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Happy To Be Alive

Posted Jan 10, 2008 by Gretchen Parker

Updated Jan 10, 2008 at 04:03 PM

Eric Rannebarger, also known as morning radio personality Eric Michaels on Lakeland’s 98.3 FM, is recovering in his den today in Davenport. He’s sore, bruised and cut, but says he’s healing.

“I’m walking, and I’m living and breathing, so it’s a good day,” Rannebarger said. Phone calls and visitors came in a steady stream. Friends and co-workers sent e-mail, too, as they found out he had been banged up in Wednesday’s I-4 pileup.

Rannebarger’s show starts at 6 a.m.; he was headed west toward the radio station when his 2000 Mazda Protégé slid into the mess of cars and tractor-trailers. He described it as hitting a “wall of dirty, white, gray fog.”

After he climbed out of his car, he worried he was having a heart attack. His chest hurt, he was nauseated and he had pain on his left side. A tractor-trailer driver helped him into his cab and gave him a bottle of water before an ambulance took him away about three hours later, Rannebarger said.

Today he is still struggling to make sense of what happened. He wants more details, but when he watches and reads news reports, he gets emotional.

“It takes me back there,” he said. Rannebarger said he’ll look for a counselor to help him deal with the anxiety.