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unseasonably warm , and Bob said : I ' m not going to wear my helmet , it ' s too hot . I said : No helmet , no ride , no discussion . " He laughed and , putting his helmet back on , went out to ride .

Later in the afternoon , I walked into the dining room and saw my husband Jeff had left the house and was driving off in the car . I went to the window and saw all of the cousins and my daughter Myra huddled around my son Matt . They looked wrong somehow .

I called to Matt and asked : What ' s wrong ? He said : " Bob wrecked . When I asked if he was hurt , Matt wouldn ' t look at me . He said : I don ' t know , he ' s just lying there . He told me where Bob was , and I started running . As soon as I saw Bob , I knew he was obviously hurt bad . On the ride to the hospital , his eyes kept closing , and we were terrified , trying to keep him awake .

Greg told us that he and the three boys had been riding on one of the roads on the farm . None of them were going very fast . Greg was behind Bob and saw him lose control on a curve . The ATC bounced across the road and flipped down the hill . It threw Bob into a tree with enough force to throw his helmet 20 feet away and then the ATC landed on his back . Greg said that at first Bob was still , then his arms and legs started jerking as he ran down to get Bob and carry him to the road .

At the hospital , we learned that Bob had several broken bones , a concussion , damage to his lung , kidney and pancreas . He had a purple line across his neck where his helmet strap had been and a clear purple tire track across his back . The first night he kept jerk ing up in the bed with his arms extended , as if holding handle bars , then he would fall back , saying : I thought I was on my 3 wheeler . "

The pancreas injury turned into acute traumatic pancreatitis . The doctors said that Bob had to have had a tremendous blow to do the damage that was done . It was very difficult for us to accept that our son had a debilitating disease as a result of an injury .

As the weeks passed , Bob faded before our eyes . Our son , who so recently had been happiest roaming mountains and fishing the streams , was content to lie in bed doing nothing . He didn ' t want to eat , and we often spent an hour coaxing him to eat a bowl of soup .

Jeff and I took turns at the hospital , and every time I drove from Gatlinburg I had to pass the Honda place . I was furious with them and wanted to stop and ask them how they could sell those things to children ; how they could represent themselves so confidently as knowledgeable ? Why didn ' t they warn us at all ? Surely there were adults who would buy ATC ' s anyway , but didn ' t they feel that chil dren are everyone ' s responsibility ?

If we had heard one warning , one indication of the danger we were placing our children in , we never , ever would have bought an ATC .

Between two children at home and one in a hospital 50 miles away , I never did stop . After 242 months , Bob had lost over 30 pounds , and we were in our third hospital ; this time 1 , 000 miles from home at the Mayo Clinic .

Bob was extremely sick , and the situation had reached the point where the doctors said that his condition was very critical . They said that they had done everything that they could and it wasn ' t working .