Heading into the 2005 cross country season, Chris Drissel had a fairly simple goal: he wanted to run the exact same time he’d run the season before.

On the surface, it may have seemed modest or even easy, until considering that the Holy Family University student-athlete was then less than a year removed from surviving a near-fatal car accident in which he was impaled on a rusty metal pole.

Drissel’s recounting of the single-car accident is relaxed these days — the result of multiple narrations of the incident — and in direct contrast to the seriousness of the crash. Not only was he impaled through the chest, but he also sustained two skull fractures and four broken ribs. In addition, doctors removed his spleen and part of his left lung.

Fortunately, Drissel doesn’t actually remember the accident. What he knows about it is from what others have told him. The cause of the accident isn’t clear — it wasn’t alcohol or speed related, but he does remember being tired.

At about 3 a.m. on  January 4, Drissel’s car crossed into the oncoming lanes, jumped the curb and skidded into a chain-link fence. The car hit the fence and a concrete-anchored junction post. The post slammed through Drissel’s chest.

Drissel was just a couple of blocks from home at the time. His father, a police officer, heard the call over the radio, picked up Drissel’s mother, and drove to the scene. When Drissel’s father asked if the accident was fatal, he was told no, but that it probably was going to be.

After emergency personnel cut through the post and extricated him from the car, Drissel was transported to the hospital with two feet of pole still imbedded through the front and back of his chest. A CAT scan also revealed the two skull fractures.

“The surgeon came to my parents and told them it was going to be a tough surgery to remove the pole and that most likely I was going to die,” said Drissel.

Somehow, Drissel pulled through the operation. But even then his chances of survival were estimated at a paltry 25 percent due to concerns about infection from the rust on the pole.

Ultimately, Drissel was hospitalized for 18 days, including a week in a drug-induced coma and four days in a rehabilitation center.

However, his road back to competitive cross country began before he was discharged. There was no question in his mind that he would return. He was walking on a treadmill before he left the hospital.

“I wanted to come back big time,” said Drissel, a junior nursing major who aspires to assist anesthesiologists. “After I got out of the hospital, I started walking a mile on the treadmill every night. After a week, I was bumping it up to a mile and a half. I would jog the last 400 meters. I just went from there and kept going.”

Beyond his own personal drive to return, Drissel was buoyed by the unwavering support of family and friends. Because news of the crash spread across northeast Philadelphia, he was hard-pressed to go anywhere in his neighborhood without being asked how he was doing.

Drissel ran himself right back into a spot on the cross country team last fall, much to the surprise of teammates. “They came to see me in the hospital and saw what kind of condition I was in,” he said. “They knew all my injuries. When they saw me running, they were shocked and happy.”

Knowing that his personal best from the previous season was 31:15, Drissel went into the 2005 season simply wanting to get back to where he was — not as easy as it sounded considering he’d lost part of his lung.

In the end, Drissel missed his goal by about a minute, but the lessons he learned through the experience hit the mark.

“Live every day as it is. Work hard and eventually it will pay off,” he said.