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Go Shockers - RH: Shocker Track Coach Faces Brain Cancer With A Competitive Attitude
Quite the article by Sully. Maybe I'm out of the loop but this is the first I recall hearing about any of this.
Thoughts and prayers to coach Wilson as he continues to battle this.
After roughly eight hours immersed in the waters of a drainage ditch, Pat Wilson estimated six minutes or so remained. The muddy water filled the cab of his 2022 Toyota Tacoma. He needed to escape.
He flipped off a bridge late that rainy night in May, likely disoriented from a brain tumor doctors would soon discover. His truck landed upside down in the water on a country road west of El Dorado.
Wilson quickly cut himself free of the seat belt with the blade in the Leatherman Multi-Tool he carries. He held his breath and ducked under the water, pushing aside the tattered air bag floating in his way, as he searched the extended cab over the next few hours in search of his tools and an exit. He found a tire iron and used it to try to break the passenger window, with little success.
Wilson coaches pole vaulters at Wichita State and vaulted for the Shockers from 1993-97. There is danger in pole vaulting, as Wilson describes it, that moment of decision when an athlete hurls their body into the air propelled by a fiberglass pole.
With the cab filling with brown, cold water, Wilson reached that decision point again.
"It's the fear factor," he said. "You're coming down the runway and the warning alarm is going off in your head. You've got to decide that you're going to do it. That's what I did with that window. I didn't have enough air left. I decided to really get aggressive."
That is how his family and friends know him, how he grew up roaming the family ranch, hunting, fishing and learning how to handle precarious situations. His mother remembers finding him climbing to the top of a two-story scaffolding attached to the house around age 5. He loved wrestling and pole vaulting, pursuits that reward toughness, individual motivation and more than a bit of daredevil spirit.
"He didn't have much that he was afraid of," said Annie Wilson. "Probably, it's just as well I didn't always know everything he was up to."
Pat Wilson
Wilson used his right elbow to free himself. Perhaps the spider-web cracks started by the tire iron helped. Wilson knows his elbow did most of the damage and it took repeated blows.
"I hit that window as many times as I could, as hard as I could," he said. "It finally shattered. The doctors couldn't believe that I didn't break my arm. My whole arm was purple. Extremely bruised."
He tried to ignore a water snake that swam past during his escape. He pulled himself out of the water using tree roots on the bank. He walked to a farmhouse and the residents gave him a ride to his family's 1,400-acre ranch northeast of Leon.
Later that day, a CAT scan found a mass in Wilson's frontal lobe, soon diagnosed as a glioblastoma, an aggressive type of cancer that "can be very difficult to treat and a cure is often not possible," according to the Mayo Clinic.
He flipped off a bridge late that rainy night in May, likely disoriented from a brain tumor doctors would soon discover. His truck landed upside down in the water on a country road west of El Dorado.
Wilson quickly cut himself free of the seat belt with the blade in the Leatherman Multi-Tool he carries. He held his breath and ducked under the water, pushing aside the tattered air bag floating in his way, as he searched the extended cab over the next few hours in search of his tools and an exit. He found a tire iron and used it to try to break the passenger window, with little success.
Wilson coaches pole vaulters at Wichita State and vaulted for the Shockers from 1993-97. There is danger in pole vaulting, as Wilson describes it, that moment of decision when an athlete hurls their body into the air propelled by a fiberglass pole.
With the cab filling with brown, cold water, Wilson reached that decision point again.
"It's the fear factor," he said. "You're coming down the runway and the warning alarm is going off in your head. You've got to decide that you're going to do it. That's what I did with that window. I didn't have enough air left. I decided to really get aggressive."
That is how his family and friends know him, how he grew up roaming the family ranch, hunting, fishing and learning how to handle precarious situations. His mother remembers finding him climbing to the top of a two-story scaffolding attached to the house around age 5. He loved wrestling and pole vaulting, pursuits that reward toughness, individual motivation and more than a bit of daredevil spirit.
"He didn't have much that he was afraid of," said Annie Wilson. "Probably, it's just as well I didn't always know everything he was up to."
Pat WilsonWilson used his right elbow to free himself. Perhaps the spider-web cracks started by the tire iron helped. Wilson knows his elbow did most of the damage and it took repeated blows.
"I hit that window as many times as I could, as hard as I could," he said. "It finally shattered. The doctors couldn't believe that I didn't break my arm. My whole arm was purple. Extremely bruised."
He tried to ignore a water snake that swam past during his escape. He pulled himself out of the water using tree roots on the bank. He walked to a farmhouse and the residents gave him a ride to his family's 1,400-acre ranch northeast of Leon.
Later that day, a CAT scan found a mass in Wilson's frontal lobe, soon diagnosed as a glioblastoma, an aggressive type of cancer that "can be very difficult to treat and a cure is often not possible," according to the Mayo Clinic.
Thoughts and prayers to coach Wilson as he continues to battle this.
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