SAN ANTONIO, Fla. — David Meadows, 64, is an avid pickleball player at the Tampa Bay Golf and Country Club.
His wife jokingly calls herself a “pickleball widow.”
“The moment I saw the game, I loved it,” Meadows said. “It’s a social sport. The ball is moving at somewhat a fast pace. I love that part about it.”
That part of his life almost never happened. In May 2013, David and his wife Renae were on vacation at their favorite spot in the Bahamas.
“The week that we went, there was inclement weather,” Meadows said. “I was looking forward to doing a lot of activities, jet skiing, sitting by the pool. The weather was cloudy and choppy on the water. They said no jet skiing or boating on the water.”
On the last day of their trip, the weather cleared up, and boating was allowed with caution.
“So that was my chance to go out and play,” he said.
“Sneaky husband decides to go jet skiing while I am asleep,” his wife, Renae Watley-Meadows, said. “He creeped out. I woke up because we were supposed to go to dinner. I’m looking for him.”
“I went around one of the islets out there, and the waves got really choppy,” Meadows described. “I wanted to turn around, and when I turned, I was parallel with the waves, and it capsized the jet ski. I’m in the water, I’m not hurt, but the jet ski is turned upside down.”
Meadows held on to the jet ski as the waves pushed him to shore. Just when he thought everything was going to be fine, that’s when his situation took a turn for the worse.
“Another wave pushed the jet ski right into my femur bone,” he said. “My femur bone broke right at that time.”
Now with a broken leg, the waves are pounding him against the sharp coral rock.
“I’m hanging on like you’re leaning on the back of a fence,” he said. “Everywhere I touch is like razor blades. I was taking a beating.”
Meadows was alone in the water for nearly four hours.
“Right when I was at my breaking point to just let go and see my life pass away, I saw out the corner of my eye two guys with jet skis looking for their jet ski,” he said. “I was recused by them and taken to the beach.”
Meadows was in the hospital in Nassau for eight days before returning home with a rod through his femur. But another concern was a laceration on his leg.
“In a matter of two days, it went from a small hole in my leg to a hole about the size of an orange.”
He got a flesh-eating infection called Vibrio.
Six surgeries in six months and Meadows was finally able to put weight on his leg two years later.
The moral of the story? Well, that depends on who you ask.
“Never go out boating or swimming in the ocean by yourself. It’s so unpredictable,” Meadows said.
“Clearly, listen to the wife,” Renae added. “Everybody at Atlantis said it’s too choppy. Don’t do it.”
