Aurora firefighter returns to duty after severe injuries

Firefighter Jason Matile’s physical scars aren’t from battling blazes.

His slight limp merely hints at the prosthetic leg he uses after his right leg was amputated below the knee. The scars on his right elbow testify to the two surgeries he’s need to reconstruct his shattered joint.

Matile suffered life-threatening injuries in a motorcycle accident in June 2010. Yet, in July, just 13 months later, he was pulling hoses and throwing ladders with his brethren on the Aurora Fire Department. Matile is a firefighter again.

“There’s nowhere else I’d rather be,” said Jason Matile, 27, of Sheridan, Ill.

During a vacation in Iowa, Matile was driving his motorcycle in the right lane of a curved road with his girlfriend, Amber. As he turned into the curve, his motorcycle drifted into the left lane as a van was approaching. Matile said he steered toward a ditch on the left side of the road to avoid the van, but it just clipped him on his right side.

Doctors put Matile into a coma as a result of his severe injuries. They reinforced his femur with a metal rod, and placed rods in his girlfriend’s legs.

Matile spent three weeks in the induced coma. When he woke up, he thought only a day had passed.

“I didn’t think I’d get back to work,” Matile said.

Then he met a man who knew exactly what Matile was going through — a firefighter from Florida who had been in a motorcycle accident and lost part of his leg to an amputation below the knee. And he was back on duty.

Aurora firefighters paid for the Florida man to attend a benefit in August 2010 to help pay Matile’s medical costs.

“Don’t give up,” Matile said the firefighter told him.

That’s when he knew he would wear his uniform again. He’d seen that it was possible.

Matile decided to relearn how to walk and vowed to take his first steps before Christmas that year.

“That was my goal,” Matile said. “To walk into Grandma’s at Christmas.”

Doctors hesitated, knowing that Matile, who’d had skin graft surgery, needed to build up calluses to wear a prosthetic. He worked through months of physical therapy — before and after his holiday goal.

While he did walk into his family’s Christmas celebration, he admits he had days when he “was a little down in the dumps.”

“How am I going to function the rest of my life?” Matile remembered asking.

Through perseverance, hard work and sheer will, Matile returned to full-time duty in July. He credits support from his family and the “brotherhood” in the Aurora Fire Department.

“The guys always have everybody’s backs,” he said.

Chief Hal Carlson praised Matile’s conviction to return to duty.

“If anybody could do it, Jason could,” Carlson said. “He was willing to do the work.”

Part of that work included grueling physical therapy sessions five days a week for 10 months. Now his visits are down to three days a week to stretch out his leg and elbow. Matile had his second elbow surgery Oct. 14, so he’s currently on light duty.

The physical struggle is an added challenge to the intensive duties of a firefighter. Matile’s prosthetic foot takes those pressures into account. An extra blade of carbon fiber distributes his weight when he’s lifting his equipment.

Matile plans to re-enroll in paramedic school in January to continue seeking the certification he began training for before the accident.

After his own near-death, he values his lifesaving job even more.

“I’ve always enjoyed helping other people,” Matile said. “It gives me more of an appreciation of what other people are going through in accidents.”

He wants to reassure them when he responds to emergencies and to fellow firefighters who suffer trauma or injury. Matile, who received the city’s Firefighter of the Year Award in October, said his own accident “could have been a lot worse.”

“I try to be thankful for every day,” Matile said. “You never know what life is going to give you.”