PROVO, Utah — Dayde Collins was out doing a routine tree removal Monday afternoon, when his wife Karly got a shocking phone call.
“The branch that he was using as an anchor just broke under him," she said. "An old tree, and just disintegrated, and on the way down, he hit another branch and took a lot of trauma to his shoulder, ribcage.”
Dayde fell 40 feet from a tree when his anchor branch broke, hit a shed and then fell to the ground, Karly said. Dayde had back surgery, which went well, but he currently has no feeling from his chest down.
Dayde ran for the National Guard and had just qualified for the world competition for DEKA FIT. The hallmark of Dayde is adventure, said Karly.
"The boy can run 18 miles at the drop of a hat," she said. “The hallmark of Dayde is adventure, and it'll be really hard to transition out of that.”
Dayde has been trimming trees for about two years now; Karly guesses her husband has done hundreds of jobs, and he’s never had any accidents happen before.
“He's the most safe person that you can think of," she said. "He's always told me he wears his harness when he's climbing. He has spiked shoes. He always wears long sleeve shirts just to protect his arms.”
The Collins hope to raise $100,000 to buy a wheelchair-accessible van and ramps and to take Dayde to a spinal institute in colorado for rehab.
“My hope is that he walks and runs again," said Ammon Collins, Dayde's brother. "And that's what I'm shooting for. The doctors are less optimistic.”
It’s a miracle his brother’s brain is still completely intact, said Ammon.
“He's still Dayde," he said. "He has the same jokes and same humor, and so at the end of the day, that's what's most important to me, is that is that we got to keep Dayde.”
You can help Dayde recover by donating to the family’s GoFundMe here.
