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Loren Schauers was “extremely happy and fulfilled” in his construction job — until a routine task in 2019 upended his life forever.
“I’ll always remember that day. I got in the forklift, and I was asked to move a water barrier back into place,” recalled Schauers, who was 18 at the time.
“I sank immediately into such an angle that I started to slow tip up and go down towards a 50-foot drop of a hill,” he continued. “Next thing I know, I’m watching this forklift roll downward towards me.”
It’s a miracle that Schauers, now 24, didn’t die while crushed beneath that forklift for 30 minutes. He underwent a hemicorporectomy, a rare surgery that amputates the body below the waist.
The Montana resident lost his pelvis, legs, right forearm — even his genitalia.
He shares his struggles and triumphs on Wednesday’s premiere of “One Day in My Body,” airing at 9 p.m. ET/PT. The new TLC series highlights inspiring patients with extremely unusual medical conditions.
“I wanted to be featured on ‘One Day in My Body’ in order to help show others in similar situations to me and the others on the show that you can still live a full life even if you’ve been through something painful and terrible,” Schauers told The Post.
“I feel like it’s very important to show both the good and bad of life with a disability,” he added.
Schauers’s injuries are extremely devastating — he went from being nearly 6 feet tall to 2 feet, 8 inches, with a weight that hovers around 90 pounds. And nothing is where it should be on his body.
“The surgeon had to remove everything from his hip bones down,” family nurse practitioner Brandon Hawk explained, noting that the lower hip area is where the intestines are situated.
“To get everything to fit right, they had to move everything up, which then would push on his stomach, his lungs, his heart,” Hawk said. “And then they had to make room for a colostomy for his stool to pass through and then a urostomy for urine because he no longer has a bladder.”
Schauers’s story is not just one of human resilience — it’s also of unbridled love.
Before the horrific accident, Schauers had been dating and living with Sabia Reiche for about 15 months.
Reiche, then 20, was stunned to get the call about Schauers’s emergency.
“When we were brought to Loren’s room, because he was already amputated so much, he was taking up such a small amount of the bed,” she recalled. “I was convinced we were in the wrong room. I thought we were in a kid’s room.”
Even though they were facing overwhelming uncertainty, Reiche didn’t hesitate.
“It really wasn’t even a decision for me. My brain just immediately went, ‘OK, this is our life now,’” said Reiche, now 27.
“Loren relies 24/7 on me for everything,” she added. “Food or drinks or ostomy changes or giving him a shower.”
Schauers returned home from the hospital about four months after the accident. It took a while to get into a routine.
He has a wheelchair to get around and a “sitting apparatus” that resembles a turtle shell that allows him to sit up straight without putting pressure on his spine. Reiche is also shown carrying him on the episode.
“By the six-month mark, I was sitting up by myself, getting up at 8, 9:00 in the morning, emptying my pee bag, brushing my teeth,” Schauers said, “getting ready for the day by myself before my wife was even awake.”
Schauers and Reiche, who wed in 2021, have been documenting their reality on their social media channels.
One of the most asked questions: How is their sex life?
“When it comes to intimacy, we’re not different than any other regular couple,” Schauers said. “I might not have all the parts that I need, but it doesn’t change how we’re intimate with one another or how we love one another or how we show affection to one another.”
Not long after the accident, Schauers was informed he wouldn’t be able to father children. He said it was “one of the hardest things” to process.
“I didn’t cry over not having legs or a pelvis,” he said. “The only thing I cried about was not being able to have kids.”
Even though the couple is in a good groove, Schauers’s health challenges persist. He’s shown on the episode battling yet another kidney infection.
“The fear is eventually reaching a point where he’s resistant to all of the antibiotics, and then we face kidney failure,” Reiche said. “That’s kind of where, like, the life expectancy for him comes into play.”
Schauers added: “Hopefully we’ll live ’til we’re 80. We’ll see.”
He told The Post that now that filming is over, the couple is working on a “few things to improve my independence,” including prosthetic advancements.
