INDIANAPOLIS (WTHR) - Newlyweds, on what should have been a perfect honeymoon, experienced a life-threatening emergency.
The Purdue graduates had an accident while climbing a volcano in the Caribbean a few days ago. Now, they need help getting back home to a hospital in the United States.
Just days after their wedding, which the bride's mom Debra Catron describes as "perfect," Acaimie and Clay Chastain's vows got tested on their first big adventure as a married couple.
"You think you have your life planned out and then God has other plans," Catron said.
While climbing a dormant volcano in St. Kitts, the Purdue grads reached the top and Clay started to hike the rocky path down.
"There was a path down that had a rope and the rope broke," Catron said. "He fell, free-falling and then tumbling about, they guesstimate, 50 to 70 feet."
The honeymooners were alone on that mountain. They had no cell service either.
So with her husband bleeding and badly injured, Acaimie, all 110 pounds of her, climbed down and brought him up.
"She half-carried him up out of the crater and then two miles down the volcano," Catron said. "Pull, push, drag...the Lord was with her. That's the only way."
Clay survived.
But he's now stuck in St. Kitts with a concussion, a fractured vertebrae and a fracture with an air pocket in his skull.
"That air pocket, that's what's prohibiting him from flying commercially with a pressurized cabin," Catron said.
Now, family and friends are raising money for a $35,000 medical transport plane, which is not covered by insurance. It will get the couple back to their new home, back to their new life, back to quality care in a U.S. hospital.
They're newlyweds ready to heal after a life-threatening fall.
"They've gone through this, they can handle anything," Catron said. "We're just so thankful he wasn't hurt worse and we still have a son-in-law to love on."