Photos courtesy of Allison Dybing-Driessen.
The accident
It was March 12, 10:08 a.m., when Dan Driessen got a call from his son Gauge.
“Dad, I fell,” Dan recalled his son saying. “I can’t feel my legs. I’m paralyzed.”
The Driessens were skiing in Red Lodge, Montana. They were on the last run of their vacation, getting ready to go home. Gauge was racing his young brother, Henley, down the hill, when he got to a crest where somebody was standing and obstructing his path.
Gauge couldn’t avoid the person in time. He jumped in the air, then took a fall. He later learned he was traveling around 65 to 70 miles per hour.
When Gauge landed on the ground, he had difficulty breathing. In his head, he thought he might have just broken a rib.
“Then I flipped over and I realized my legs weren’t working,” Gauge said. “I think my first thought was, ‘What am I supposed to do for a job? Am I supposed to be a motivational speaker?’ So that kind of ran through my head for a second. Then I realized I should probably get somebody down here.”
Dan recalled telling his son, “Gauge, I need to know where you’re at, so I can get ski patrol to you.”
Gauge told him that ski patrol was already right behind him. They were taking their skis off.
Dan urged Gauge to stay calm.
“It might be a stinger. It might not be anything at all. You don’t know yet,” Dan said. “So just relax, okay?”
Gauge, a football and baseball player for Devils Lake High School, said, “I’m screwed, Dad,” Dan recalled. “I just lost football.”
Dan assured Gauge that he was on his way. Then he called Henley, who was waiting at the bottom of the hill. Henley told him that Gauge didn’t make it down. Dan, calmly but with urgent tension in his voice, recalled telling Henley to take off his skis and to head towards ski patrol.
Although Gauge couldn’t move his legs, he thought he could briefly feel his toe move. To this day, he still isn’t sure if it was actually moving or if it was just his imagination playing tricks on him. In any case, at the time, he thought he could move it.
That sensation told him one thing: He knew he would walk again. In the thick of the moment, laying in the snow with legs that he couldn’t feel or maneuver, he decided he was going to work as hard as necessary to walk away from this accident on his own two legs.
From surgery in Montana, to a six-week stay at a world-class hospital in Colorado, Gauge refused to take “No” for an answer. He was going to make it out of this. With the support of doctors, family, friends and a disciplined recovery schedule, Gauge went from being told he might never walk again to playing in a real, live varsity baseball game this spring — all in the span of just over a year.
The ICU in Billings
After he was taken in by ski patrol, Gauge was rushed to the emergency room in nearby Billings. It was determined that he had a punctured lung, three broken vertebrae, seven broken ribs, a cracked sternum and acute liver failure.
The doctors put a tube in his lung. In the ICU, they performed a two-and-a-half hour surgery where they inserted two rods and eight screws.
The day after the surgery, they came in and told Gauge there was a chance he’d never walk again. His sports career was likely over.
“I looked at my parents and said, ‘That’s not gonna happen,’” Gauge said. “‘I’m gonna play baseball. I’m gonna play my senior year of baseball.’ And there was never a doubt in my mind I was gonna play again.”
While in Billings, Gauge was still paralyzed. The closest he came to walking was with parallel bars assisting him. He spent over a week in the ICU to recover from the surgery.
The Driessens immediately had lots of support. One of the physical therapists there happened to be from Harvey, North Dakota, close to where Gauge’s mom, Allison, grew up. The family also had a friend who was a retired ICU nurse, and she visited them in Billings. Lots of people stopped by or called to check in on Gauge.
It was quickly apparent that Gauge would require treatment above the level of a standard hospital. The Driessens were told he’d have to go to a rehab center, where he’d essentially learn how to walk again.
They asked if they could do it in Fargo, but that request was denied.
“No, you have one shot at this,” Allison recalled being told. “We’re sending you to Denver.”
Craig Hospital in Denver is a renowned hospital, specifically designed to operate on spinal cord and brain injuries only. Patients and their families have to be interviewed just to get in. It can take up to 90 days to be accepted.
It took the Driessens three days. Staff from Craig flew up to Billings to interview them, and by the weekend, they had an airplane ready.
“It was absolutely amazing,” Allison said.
Craig Hospital
Gauge and his family flew to Craig Hospital in Denver, Colorado, on March 21. Nine days after the accident.
Dan and Henley were there with Gauge to begin with. But after helping him settle in and saying their goodbyes, they went back home to Devils Lake. Allison stayed in Denver with Gauge.
“It was easier to be at Craig than it was to be home,” Allison said.
She helped make sure that he continued his schooling while he was there, and that he got the necessary medical treatments. But her responsibilities were minimal, with her presence as Gauge’s mom more important than anything else.
“It’s harder when you get home and you have to balance life and work and, still, therapies,” Allison said. “So Craig was a blessing. But it was hard to have Dan be gone and Henley to be gone.”
Gauge joined Craig Hospital’s education program that specializes in 16-to-24-year-olds. He met other kids in similar situations as him and learned alongside them.
Before the accident, he had been taking anatomy at Devils Lake High School in Jenna Windjue’s class. Windjue had Gauge write some paragraphs each week about what was happening with him at Craig, which forced him to pay close attention to the science of his injury and the rehab methods.
Gauge would do five to six hours of physical therapy a day. The hospital had robots that helped him walk and a video game that taught him how to lift his legs.
Gauge, an already skinny kid, had lost 25 pounds in the aftermath of his surgery in Billings.
He was able to walk with the aid of a walker at around two or three weeks into his stay at Craig. He made two excited phone calls the first day he walked: one to Devils Lake football coach Todd Lambrecht, and the other to friend and football teammate Amiri Francis. They were two of many who were following his progress.
Some of the kids Gauge went through the program with weren’t as lucky.
“It was hard to celebrate his successes when the other guys that he knew were never gonna walk,” Allison said.
Dan and Henley made occasional visits. The staff treated them well; they got to go to a Rockies game and a Nuggets game, and had other fun outings as a family to make the best out of their time in Denver.
Gauge stayed at Craig for about six weeks’ time. Through daily workouts and training, one step at a time, he regained the feeling in his legs and built back some of the weight he’d lost.
By the end of the six weeks, he was walking on his own. There was still a limp, and he didn’t yet have the strength or mobility to play competitive sports. But the first major sigh of relief was out of the way.
Return home and continued recovery
Gauge and Allison flew home on May 4.
On May 5, Gauge woke up early, hit the gym, came home, then went to church.
“And that day forward, I said I was gonna play baseball,” Gauge said. “And I was gonna work every single day to get back.”
When Gauge got back to his physical therapy class with Mrs. Windjue, he presented about everything that had happened. The knowledge he’d gained got him interested in physical therapy as a career.
“I think it was because everybody kind of extended, and made everything a learning opportunity for him,” Allison said.
For the remainder of May, Gauge did physical therapy four or five times per week. In June and July, he was able to dial those down to two or three.
“It was a lot of finding stuff to do — finding replacements of what I couldn’t do,” Gauge said. “It’s like my legs weren’t turning fast enough. Trying to open up a hip, I would work my hip flexors and strengthen everything to the best of my ability. So it was more me figuring out my limits and having to bypass them.”
Mary Lunde, a physical therapist in Devils Lake, helped Gauge through the process. Allison remarked that Gauge kept exceeding Lunde’s expectations.
“She would say, ‘Oh, we’re gonna try this.’ And then he would master that, and she’d go on to the next thing,” Allison said. “And she was his biggest champion, I think. She pushed him hard.”
Baseball season was already in effect when Gauge got home from Denver. Although he couldn’t play, he continued to attend every game and practice. He worked out as much as he could, went through the pregame lineup announcements and cheered on his teammates from the dugout. He went on every road trip. If the team was playing in a tournament in Fargo, Gauge was there. If the team had a six-hour drive round-trip on a school night, Gauge was there.
In a situation where other kids might have opted to stay home, or to not invest all that time, Gauge jumped right back in as a part of the team.
“It was seeing everybody else kind of mess up, and me knowing that I used to be able to do that,” Gauge said of his motivation. “And I have to work my way back up there knowing that I have an opportunity to play again, and I need to really work this, because I want to watch this program succeed too. And I want to be the one helping them succeed, and not just be another bench player. That kind of drove me.”
Gauge stayed with the baseball team all the way through the end of the summer Legion season, where Devils Lake made it to the state tournament. Then it was right into football.
He was one of the captains on the football team this fall. He got to carry the big Firebird flag going out onto the field before games. But he still couldn’t play.
Devils Lake football made the playoffs for the first time in three years.
“It was really tough to sit there and watch. I don’t know. I had to sit there and watch practice, knowing that I could really make a difference on the team,” Gauge said. “I started for two years, and watching everybody else do what I was supposed to be doing was really tough to watch. The coaches had plans for me to do every single thing possible.
“Now I get off the field, and all of a sudden I’m sitting back watching people succeed, when I felt like I put in that time and effort. It was kind of hard to watch that it wasn’t me.”
As Gauge continued his workouts, gradually building up strength, the Driessens seeked out a diagnosis from a neurosurgeon in Bismarck. Walking was becoming smoother and easier for Gauge. His goal of playing baseball as a senior was coming closer to reality.
So Allison gathered all of Gauge’s medical reports — everything from Billings and everything from Craig — and sent it to the neurosurgeon. They traveled down there for an assessment.
“We didn’t know what they were gonna say, just because when you get hit by a ball, it would mess it up,” Gauge said. “But I kind of came in there not knowing what to think. And I had a neutral view on if I was getting accepted, if I wasn’t getting accepted.”
The neurosurgeon walked into the room. He was holding the papers Allison had sent him. Dan recalled him saying, “I’ve gone through your file. I can’t believe you’re walking. I can’t even believe you’re walking.”
It ended up being a roughly five-minute appointment, Gauge said.
He was cleared to play baseball.
“I was so shell-shocked,” Gauge said, “that I didn’t know what to say.”
The first thing he did was text Brent Luehring, the Devils Lake head baseball coach. Luehring, as Gauge recalled, responded, “All right, well you better be ready for open gyms then.”
Football season was still ongoing. Gauge would never get to play high school football again, and he’d already known that.
But suddenly, he had something to look forward to.
“That really increased my morale a little bit,” he said. “I really started hitting the gym harder after that and watching everything.”
It was a testament to all of the hard work Gauge had put in, Allison said. When the neurosurgeon told the family that Gauge could play baseball this spring, she recalled him telling Gauge, “Go live your life.”
And so he did.
Back on the field
Gauge’s parents have always known him as a hard worker. He was the kid who woke up, got to the gym at 6 a.m. and was the first to arrive at practice, even before the accident.
“He’s always been a team player,” Allison said. “Just a really strong work ethic.”
Before the accident, he’d been on the rise as a football player. He was the freshman quarterback, then established himself as a starting safety and receiver his sophomore year. He just kept getting better. His junior year, he put on about 19 pounds of muscle — which he ended up losing in the ICU.
“He was so fast and so strong, and so he had to regain all of that,” Dan said.
Gauge said he talked to one of his fellow Craig patients back in August. Gauge, up 28 pounds and cleared to play baseball, asked him how he was doing.
The patient responded that he was going to be stuck in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. He was scared about how college would go.
“You gain a different sense of understanding, having to watch people struggle like that,” Gauge said. “And I was lucky enough where I did start walking right away. I started regaining everything. But the people there who weren’t, and the people there who weren’t getting any better, it was tough to watch. I think my empathy has grown a little bit for all injuries. And just watching other people having to watch me succeed, and they’re not succeeding, was really tough, too.”
On the baseball field before the accident, Gauge was a speedy outfielder who could cause havoc on the bases. He also had a deceptive arm angle on the mound.
He got back to baseball practice in early spring and threw some bullpens, where he said he felt very little pain and eased back into it pretty easily. Hitting was more of a challenge. He hadn’t swung a bat against live pitching in close to two years, so his mechanics were out of whack upon his return. And although he could walk and run again, his speed understandably wasn’t what it used to be.
“I spent a lot of nights in the batting cage at the college working on tees, trying to get everything working functionally again,” Gauge said. “That’s the toughest part so far. Even before I got hurt, I wasn’t that good of a hitter. I was just fast. I’d bunt down and get an infield single. I’m not able to do that anymore, so I have to reset all my mechanics and work harder to get that.”
Luehring was impressed with Gauge’s bullpens, especially his ability to throw strikes. He praised the overall value Gauge brings to the team.
“It could have been different for him,” Luehring said. “So we’re definitely glad he’s back. He’s a really good leader for us, and he works hard. It’s just a testament to what he’s overcome.”
Having been around the team through his injury, his presence and leadership are nothing new for the baseball squad. His teammates all know what Gauge is about.
The only difference is he actually gets to play now.
“I feel like they’ve really accepted me with arms wide open,” Gauge said. “Just ready for me to be back and playing again. I’ve grown up with these guys playing baseball. We won state when we were 15. These guys have been around my entire life. And seeing those guys accepting me and pushing me harder to get better and better, it’s been awesome.”
When the Firebirds stepped on DLYA Field for their first game of the season against Grafton last Tuesday, Gauge wasn’t in the starting lineup. But, with the team up 10-0, Luehring brought him in to pitch the top of the fifth.
It was Gauge’s first time pitching in a game on that mound since his freshman year. His sophomore year, the field was being redone, and his junior season was wiped out by the injury.
The first pitch he threw was grounded to shortstop. But back-to-back walks and a hit by pitch loaded the bases.
“I was pretty nervous,” Gauge said. “It was just a sense of being back… But I had to take time to tell myself, ‘Just like normal. Nothing’s changed. It’s on you now.’ So I had to calm myself down halfway through.”
Gauge got out of the inning with two runs. He finished the frame with a swinging strikeout — his first punchout since the accident. But the runs, making it 10-2 Devils Lake, kept the game going.
So Luehring gave him another shot. This time, it was with the bat. He pinch-hit in the bottom of the fifth in an RBI situation, Devils Lake having already scored a run in the inning. Gauge wasn’t expecting to get an at-bat that day. Now, he had only a few minutes to switch his mindset into hitting mode.
He swung at the first pitch and lined it into right field. A base hit. The game ended automatically with a 12-2 score. What had been a frustrating fifth inning culminated in smiles and celebrations.
“You can just tell he’s excited to be back,” Luehring said.
After his adventurous heroics in Devils Lake’s season opener, Gauge started Friday’s conference opener on the bench. He didn’t play in a 2-1 defeat of Fargo Davies.
He did, though, get an at-bat in the nightcap of the doubleheader. He lined another one into right field, not too dissimilar from his hit on Tuesday. But this one went directly to the right fielder for an out.
Gauge made it clear his intent isn’t just to be a nice story and then never play.
“I wasn’t even supposed to be playing baseball, and now I have an opportunity,” he said. “And I don’t think anybody else realized that I was here to actually play. I thought it would be like one of those stories you see on TV, with the guy coming in in the ninth inning, up 10 runs, and it would just be the one at-bat for his career. I don’t want to be that person. I want to be the person that plays after the injury and puts it behind him. So I want to give everything I can to get back to that.”
Where to go from here
No matter what happens this season, Gauge’s high school sports career will come to an end by August.
As recently as this time last year, there was no guarantee he’d even walk again, let alone play a baseball season. Now he wants to use his second chance to stay active throughout his life.
“Now that I recognize that at one point I wasn’t able to, and now I am, I took for granted that I had all these opportunities to do stuff,” Gauge said. “I kind of just sat at home, or just playing the Xbox. Didn’t really care about it. And now I know I can, and I almost didn’t. So I want to do everything I can in my life.”
From his parents’ perspective, this experience has matured Gauge. He’s always been a hard worker — but now it comes from a different place, with more purpose behind it.
“He has equally as much drive as he had before, but it’s for a different reason,” Allison said. “It’s more for quality of life for the rest of his life. Baseball and football don’t last forever. Having your mobility does, hopefully. So I think he’s got more of a sense of overall health, beyond just lifting weights and being fast.”
The accident was an instant shock. But through Gauge’s recovery, he and his family eventually found a way to reset.
The Driessens were lucky, considering the circumstances, and now they want to make sure they take advantage of every opportunity in life — of every seemingly simple thing that you don’t always think to appreciate until it’s nearly taken away from you.
“You don’t have a choice,” Allison said. “You’ve gotta keep going. So we did the best that we could, and we had a lot of angels along the way that helped us. And you don’t realize how many people are cheering you on until something like this happens. And I think we have much more of a sense of paying it forward now. When somebody’s hurt or somebody passes, you know what it’s like.”
Even the dynamic between Gauge and Henley is different. Henley didn’t see Gauge for about a month while Gauge was at Craig. He was going to school in Devils Lake like normal, following Gauge’s journey mostly through updates from his parents.
Now, he has his brother back.
“I think their bond is a lot closer now because of it,” Allison said. “Henley’s always looked up to Gauge. And he’s kind of helped Henley get healthier, too. And I just think he sees how hard [Gauge] works, and he wants that for himself, too.”
Gauge now spends more time with his brother. They work out in the gym together and hit in the cages together. Henley is able to learn from Gauge in a way that he wasn’t before the accident, before Gauge had been tested like this.
“I felt a big sense of guilt having to have him watch his older brother go through this,” Gauge said. “Before my accident, we were just two brothers, always fighting and never sharing and never getting along. And after this accident, I feel like I’ve really gotten close to him.
“I still feel like part of this is my fault, and he had to watch all of this happen. And I can’t give him that time back. So I’m doing everything I can right now to spend time with him and make sure everything’s okay for him.”
After high school, Gauge is planning to major in physical therapy. It’s a career he now wants to pursue.
He’d also like to run a marathon, and to hike all of the national parks.
Somehow, he overcame the odds to be able to do those things in his life.
“Gauge was laying there in ICU,” Dan recalled, “and he looked at Allison and he said, ‘Why did this have to happen to me?’ Allison had a good reply. She said, ‘Because you’re the only one who can handle this.’
“And I think she was right.”
