Episode Fifty-Eight: The Byte-Ford Austin
Ford died three times after hitting a light pole at 90 mph. In this episode he talks about what happens in that liminal space of death and how it's the people you've met along the way that mean everything.
Transcript
Welcome to episode 58 of Bite-Sized Blessings.
In this episode,
I get to interview the esteemed Ford Austin.
Check out his IMDb and you'll see exactly what I mean by esteemed.
He has 110 credits as an actor.
He's been on such shows as Westworld,
The Tragedy of JFK,
As told by William Shakespeare,
Bosch,
Agents of S.
H.
I.
E.
L.
D.
,
Bones,
And many more.
He also has 83 credits as a producer,
39 credits as a director,
As well as credits for writer,
Editor,
Cinematographer,
And many more.
I'm so grateful that he shares his story with me today.
I do want to announce a trigger warning for this episode,
However.
There is the discussion of severe trauma,
So please be aware of that and take care.
I also want to say that the audio is a little erratic at times,
But it's not too bad.
So please have patience because I assure you Ford's story is not one that you want to miss.
So now,
Episode 58 of Bite-Sized Blessings.
I was driving 90 miles an hour.
The police report said I was driving 90 miles an hour in a Porsche convertible with no airbags.
And I slid sideways into a pole at my left hip,
Sideways into a light pole,
And stopping the entire car accident with your left hip.
I was inside the windshield.
I smashed into the windshield,
And I was stuck in the glass with my forehead.
And I was talking to firefighters as they were cutting me out of the car.
I said I saw they were coming up with the jaws of life.
And I was like,
Oh,
Good,
You're here.
Thank God.
Get me out of here.
I want to live.
And they fired it up,
And it sounded like a chainsaw.
And I was in such shock,
I thought,
Oh,
They're going to cut me in pieces and put me back together at the hospital like a Frankenstein,
Stitched me back together.
God forbid they cut the car.
And I said,
No,
Forget about it.
Leave me here.
I'll figure it out myself.
And then I collapsed.
And I woke up standing on the side of the road barefoot talking to my great-grandfather and looked back and saw them cutting me out of the car.
I was driving 90 miles an hour.
The police report said I was driving 90 miles an hour in a Porsche convertible with no airbags,
And I slid sideways into a pole at my left hip.
And I think back to this,
Like how is this not a miracle?
Sideways into a light pole and stopping the entire car accident with your left hip.
I was inside the windshield.
I smashed into the windshield,
And I was stuck in the glass with my forehead.
And I was talking to firefighters as they were cutting me out of the car.
I saw they were coming up with the jaws of life,
And I was like,
Oh,
Good,
You're here.
Thank God.
Get me out of here.
I want to live.
And they fired it up,
And it sounded like a chainsaw.
And I was in such shock,
I thought,
Oh,
They're going to cut me in pieces and put me back together at the hospital like a Frankenstein,
Stitched me back together.
God forbid they cut the car.
And I said,
No,
Forget about it.
Leave me here.
I'll figure it out myself.
And then I collapsed,
And I woke up standing on the side of the road barefoot talking to my great-grandfather.
I looked back and saw them cutting me out of the car.
Now,
Without going too much into it,
The miracle is that I did not die,
That I wound up getting to the hospital where I died three times,
Once I died for three minutes in front of my wife.
And the real miracle is that there was a team of doctors at Cedars-Sinai Hospital where I lived for six months who used all of their skills and all of their training to fix and I'll just list it real quick,
And you tell me how much of a miracle this is.
I had a brain bleed that caused a stroke.
My left eye was cut from the windshield and had to be put back in.
Every rib in my body was broken,
Shattered.
My pelvis was broken into ten pieces.
My hip was broken.
My right femur was broken.
I had a rod put in it.
My lungs collapsed.
My kidneys failed.
My spleen was ruptured and had to be taken out.
My heart stopped three times,
And I was put on life support.
And they said,
I have 72 hours.
If I live in the next 72 hours,
Then I'll be okay.
That's going to give me a one percent chance.
And I was paralyzed.
I couldn't walk.
I couldn't really talk.
You know,
I had to relearn to read and write and relearn mathematics.
I was then able to go and run a three mile race and that I was able to play tennis and tennis tournaments and compete in croquet,
Getting a real estate license now.
I went on and I studied Shakespeare at Harvard in their Shakespeare program.
I also started a big company in Oklahoma,
And I wound up doing more movies after the car accident than I did before the car accident.
And at the time of the car accident,
I laid in the hospital bed and I was doing contracts with my one right hand that would move and the rest of it was paralyzed.
And I was producing a movie for a Skywalker Sound.
And I was I was making the sequel to Showgirls at the time,
Which was even worse than the original.
But the people that were involved were really amazing.
And we eventually finished that movie and I went to that movie premiere in a wheelchair.
And,
You know,
There's a period of time I went to premieres on crutches or in a wheelchair and I was like dictating scripts and shooting things that I had no right to shoot because I was still unable to walk.
And I don't know how in the world I recovered and I was able to do all the stuff that I was able to do,
Except to help all the doctors,
All the physical therapists,
My family,
My wife did most of it.
And organizations like Artists for Trauma,
Which is one of the best organizations out there,
Artists for Trauma was created by a friend of mine who was in a helicopter crash.
And I became part of this community of trauma survivors that we decided we weren't going to just be trauma survivors,
But we were going to be trauma thrivers.
We weren't going to let the trauma stop how our lives grew.
We were going to let the trauma reclassify how we were going to live amazing lives.
And we weren't going to let it stop us.
And in a period of time,
I did say,
You know,
What have I done in my career?
And I sat down there and I would just kind of sit in my hospital bed and I would think about the jobs that I had done and the movies I'd made and the TV shows I'd been on and the plays that I'd done.
And I just go down the list thinking,
Well,
I guess I've done enough in my life because I can't do any more.
And then after the accident,
I did way more than I did before the accident.
And now it's been 10 years since the accident,
Almost 11.
You just you just keep moving forward.
So but at a party,
I would say I'm a trauma survivor who says yes to everything.
Thank you so much for listening to episode 58 of Bite Sized Blessings,
The podcast all about the magic and spirit that surrounds us,
If only for the better.
I need to thank my courageous and unstoppable guest,
Ford Austin,
For agreeing to share his story with me today,
As well as the creators of the music used.
Sasha End.
And that's it.
I love his music so much.
I used all of it in the show.
For complete attribution,
Please see the Bite Sized Blessings website at bite.
Com.
On the website,
You'll find links to books,
Music,
Change makers,
And under Ford's episode,
A link to the group that helps artists who have suffered trauma.
Thank you for listening.
And here's my one request.
Be like Ford.
Be unstoppable.
Whether it's in your friendships,
Your job,
The work you do for the world.
Be unstoppable.
Make unstoppable your superpower.
I'm not saying you have to go out and buy a cape for this new superpower,
But you never know.
It can't hurt.
Hi.
Hi,
How are you?
I'm good.
How are you?
I'm good.
Sorry about that.
I was just like trying to get a real estate license and it was like I was in the middle of a test and I thought,
Oh,
I got this 30 minutes.
And then I was like,
You didn't have 30 minutes.
It's your it's it's a brand new watch,
Or is it a,
You know,
It's an old watch,
And it's like,
You know,
It's not digital numbers so you know you get used to looking at digital numbers so much that when you're filing.
You're like,
Hey,
I know what time it is.
It's very easily easy to go shoot this things like an hour away from what I thought.
Right.
So,
You know,
Your first question is your first question to me on your text was,
What kind of person are you I guess I'm a person that makes mistakes.
