Ivory Lindsey

Ivory Lindsey has been riding horses for nearly 50 of his 57 years, but nothing could have prepared him for what happened on May 1, 2016.

Lindsey was leading his horse, Jo Jo Dancer, on a cool-down walk in the early evening when another horse named Sarge, who was grazing on the far side of a low fence, swung around and locked onto Lindsey’s throat with his teeth.

“I had turned to call my son when the horse grabbed me by the throat—and he crushed it,” Lindsey said. “I never saw it coming.”

Lindsey does not remember any pain, but he does remember watching blood gush onto his boots, the result of a deep horizontal gash across his neck.

“All I can remember is suffocating,” Lindsey said. “I could take in air, but I couldn’t put any out.”

Eventually, he made his way to the emergency room at Ben Taub Hospital, where Robert Todd, M.D., medical director of the trauma department, was working. Todd has had extensive experience with neck trauma, a stroke of luck for Lindsey. Over the next 28 days, Lindsey endured seven surgeries to repair the bones, muscles and vocal cords Sarge crushed with his sudden bite.

No one expected Lindsey ever to speak again, but each day he kept trying to find his voice.

“During the mornings and nights, I would always be trying to talk,” he said, “but nothing would come out.”

Until one morning, alone in his room, Lindsey placed one of his hands over the hole in his neck—he’d had a tracheostomy so doctors could insert a breathing tube in his windpipe—and pushed out a noise. His voice was coming back.

Soon after, Todd arrived with a group of medical students and a nurse handed Lindsey a pen and paper so he could write answers to their questions. Lindsey put the pen and paper aside, looked up at the small crowd and said: “What did you want to ask me?”

“They all jumped and looked,” he recalled. “They were all shocked. It was a big deal.”

Lindsey got back on Jo Jo two weeks after leaving the hospital. He tells everyone his survival story and praises the doctors who helped him.

And his scar?

“I never think about it,” Lindsey said, “but I carry it with pride, yes I do. I carry it with honor.”

For him, the scar is an emblem of his survival against formidable odds.

“I call it a blessing from God,” Lindsey said, “and it’s also a reminder of what God is able to do.”