Almost three months after he was struck by a bullet in America’s deadliest mass shooting, Victoria’s Sheldon Mack is on the mend.
Daily doctor appointments have declined to monthly ones and his wounds are healing more quickly than expected.
The randomness of the experience — waking up in a Las Vegas hospital bed to a news cycle saturated with images from the terror attack that he was lucky to survive — is not lost on him.
At 21, he said it has changed his outlook on life.
“I’m definitely kind of more about action now. ... It’s unpredictable what can happen next,” Mack said.
“I’m just trying my best to make the best of every day and make every day count.”
Mack was celebrating his birthday on Oct. 1, when a wealthy Nevada resident sprayed bullets into an unsuspecting crowd at the Route 91 Harvest music festival from a hotel room window.
Fifty-eight people were killed and about 500 were injured.
One bullet struck Mack’s right forearm, below his elbow, shattering the radial bone. It continued on a path into his abdomen, passing through his colon and nudging his spine. Pieces of it remain scattered through his body.
Mack has regained control of his hand — his fingers were initially limp and his thumb numb — and he has a normal, healthy appetite even though one foot of his colon was removed.
It hasn’t all been smooth sailing. He looks over his shoulder in crowds more than he used to. And although he was ready for the annual Halloween fireworks show in his Saanich neighbourhood, he was still uncomfortable with how similar it sounded to the peppering of bullets weeks before.
But Mack said he’s looking forward to returning to work at the Bard & Banker, as well as graphic-design school at the Pacific Design Academy, in the new year.
He also counts a new friend in the off-duty paramedic, Jimmy Grovom, who kept Mack from bleeding out by putting pressure on his wounds, despite being shot in the leg himself. “We touch base every once in a while to see how each other is doing,” Mack said.
A few days ago, Mack couriered some tokens of Canadian culture for the holidays to Grovom, an Orange County, California, resident: A box of Trailer Park Boys DVDs and the coveted advent-calendar of Victoria beers: A Phillips’ Snowcase.
If Grovom and his brother can make a trip to B.C. before the hockey season is over, Mack’s sister Rachel, who works for the Vancouver Canucks, says she can get them to a game.
Mack’s father, former CTV Vancouver Island news anchor Hudson Mack, said the family has picked up unnecessary trivia about guns and bullets, because they were worried about infection in the wake of the shooting. “A bullet is actually the most antiseptic thing to enter a body, because the heat burns off and sterilizes it and the velocity blows off anything that would have clung to it: Stuff you don’t need to know,” he said.
After decades in the news business, he found himself watching the news in the hours after the shooting, desperate not to discover his son among the dead. It would be hours before he and his wife, Patty, got confirmation that Sheldon, who underwent major surgery, had survived.
“For years, in the newsroom, I would always rant at reporters and producers writing about ‘a parent’s worst nightmare.’ But what unfolded for us over the next several hours gives truth to the cliché,” he wrote in a Nov. 6 Facebook post.
He said the shooting has brought the family closer together.
They’ve been touched by the outpouring of support from the community — about $31,615 was raised through a GoFundMe campaign.
Whether the family will have to pay emergency medical bills in the United States — which can cost up to $10,000 US per hour — is still unclear. Hudson Mack said the family is still working with Nevada’s funds for victims of violent crime, but what will be covered has not been finalized.
It’s becoming surreal telling and retelling the story to family and friends, he said. “It could have been so much different. Our hearts break for the families who are going through Christmas who lost loved ones and for people who were hurt like Sheldon, but haven’t recovered as well.
“We’re just very fortunate and it sure makes you realize how fleeting life is.”
