Photo submitted to Times Observer Diana and Greg Camp at their July 17, 2021, wedding at Youngsville Free Methodist Church.

Greg Camp needed some very special equipment to get back to his old life.

In March 2020, Greg took his dirt bike out for a spin in the woods near his farm in Pittsfield. He had just rebuilt the engine and wanted to see how it ran.

He knew he couldn’t stay out long, he had to milk the cows.

It’s been three years and he still hasn’t milked the cows.

During that quick ride, Greg came unexpectedly on a tree across the trail. He couldn’t stop.

Photo submitted to Times Observer Greg Camp of Pittsfield receives a new Action Trackchair that will provide him with the mobility he needs to return to his farm three years after an accident left him paralyzed from the waist down.

“I tried to lay my dirt bike down and go under it,” Greg said. “It caught me in my chest.”

The crash shattered his C6 vertebra — around his Adam’s apple — and damaged some of the others.

He couldn’t move. He could breathe, but not very well.

There was some good news. He would be missed at the farm. “Somebody will eventually realize that I am not milking and come looking for me,” he remembers thinking while he retained consciousness.

He was also cold — which turned out to be more good news.

Photo submitted to Times Observer Greg Camp uses an Action Trackchair to pay a visit to the barn on his dairy farm in Pittsfield three years after an accident left him paralyzed from the waist down.

“What helped me survive… it was so cold, it lowered my body temperature and kept the swelling down,” he said.

Three or four hours later, the expected searchers came. Camp doesn’t remember that, but he heard about it.

“When they found me, I was talking to everybody,” he said. “I know that was the Holy Spirit working through me to let me know I would be Ok.”

“His C6 shattered into hundreds of pieces,” Camp’s wife, Diana, said. “He severed his spinal cord.”

“The prognosis was that he would be paralyzed from the neck down and on a ventilator for the rest of his life, living in a nursing home,” she said.

“They figured I almost passed away from the wounds three times,” Greg said.

He spent nine weeks in hospitals in Erie and Pittsburgh.

PROGNOSIS IMPROVES

A cage was put in place of his C6. Rods and screws were put in to support other vertebrae.

“It was hard,” he said. “It was hard just being inside that long.”

One of the surgeries that he underwent caused damage to his vocal cords and he temporarily lost the ability to speak.

He was admitted on a Saturday. COVID restrictions took effect two days later. So, in addition to being paralyzed, and not being able to speak, he was not allowed visitors.

His brother-in-law set up an iPad to allow him to see and talk to — when he was able to speak again — friends and family. Diana is a nurse and was able to get in to unofficially visit him twice.

It has taken time, but the prognosis has improved.

“Through lots of prayer and lots of hard work, he’s regained significant movement,” Diana said. “His whole upper body,”

“One thing I have not gotten back is my hands,” Greg said. While he has feeling in his thumbs and forefingers, his other fingers are numb. Nerves that pass from his triceps through his forearms into his hands and fingers are damaged.

BACK TO THE FARM

Having some movement back allowed Greg to think about getting back to the farm.

The Camps moved to Pleasant Township because his power chair simply couldn’t get him around on his farm.

“He can’t go in the grass,” Diana said. “He can’t go outside when it’s wet.”

He wanted to get back to that life, so he searched for some mobility options. He found an Action Trackchair.

It had large tracks — the kind it would take to move around the farm.

“We started saving a little bit,” he said. “It was going to take a while, but eventually…”

They were not alone.

Fellow members at Youngsville Free Methodist Church wanted to help.

“He was praying for this,” Ralph McIntyre said. “Next thing you know, some of us were convicted to do this.”

He messaged Diana. “Does Greg want a track chair?”

She replied that he did and that they had started saving for one.

He said, “God told me you’re going to get it.”

“He started this fundraiser,” she said. “It went fast.”

In September or October, McIntyre heard about a four-wheel drive wheelchair available at auction. He checked it out, but it was no good for the farm. “This isn’t going to work for him,” he thought.

So, he waited.

“A week or two later, I’m shaving, getting ready to go to church,” McIntyre said. “I had this spine-chilling thing… ran up the back of my neck… like God talking to me. What about Greg’s chair?”

He was spurred into action. He asked around, trying to find people to join him in helping.

“A lot of people were very responsive to it,” he said. “One man wrote me a check for $5,000. A family gave $2,000.”

“There were little kids giving to us,” he said. “They learned the power of giving.”

“An older lady wrote us and wanted to tell us a story about her granddaughter,” Greg said. “She was putting money in an envelope to donate.”

Her granddaughter saw and asked what she was doing.

After she explained who the money was for, the granddaughter asked her to wait and left.

“She brought out eight quarters. It was her savings,” Greg said. “She said, ‘He needs that.'”

“There’s just so much,” he said. “It’s overwhelming sometimes.”

‘CONVICTED TO DO THIS’

The donations continued to roll in.

A man told McIntyre, “You get within $10,000, you let me know.”

“We did,” he said. “He wrote a check.”

“They were all convicted to do this,” McIntyre said. “It was quite an ordeal. It changed people’s lives.”

The Trackchair is a life changing piece of equipment for Greg.

“The big thing that it’s going to allow me to do is go back to work on the farm,” he said. “I can start doing some work. I can get up in the woods, and enjoy spending time up there.”

On Friday, the TrackChair was delivered and Greg came into town to pick it up and receive some instruction on its use.

That turned into a trial, too.

“We had an older wheelchair van given to us,” Greg said. “That has really helped out.”

“We were headed down to Youngsville, the tire went out on the van,” he said.

He figured it wouldn’t be a bad trip to take the power chair the rest of the way.

“I wheeled down through Youngsville to get down to the church,” he said.

It started to snow. “Luckily, I had a blanket on my lap.”

“He didn’t show and didn’t show,” McIntyre said.

When he finally did arrive, he was covered in snow.

Despite efforts to keep that tale under wraps, Diana found out. “They tried not to tell me because they knew I would worry,” she said.

Greg had to get some instruction because the Action Trackchair is far beyond a power chair.

“They have tracks on them,” McIntyre said. “It’ll pull up to 150 pounds. They even make a snowplow for these things.”

The vehicle can navigate slopes of up to 20 degrees. The Camp farm is fairly flat, so that should be plenty.

“They make them for people that want to go hunting,” McIntyre said. “They make fishing rod holders that go on them.”

“His ambition is to go back and run the farm that they have,” he said. “That’s the ambition behind this.”

“Right now, it’s my dad and my daughter, her fiance, and my cousin,” Greg said. “They’re running it right now while I’m getting back to it.”

‘YOU HAVE TO STAY POSITIVE’

Learning about the Trackchair let him know just what he’ll be able to do.

“They were showing me all the parts to it,” Greg said. “The one thing that I liked… it has a standing feature. It will lock my legs in and stand me up.”

“I’m really looking forward to that — getting off my butt for a change,” he said.

He said trimming up the fruit trees he has planted around the farmhouse over the years will be much easier from a standing position.

One thing he still won’t be able to do is the milking. But, he’ll be able to do many other tasks.

From the Trackchair, he’ll be able to transition into a hand-controlled skidsteer and other equipment.

“I’ll be able to help clean the barn,” Greg said. “I’ll be able to move bales around.”

“I have two tractors and my chopper with hydrostatic clutch,” he said. “That’s going to help me get out in the fields more.”

He has occupational vocational rehabilitation and Agribility sessions on his calendar and will be working toward even more independence.

“There are days that I know that I get down,” he said. “You have to stay positive. You still have to live.”

“The hardest part for me, I’ve always been able to do everything for myself,” he said. “It’s overwhelming when you realize how many people care that much.”

“It’s hard to remember all the things that I’ve gone through,” he said. But he didn’t mean all the physical trauma.

“There have been so many blessings that God has blessed us with, it’s hard to keep track of them all,” he said.