After paying another hospital visit to Allen Trent in Wichita earlier in the week, Barton Community College head baseball coach Mike Warren says he’s encouraged by his progression.
“He was awake and he can move both arms,” said Warren of Trent, whom he saw on Tuesday at St. Francis Hospital. “While he was laying there in his hospital bed, he raised both of his hands above his head for me and raised each of his legs in the air, one at a time.
“He shook my hand when we got there, and responded to me when I talked to him.”
Trent was critically injured in a one-vehicle car accident near Andale during the early-morning hours on Sunday, July 8. The outfielder/first baseman/pitcher, who completed his freshman year at Barton in the spring, went through his car’s windshield during the mishap, sustaining life-threatening injuries, thus being airlifted to Wichita.
Nearly a month later, Trent has made marked improvement in his slow road to recovery.
“He still has a respirator in his throat and he’s off the respirator now for 1½ hours per day, which is pretty good,” Warren said of the 6-foot-4, 230-pounder. “They can get him out of bed with any straps and they hold on with each arm and he takes two steps and sits down in a chair.
“His fever is gone, and his heart rate is down and not what it was. There was a lot of good feeling in that room for me as opposed to what I saw him like the week before.”
Trent’s problems increased when staph infection got into his lungs.
“They did surgery on him and there was a cyst the size of a softball cut in half, that’s how big (the infection) was,” Warren said. “It was on part of his right lung and it was prohibiting him from breathing very well and they went in and got 95 percent of it and it was MRSA. It hardened on his lung, and now he’s breathing a lot better.”
Trent’s recovery time will be long and tedious, according to Warren.
“He gets tired real quick, obviously, and he still has a ways to go,” he said, “but it was encouraging. To give you an example, his nurse was in the room and I told her, ‘This is the guy that got me to start to watching the show Swamp People,’ and he grinned from ear-to-ear.
“He thought that was so funny. I don’t know what is in store in the next few weeks, but at least he’s in a different room now (out of intensive care)  and it was inspirational to see the progress that he has made in such a short time.”