‘I’m Just Happy He’s Alive’: Wife Of Injured LI Motorcyclist

STONY BROOK, NY — Twenty-five-year-old Jesse Dougal was riding his motorcycle on Moriches-Middle Island Road in Shirley on Saturday, on his way to meet up with friends at a local deli when he was struck by a pickup truck.

He remembers skidding with the bike and then tumbling, but that’s it, his wife, Abigail, says. After the crash multiple good Samaritans came running to his aid — helping him before paramedics arrived. He was conscious and asking for her. She was about 20 minutes away when she got the emergency call, so she alerted his friends and let them know he needed someone there at the scene with him.

Jesse’s injuries were so bad, a tourniquet needed to be used to stop the bleeding in his leg where the femur was fractured and broke through the skin. Abigail got there right as paramedics were ready to transport him by ambulance to a waiting helicopter bound for Stony Brook University Hospital.

“It’s definitely going to be a long road,” Abigail said as she waited in the pre-op room with him on Thursday just before he was scheduled to have another surgery to clean out his wound of debris from the roadway. “It was very scary. I'm just happy he’s alive — they said his helmet saved his life.”

Jesse spent six hours in surgery for a splenectomy to remove his spleen after it ruptured from internal bleeding, and he will need multiple surgeries on his legs before he can walk again.

“Hopefully, he'll be able to walk again, but it's going to be definitely lifelong injuries,” Abigail said.

From sliding on the roadway, Jesse’s bone came out and parts were ripped off, so he will be needing bone grafts, as well as metal plates and screws. He has multiple fractures in areas including the tibia, his knee, and a dislocated ankle.

He also has fractures to the vertebrae on his thoracic spine.

“It’s not anything horrible,” Abigail said. “It will just have to heal.”

Jesse’s doctors have said that it will be maybe a year before he is walking again and they can’t be 100% certain when the father of two will be able to return to his work as a carpenter because they still have to see the progress.

“Pretty much right now they're trying to just save the right leg,” Abigail said. “That's what the doctor was telling me that a couple of days ago, they were saying, ‘You could lose your leg.’”

They were telling the couple, who reside in Moriches, that the surgeries have to be completed in a “timely manner,” Abigail said.

“Right now, it's kind of just up in the air,” she said.

The situation is a hard one for the couple as Jesse was the primary worker and Abigail only works part-time. Since his crash, she has had to take off work and will likely miss more days as her husband recovers.

In the meantime, she has started a fundraiser on GoFundMe to help defray expenses. In just two days, the page has raised about $1,000 towards its $10,000 goal.

Abigail knows it will be a long road ahead, but is happy that Jesse is alive, as just days ago his blood pressure was severely low.

“[The doctors] were like, ‘You could have died,’” she said.

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