WBAP's Alan Scaia blogs about car-crash recovery
You may or may not recall that in December, Alan Scaia, morning-drive reporter for WBAP/820 AM, was one of three people injured in a head-on collision in Wise County.
It you don’t recall it, that’s OK — according to a blog post Scaia wrote Wednesday morning for WBAP’s website, Scaia doesn’t remember it that well himself.
“You all probably found out I was in a car crash before I did,” Scaia writes. “I say that because one of my first memories at the Baylor Institute for Rehabilitation is asking a nurse why I was there and her telling me that I’d been in a car crash. That was in February [emphasis his]. I feel bad, now, because I suspect I asked the same question just about every day up to that point. Also, I’m a journalist, so I feel like I should have heard about this crash first.”
According to the original Star-Telegram report, Texas Department of Public Safety Sgt. Lonny Haschel said that the wreck occurred on Farm Road 51 South near Farm Road 2048, about 5 miles north of Springtown. Scaia and a passenger were in a Toyota Camry with a WBAP logo on the doors when a southbound pickup crossed the center line and collided with the Camry.
Tyler Cox, operations manager/program director for the news-talk station, told the Star-Telegram at the time that Scaia, a five-year WBAP vet, was in intensive care at John Peter Smith hospital in Fort Worth. ““He is highly regarded by our staff, and everyone is very concerned about him,” Cox said.
But JPS was only part of Scaia’s recovery journey. “I started at JPS in Ft. Worth. I can't remember a thing about it, but I'm pretty sure when I was conscious, I was also crazy,” he writes.
Scaia learned at Baylor that when he was at JPS, he initially wasn’t expected to survive, and then when he was expected to survive, he “might not be mentally capable of a whole lot.”
“Finally, in some of the more recent reports, the good doctors at Baylor expressed surprise at how well I was recovering and they started talking about getting me back to home and work,” he writes. “I know it’s only April, but thanks to JPS and Baylor, I think we have the comeback story of the year!”
But there’s a lot to that comeback story — including a long journey to getting his memory back to the point where he could even remember what year it was; Michael Chiklis joining the cast of American Horror Story (it makes sense in the context of Scaia’s post, and it’s amazing that anyone can remember Chiklis’ short-lived CBS series Vegas, much less someone who went through what Scaia did); Pie Five; and the Montreal Expos, among other things.
We’re being purposely vague here, because Scaia’s post is both funny and frightening, and he tells the story better than we ever could. We’ve quoted him enough. Get the straight story here. It’s one of the times you’ll really get a payoff by clicking on the link. Big H/T to WBAP news director Rick Hadley, who shared Scaia’s blog post on Facebook.
This story was originally published April 8, 2015 at 2:41 PM with the headline "WBAP's Alan Scaia blogs about car-crash recovery."