David Raborn doesn't remember the day he nearly died in a cycling accident on a rural Alberta highway.
The Sherwood Park man instead relied on the memories of his rescuers in his story of his astonishing recovery from traumatic brain injury, five months of which he spent in a coma.
"The easiest way to write a book is you just get other people to do it for you," Raborn said with a laugh during an interview Thursday with CBC Radio's Edmonton AM.
"I sort of spearheaded this thing."
Raborn's book, Hey Guys, Did I Miss Anything?: A Journey Back, and Stories from Five Months in a Coma includes passages from his doctors, surgeons, and his dearest friends and family.
'There was so much blood'
The two Lloydminster people who found Raborn unconscious on the road moments after the accident also penned a chapter.
The man and his son were on their way to a midget triple AAA hockey try-out when they saw Raborn.
Raborn said his young rescuer "was terrified of blood, and there was so much blood. They thought I was a moose or a deer, because a human couldn't have that much blood."
Raborn was cycling on Range Road 223 on Sept. 22, 2011, when he hit a pothole.
He was sent flying over his handlebars and smashed head first into the pavement. His skull was cracked.
Doctors did not expect he would survive.
Raborn, now 32, would spent five months in a coma, followed by three months in an intensive rehabilitation program at the Glenrose Rehabilitation Hospital.
He has no memory of the accident. His first memories are in late 2012 when he started coming out of the haze of his brain injury.
'My body was spared'
"I had some pretty severe brain damage."
The road to recovery would be a long one.
Raborn couldn't speak and struggled to walk. His legs had atrophied. His muscular frame had shrunk to a skeletal 123 pounds. He now suffers from epilepsy due to the lasting damage to his brain tissue.
Raborn credits the Glenrose staff for his recovery. All proceeds from his book will be donated to the hospital.
"I was basically a toddler," Raborn said. "I had to learn how to speak, to talk, to eat, to walk. I was just a burden to everybody."
Since being released from hospital more than a year after his accident, Raborn has returned to work and is cycling again.
He hopes his story inspires others to be more courageous and reminds readers that you can't overcome life's challenges alone.
Raborn said he wouldn't have survived his ordeal without the dedicated support of his friends, family and complete strangers.
"I want people to know that you need to be surrounded by a community," he said. "I have the best support system in the world."