Worth the Trip

Most Friday mornings, you can find 29-year-old Tyler Bullard on the tennis courts at a park in Wilmington, North Carolina. He’s been playing in tournaments for more than a year through a community tennis association called Wheel Serve NC, and his game is improving. He’s been a finalist in some tournaments and is hoping for a win soon.

But whether he brings home a win or not, he’s come a long way in all parts of his life. Tyler is in a great place, and he says he’s happy.

Tyler started cutting trees as a summer job in high school and continued to work with a tree removal company after he started college at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, North Carolina. There, he learned to climb trees to cut them.

When his girlfriend at the time found out she was pregnant, he left school and went to work for the tree company full-time.

Although Tyler and his girlfriend split up after his son was born, all three eventually moved to Wilmington, North Carolina. Tyler got a job with another tree removal company and grew to love the city.

On October 27, 2020, Tyler had climbed about 55 feet to cut a large limb from a pine tree when the part of the tree he had a rigging point tied to broke, catapulting him in an arc through the air and then to the ground. Tyler was knocked unconscious, but members of his crew said he landed first on his feet. He sustained multiple injuries, including two broken femurs, broken ribs, a collapsed lung, broken fingers, and a C-4 to C-7 incomplete spinal cord injury (SCI). He went to New Hanover Regional Medical Center in Wilmington, where he had multiple surgeries to repair his broken bones. When his mom suggested Shepherd Center for rehabilitation, Tyler was hesitant.

“They told me that it was the best facility this side of the Mississippi River. But they also told me it was in Atlanta and that felt very far away. I wouldn't be able to see my son, my family — but my mom talked me into it, and it was probably one of the best decisions I've ever made in my life. When I got to Shepherd, I’d been in a hospital bed for two weeks. I hadn't gotten up, and I was stiff as a board. The second day, they had me in a power wheelchair, and I was going to therapy, working the kinks out,” Tyler recalls.

Tyler spent five months at Shepherd, first as an inpatient in the Spinal Cord Injury Rehabilitation Program and then in the Spinal Cord Injury Day Program.

“I just kind of did what I was told. It wasn't easy. At first, I fought back a lot, told people I wasn’t going to do things, but then I had to sit back and look at my situation. I looked at the people around me, and it was a shared experience — other people were going through the same thing. I had to look at what I still had that was important to me and plan a route back to normal life,” he recalls.

The Day Program helped him build confidence in his ability to regain independence.

“It created a smooth transition from inpatient to outside. During inpatient, you're in a bubble. You've got everything you need and people there to help you, but transferring over to the Day Program, people are there if you need them, but you’re more on your own in the apartment. Of course, there’s help available — and my stepmom was there with me from day one. I'm definitely grateful to her for that.”

Throughout his recovery, he stayed close to his family, both immediate and extended, and those relationships remain very important to him.

When he returned to Wilmington, his stepmom stayed with him for a while, and then his sister and nephew needed a place to stay, so they moved into his apartment.

He continued physical therapy at a local outpatient rehab facility, where he gained strength and began to walk with the aid of a walker. He also learned to do independent transfers. He got an accessible van and learned to drive using hand controls.

“I started thinking about what I was going to do, because I just could not stay home all day, every day, not doing anything. I would find things to do, of course, but I wanted direction. I wanted to be independent,” Tyler explains.

So, he enrolled in a local community college to study information technology (IT), and he got a job as a tutor. He’ll graduate with an associate degree in May and has already been accepted to the University of North Carolina-Wilmington, where he’ll pursue a bachelor’s degree in IT. 

Along the way, he met his girlfriend, now fiancée, Dani. She has a daughter, the same age as Tyler’s son, and he says the two kids get along well. They found a house together in Wilmington and recently welcomed two puppies to the family.

 He says he’s a happy guy with a new perspective.

 “I'm a better person than I was before I was injured,” he adds. “This experience has changed me for the better. It’s not like I was a bad person before, but I'm definitely humbler now, and I appreciate things a lot more.”

Written by Ruth Underwood