Gilbert, AZ – Even in the darkest of hours, Tammy Yohe always believed her husband would pull through. Twelve weeks and 22 surgeries later Jason Nelson is no longer in a coma. Yohe remembered his first words.
“He said what happened. What’s wrong, what happened to my body,” said Yohe.
On Feb. 9, Nelson was retiling the bathroom floor of their rental property near Warner in Val Vista. According to firefighters he stepped into the garage to have a cigarette. Southwest gas confirmed the explosion was triggered by two cracked natural gas pipes that weren’t even hooked up to any of the homes in the neighborhood.
“He remembers being on fire and he remembers the tremendous pain, running through the house. He was just trying to find anything because unfortunately we turned the water off within the home. He didn’t know what to do. He just panicked,” said Yohe.
Doctors didn’t expect Nelson’s body to heal as fast as it has. If all goes as planned he should be released from the rehab facility in the next couple weeks, and will be allowed to continue his recovery at home.
“He’s scared. He’s worried that his hands won’t ever be the way they were before. They may not. We try to stay in the present and not so much into the future and focus on the day by day of what he needs to do,” said Yohe.
Medical bills are piling up and Nelson still has several surgeries to repair his hands ahead of him.