Nick DeVries was not going to let a few broken ribs get in the way of his wedding day.
He took some pain medication and let his friends apply Icy Hot while he thought about his bride’s two-year wait to get married, the $5,000 they spent on the wedding, and all their friends and family who traveled across the country to see them tie the knot.
Then, the pain pills took over, and on Sept. 5, Fruita’s Nick and Holly DeVries got married at Five Winds Ranch outside Collbran. They danced, ate barbecue and mingled with guests. Nick “was feeling really good and then it kicked in and I said, ‘Yup, it’s time to go to the hospital.’ “
Truth be told, Holly said, she wanted to take Nick to the emergency room before the wedding. She was out on the balcony taking pre-ceremony photos when a group of people went running off behind her.
Her mom came in and said, “We are not going to tell you what happened.”
It was Nick. Holly knew.
In hindsight, Nick, 28, should have worn his seat belt on the RZR Side By Side he was driving. Then again, maybe he shouldn’t have even been in a UTV (utility task vehicle) moments before his wedding.
“I told him not to take those things up there,” Holly, 26, said.
Either way, a tire went flat, the rim caught some dirt and the RZR overturned.
picture: short bridesmaid dresses uk“I guess I bent the steering wheel in half to the side,” Nick said. “I was trying to stay inside, I guess.”
He stood up to flip the UTV back over and collapsed. That’s when he assumed he broke his ribs.
When Holly saw him, however, “I was ready to take him to the hospital then and there.”
Nick had none of it.
“I’m getting married today,” he said, looking back. “I love my wife. I wasn’t going to sacrifice her day because I made a stupid mistake.”
Eventually, when the pain became too much to bear, Holly in her wedding dress and Nick in his tux showed up at Community Hospital for a CT scan. There, they learned Nick did not break his ribs as feared. He had “unstable fractures” in four vertebrae. He had broken his back. He’s lucky he didn’t do more damage during the ceremony and subsequent party.
The couple was transferred to St. Mary’s Hospital.
Nick was admitted and underwent a four-hour surgery with Dr. Brian P. Witwer. The repair required 10 screws, two metal rods and two metal plates. The surgery left a very clean and straight scar down half of Nick’s back.
But he was walking the next day. On Sept. 9, four days after he broke his back but got married anyway and ended up in a hospital, Nick was discharged.
“Dr. Witwer was amazing,” Holly said.
He won’t require physical therapy.
He went back to work at Cudd Energy Services wearing his hospital bracelets to say hello.
Holly, owner of Right By Your Side Home Care, joked that the couple had a $300,000 honeymoon. Thankfully, they have good insurance.
On Friday, Nick answered the door to his Fruita house. He’s walking slow, and he hasn’t been able to eat much, but he’s home and proudly wearing his wedding ring.
He and Holly had their first date four years ago at a Denver area Starbucks. Now, they have an unbelievable wedding story.
“We laugh about it now,” Holly said. “We laughed about it then because there was nothing we could do about it. … I told my mom, it isn’t a wedding unless it rains or something goes wrong.”
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