MURRAY — His friends call him "The Machine."
It's a nickname 19-year-old Christopher Bullock picked up after getting into a rash of bad luck with car accidents, including one in which he totaled his vehicle. But each time, he was able to walk away.
On Wednesday, The Machine was up and walking again — albeit very gingerly — after his most recent, and most horrific, crash.
On Monday, Bullock was, ironically, en route to the hospital for an appointment when he entered the intersection of 1300 East and Zenith Avenue and was T-boned by a vehicle that ran a stop sign. The impact tipped Bullock's vehicle onto its side and into a nearby chain-link fence.
Part of the metal bar that stretches horizontally across the fence-line tore through the roof of the vehicle and impaled Bullock, entering his right thigh near his groin and exiting out the back of his leg.
"I immediately went into shock when the pole went in my leg," he said Wednesday from his hospital bed at Intermountain Medical Center.
But at the time, Bullock didn't know what had happened or the extent of his injuries. He was bent over the steering wheel of his crushed car, stuck to something that had penetrated his leg and unable to move.
"As I started to feel my legs, I felt a large amount of hot, sticky substance going down my leg," Bullock said. "As I reached around, I felt the pole. I'm almost resting on it."
But for all of Bullock's bad luck, he also had quite a bit of good fortune with him that day. A nearby tree prevented his vehicle from tipping completely on its side, which could have pushed the pole into his body even further and possibly killed him. Even more fortunate, the pole completely missed his femur and the majority of tendons and ligaments. The only area heavily damaged was the femoral artery.
"I thought (to myself in the car), 'I'm probably going to bleed to death,' " Bullock said. "It was impossible for me to really come to terms with the situation, I was in such shock."
For the next two hours and 20 minutes, according to Bullock, all he could do was wait for rescuers to cut him out. But again, good fortune was on his side.
"All of the right people responded," he said.
Bullock had high praise for the police, firefighters and paramedics who helped him. After a lengthy procedure, firefighters were able to use the Jaws of Life to cut through the car and cut the pole that was pinning Bullock. But there was a still a 3-foot section of the metal pipe stuck in his leg, which paramedics didn't want to remove until he got to the hospital.
Once he was able to move, the only way rescuers could reach Bullock was for him crawl on his hands and knees, with the metal pipe still in him, out onto a backboard.
"I could barely hold myself up," he said.
Bullock had to be taken by ambulance to IMC because he wasn't able to fit in the medical helicopter with a pipe sticking out of his leg.
He said he was most scared when he reached the emergency room and was about to go into surgery. Doctors told him of all the possible outcomes. It was that moment that Bullock now calls "the birth of Zim-Page," because of his ID number on his chart going into surgery.
The surgery was a success, and Bullock will not only keep his leg, but also was expected to make a full recovery. Doctors even gave him the metal pipe they took out of his leg, something that Bullock said he would like to put in a glass case and keep forever.
On Wednesday, it was hard to tell that the second-year student at the University of Utah was in such a bad crash. With a toothpick in his teeth, Bullock was calm as he retold the story and joked with his friends who came to visit.
The experience, however, has brought his family closer together, he said, as well as shown him how many people care. Bullock has been visited at the hospital or received text and phone messages from not only friends and family members, but also high school acquaintances to whom he hasn't spoken in years, police officers who were at the scene of the crash and even eyewitnesses who never knew Bullock until they saw the accident.
e-mail: preavy@desnews.com