A life-changing injury. Care close to home. A return to the life he loves.

Preston Sims loves to ride his dirt bike and considers himself a careful rider. Before heading down unfamiliar trails, he'd usually ease through first to look for fallen trees or other hazards before opening the throttle.

But on April 7 of this year, he broke his own rule.

He spotted what appeared to be an open field in West Hattiesburg and took off without scouting the terrain first.

Preston woke up early that Tuesday morning, felt like taking a ride, and quietly slipped out of the house while his siblings and grandmother, who was caring for them while his parents were out of the country, were still asleep. After riding familiar trails near his Lake Serene neighborhood, he ventured farther, eventually reaching an area off Old Highway 11 behind Temple Baptist Church and across from Oak Grove High School.

The field looked harmless.

"I'm a safe rider," Preston said. "I never do wheelies or anything like my friends. I was always the safe one in the group. If I was going to ride down a trail, I'd always go slow first because a log could have fallen or someone could have stretched a cable across it. My number one rule was, 'Never go across a field that you think is flat.' The one thing I always told myself not to do was the one thing I did."

That decision changed everything.

"I saw this big field and thought, 'That looks like it'd be fun to shoot across really quickly,'" he said. "I dropped the hammer on my bike and got up to probably 60 or 65 miles an hour. I never saw the eight-foot drop in the terrain. My bike went one way. I went the other and landed flat on my back. It knocked the breath completely out of me."

The pain was immediate.

In shock, Preston lay on the ground for several minutes before trying unsuccessfully to get up. Realizing he couldn't move, he inched his way to his cell phone, which had landed several feet away, and called his brother.

Meanwhile, people from the nearby church who witnessed the crash rushed to his side and called 911.

An ambulance arrived along with Preston's siblings and grandmother.

When Preston needed specialized orthopaedic trauma care, he didn’t have to leave South Mississippi to receive it. He was transferred to Forrest General Hospital, where the Orthopaedic Trauma team was ready to care for injuries this complex. Just a few years ago, that level of care often meant traveling outside the area. Today, more patients can receive specialized trauma care close to home, and closer to the family and people they need beside them.

Preston had fractured two vertebrae in the middle of his back and suffered a severe fracture of his sacrum, the large bone that connects the spine to the pelvis. The injury compressed nearby nerves responsible for movement and other vital functions. While sacral fractures are most often seen in older adults with osteoporosis, they are uncommon in otherwise healthy teenagers unless caused by significant trauma.

Dr. Joseph Radley, director of Forrest Health’s Orthopaedic Trauma Program, took Preston to surgery immediately. Because of the complexity of his injuries, orthopaedic trauma surgeons Dr. Daniel Gloekler and Dr. George Puneky, and neurosurgeon Dr. David Nathan joined him in the operating room. Together, the team spent more than five hours reconstructing Preston’s fractured sacrum.

As surgeons worked to repair Preston's injuries, his parents, Valerie and Brandon, were desperately trying to get back to Mississippi. They had left for a Bahamas cruise just two days earlier when family members reached them with news of the accident.

Unable to be at their son’s bedside, the couple spent the entire surgery on the phone waiting for updates from the medical team at Forrest General, trusting the physicians, nurses, and other professionals caring for Preston in their absence.

"I don't think any of us realized the level of trauma he was experiencing," Valerie said. "At that point, everybody's just trying to survive. The hardest part was feeling so helpless because we couldn't be there."

When the surgeons finished, Preston's parents were told his recovery could take anywhere from six months to a year.

"That really hit home how big of a deal this really was," Valerie said.

For Preston, the reality didn't fully sink in until later.

"I thought it would be pretty easy," he said. "They told me it would take a lot of therapy to get me back on my feet and walking normally. I didn't know if I was ever going to walk or ride again."

That's when the tears finally came.

"The nerve pain was horrific," Preston said. "Every time I put my feet on the floor it felt like hot needles going into them. There was nothing I could do but scream. It would make a grown man cry. I felt like it was never ending."

A spinal steroid injection eventually eased the pain while therapy helped him slowly regain his strength.

Valerie remembers physicians describing Preston's injury as one of the most severe sacral fractures they had seen.

"But the fact that Forrest General had the Orthopaedic Trauma team here to put Preston back together, essentially, and give him a chance at recovery is a blessing," she said. "The way they took care of him and immediately went into action. I think that's the reason Preston is where he is today. Dr. Radley and the other doctors who came in on their day off to assist — just the fact that they cared that much is incredible. We are more than grateful for what was done here to give Preston the best possible outcome. It's hard to imagine where we might have been had he not been able to receive that care at Forrest General.

"It's been very hard. He's been through so much mentally, physically, and emotionally for someone his age. But he's done really, really well. He's a fighter."

Nearly four months after a catastrophic crash left him unable to stand, Preston walked back into Forrest General's Orthopaedic Trauma Clinic on his own two feet.

No wheelchair.

No walker.

No cane.

His gait remains slightly uneven, and therapy continues. But for Preston and his family, those unsteady steps represented months of determination, hope, and a future they once weren't sure he would have.

Today, Preston's focus isn't on how quickly he can get back on a dirt bike. It's on getting stronger, finishing therapy, and getting back to the life he loves. He knows there's still work ahead, but he's walking, looking toward the future, and grateful he was able to receive the specialized care he needed close to home.

One split-second decision changed the course of Preston’s life. It didn’t define the rest of it. With specialized care close to home and a team beside him, Preston is moving forward—one step at a time, toward the life he loves.

Forrest. For life.