THE LUCKIEST GUY

After C.J. Ardoin Was Badly Injured In A Horrific Motorcycle Crash, His Wife Kim Was Told To Prepare For The Worst. They Couldn’t Imagine How Well The Story Would End

By Brad Goins

Halfway through the new millennium’s first decade, the Ardoins had been running their family dentistry in Carlyss for nearly 25 years. Husband C.J. handled the dentistry; his wife Kim was the business manager.

For much of the business’ first quarter century, C.J. was an ardent cyclist. He got “serious into” triathlons in the 1990s, and continued to participate in them right up to 2004, when heart surgery altered the focus of his activities to some degree.

Not much later — in 2007 — a new love came into C.J.’s life: the motorcycle. And it’s no exaggeration to call it a love.

“It was a hobby that became a passion quickly,” says Kim. “He has a huge passion for motorcycles. When he fell in love with motorcycles, he fell hard.”

To some degree, C.J saw his new-found passion for the motorcycle as an extension of his enthusiasm for cycling. “It’s two wheels,” he says. “It’s all related. My cycling skills helped me on motorcycles.” And it’s not as if bicycles are the gold standard of safety while motorcycles are all things dangerous. “I’ve had two friends killed on bicycles,” says C.J.

C.J. eventually bought two motorcycles, driving a different one to work each week. “I always thought I was the luckiest guy that I got to ride my motorcycle to work.”

Kim was reluctant to take part in her husband’s new passion, but “he really wanted me to join in,” she says. In 2008, she finally came around, and the couple got a Honda Gold Wing touring motorcycle they could ride together.

C.J. and Kim already owned a used motor home. For a time, says Kim, they were able to enjoy their two favorite pastimes — camping and riding motorcycles, pulling the bike behind the motorhome as they traveled from place to place.

A Tranquil Sunday Ride

In March, 2010, the couple spent a weekend camping at Lake Sam Rayburn. At 4:30 on the Sunday afternoon, says Kim, “We decided to take one more ride — a leisurely ride in the beautiful weather.

“There wasn’t a car in sight.”

As the pair rode their motorcycle through the rural stretches of La. 111 between Anacoco and Toledo Bend Dam, they were “fully suited up, with three-quarter helmets, leather jackets and chaps,” says Kim. “We would have loved to be in shorts and flip flops.” At times, they’d pass a couple on a bike who’d dressed down for the warm weather and were envious of them. For the Ardoins, safety gear was always a priority.

The ride was pleasant and tranquil.

And then, in an instant, everything stopped. Neither C.J. nor Kim remembers anything that happened.

The portion of the motorcycle C.J. fell into. The other side looked pristine.

Horrific Injuries

“The next thing we knew, we were being loaded into an ambulance and helicopter,” says Kim.

The couple was later told that someone had driven an ATV out of the woods and straight to the spot they were approaching in the huge, empty road.

Kim flipped over the motorcycle and landed head first on the roll bar of the ATV. She received a concussion and a cut that would require 42 stitches. Unconscious, she fell into the bed of the ATV.

When police arrived at the scene, they saw a great deal of blood on Kim, but hardly any on her husband C.J., who was lying motionless on the road. Although concussions are serious and can easily be fatal, in this case, C.J. was the one who was in grave danger. While he was bleeding a great deal, the bleeding was trapped out of sight inside his helmet or under his leather.

After the collision, C.J. and the bike had continued more than 50 feet down the road. C.J. thinks his horrific injuries were sustained from his falling into the bike — not from any contact with the road.

Both his lungs had collapsed — most likely injured by the broken ribs he had sustained.

The indentation in the front of the rim was caused when the bike wheel locked on impact.

There was traumatic injury to most of his face and lower head. C.J. thinks his chin struck the gas tank — a contact that broke most of the bones in his lower head. His eye socket bones were broken as were both cheek bones. “I had a big break in my lower jaw,” he says. Amazingly, he lost no teeth in the accident; nor did he chip any. The teeth, said C.J., “floated” within the damaged area, and would continue to do so for more than a year.

C.J. had crushed a hip, which would eventually have to be replaced. He’d also crushed the wrist of his right hand — an injury that was to loom large, as he was a right-handed dentist.

Fortunately, the Acadian Ambulance paramedics who arrived on the scene realized it was crucial to re-inflate C.J.’s lungs soon. He was put on a helicopter, which quickly flew him to the Rapides Regional Medical Center in Alexandria, La. During the flight, the paramedics re-inflated C.J.’s lungs.

‘A Very Traumatic Time’

It took dentists, oral surgeons and ear, nose and throat doctors a year to reconstruct C.J.’s face, jaw and teeth. The first half-dozen surgeries took place in C.J.’s long initial stay in intensive care. He also endured hip and wrist surgeries during his three-week hospital stay.

When he did finally make it back to his home, he wasn’t even capable of sitting in a wheelchair. A large, special bed was placed in the family’s living room. There C.J began a long period of waiting, healing and much hard work in therapy.

The recovery effort was, to a great degree, the result of efforts of “local dental professionals,” who, Kim says, “came to our rescue.” Not only did they help with the reconstruction of C.J.’s teeth and lower face, they also created appliances that enabled C.J. to eat and talk.

Kim was in a bad way herself while all this was going on. As she recovered from her concussion, she had her own crisis to deal with. She’d talked with doctors about her husband’s prognosis, and the prognosis was not good. She was bolstered by the support of good friends, the couple’s children and grandchildren, and other family members.

“I was traumatized because doctors were telling me he might not survive; he might not be able to practice dentistry again; he might not be able to use his hands again … It was a very traumatic time.”

C.J. finally comes home from the hospital.

One thing Kim did was keep these negative prognoses from her husband, who might not have understood them anyway in his heavily medicated state. As C.J.’s recovery progressed, Kim made it a point to continue to refrain from accentuating the negative. Indeed, at one point in the long recovery, a physical therapist lost his job when he told C.J. he had to accept his limitations. “No, we don’t talk about limitations,” Kim told the therapist.

Compounding Kim’s traumatic fears about her husband’s future — or whether he even had a future — were her great fears about the couple’s financial future. How would the family’s dentistry business go on — even in the event that C.J. did eventually recover?

Here again, local dentists stepped into the breach. “They volunteered to see our patients to keep our practice open during this crisis we were in,” says Kim. The Ardoins never had to lay off a single employee — all because of others’ volunteer efforts.

‘A Community Healing’

The Ardoins see C.J.’s miraculous recovery not just as the result of the local dental community, but of the community at large. As C.J. puts it, “it was a community healing.”

Many Lake Charles and Sulphur groups, including churches, organized blood drives for C.J. The family even heard of a friend who gave blood in spite of the fact that she’d always had a phobia of the process. The blood drive was so successful that doctors were eventually able to tell donors that they had all the blood C.J. needed.

The Ardoins note that they wound up on the prayer lists at many community churches. Churches also delivered meals to the beleaguered  family. Taking the lead in these efforts was St. Margaret’s Catholic School, where Kim worked as a counselor at the time of the wreck. Once support efforts started at one church, the word quickly spread to another. Family members and friends stayed with C.J. so Kim could return to work.

The children of St. Margaret’s Catholic School spearhead the support drive for C.J.

Both husband and wife are quick to attribute C.J.’s stunning recovery to spiritual influences — both the many prayers of locals on his behalf and direct intervention by God.

“It’s not our story, it’s God’s story,” says Kim. C.J. voices a similar sentiment when he says that his near-complete recovery from what could easily have been fatal or debilitating injuries is “due to prayers.”

Speaking For The Less Fortunate

C.J says it never occurred to him that he would not have a full recovery. Today, he has plates and screws under both eyes. Although one of the bones in his right hand didn’t set properly, he can now use his right hand just fine and works the very same dentist’s hours he did before the crash.

C.J. still wants to ride his motorcycle. Kim would prefer that he didn’t. “It’s been a huge conflict,” she says. The two have gradually worked out a compromise. They share an old convertible, and C.J. takes short, local rides once in a while.

Over and over, says Kim, “We’ve heard Dr. Ardoin is never going to walk again. [People still ask] is he ever going back to work?” The two are working hard to get the word out that C.J. is recovered and is practicing full-time. In fact, he returned to work just five months after the accident.

They have another mission that seems even more important to them. It’s grown out of Kim’s acute awareness that others have suffered less severe injuries than the Ardoins did but failed to survive their wrecks. 

“We want to say what we think those who didn’t survive their motorcycle accidents would want us to say.

“Our ministry is understanding the passion of those who ride.” The two try to persuade motorcycle riders to make sure that their passion for riding “never gets higher than awareness of the danger.”

The two believe that with the runaway growth of the popularity of texting, driver inattention is a greater danger than ever. “Enjoy your motorcycle,” says Kim, “but don’t ever lose sight of the danger.”

The couple now spreads the word about motorcycle safety to all who will listen. The back of C.J.’s truck is full of the familiar bright yellow yard signs and bumper stickers of the Motorcycle Awareness Campaign: the ones that read “Please Watch for Motorcycles.”

After all he’s been through; after the long adventure he’s survived, C.J. Ardoin finds himself once again doing what he most loves to do — work as a dentist all day, every day. The ability to do what he loves makes any man a fortunate man — even when the struggle has been long and hard.