Grove vows to lead Escondido water polo team after making miraculous recovery
JOHN MAFFEI
Staff Writer, North County Times
SAN MARCOS ---- Do you believe in miracles? If not, you haven't followed the amazing story of Geoff Grove.
While jogging in Utah in May, an impatient Grove ducked under a railroad crossing, and was blindsided by a train. The result was compound fractures of both legs, broken ribs, a broken sternum, collapsed lungs, a chipped vertebrae on his spinal cord and major head trauma.
For seven weeks, he lay in a coma in a Salt Lake City hospital with his mother, Chris, and sister, Darci, at his side. As bad as the accident was, Geoff was lucky. An avid runner, he was in great shape. Plus, two trauma nurses were in a car waiting at the crossing. They got him breathing and stopped the major bleeding.
Still, doctors in Utah said he took 30 units of blood the night of the accident and he almost died three separate times.
Five months after the accident, Grove is preparing to coach girls water polo at Escondido High. Practice starts next week. "I plan to be there,'' said Grove, 26.
Grove, who is living with his parents in San Marcos, still can't drive, has some vision problems and walks with the aid of a cane.
"I'm only about 50 percent back, but I plan to be at practice,'' he said.
Grove's father, Kent, broke his neck in a car accident 10 years ago and is a quadriplegic. He said the aftermath of Geoff's accident restored his family's faith in humanity. Without insurance at the time of the accident, the Groves had to appeal to the community for help to get Geoff home. A fund-raiser July 14 in the Escondido High gym raised $18,000 for an air ambulance to transport Geoff, still in a coma, back to San Diego.
"My kids have always been very involved in sports, so coaches and players showed up that night,'' Kent Grove said. "But complete strangers wrote checks, made contributions. How do you thank those people?''
A day after Geoff was placed at Scripps La Jolla, he came out of his coma, whispering to his father and brother Colin that he was hungry. "I asked what he wanted, and he said a burrito," Kent said.
Kent immediately called his wife, who was still in Utah, and told her "someone wants to talk to you.''
Chris Grove cried when she heard her son's voice.
"She had been through seven weeks of hell, watching Geoff thrash around like he had a severe case of cerebral palsy," Kent said. "And now he was talking.''
Speech therapy has been helpful. Now Geoff is waiting for some insurance red tape to clear so he can begin intense physical therapy.
"I still have a long way to go,'' said Geoff, who has dropped 30 pounds to 130. "From all the fractures, my right leg is about an inch shorter than the other, so I walk with a limp. And my voice isn't very strong, so I can't ride the refs at my water polo matches like I used to. "But I figure a guy with a cane can get away with a lot."
