

Alexander will first have to wait for another four to six weeks before you can be fitted for a prosthesis. Six to twelve weeks will then be required to return to walking and to be fully functional.

By then, it does not lose the moral. Even if it has not yet officially begun his physiotherapy sessions, he prepares himself by repeating the movements that his therapist has him listed.

“The evolution is phenomenal. The next afternoon of his last operation, he met the physiotherapist, ” explains his father, Sylvain Martel.

“If I can do something to ensure that I get faster from here, ben, I’ll do it,” exclaimed Alexander.