When Luis Santana, a 36-year-old father of four in Katy, Texas got a call from his mother while he was at the gym, he was quick to answer. She was stuck on the side of the road after her car broke down and needed help.

He secured her car to the rear bumper of his truck to tow it back home, and then everything changed.

“Then I hear this loud bang,” Santana told KPRC. “I kind of went into, like, a shock mode.” Santana ended up being pinned between the front of his mother’s SUV and the back of his truck. He described the pain as otherworldly and immediate.

“When I took that second step, that’s when I knew I was in trouble. I had already lost my leg on impact, and I fell to the ground,” he said.

A passing driver, who’s believed to be a nurse, pulled over to help. She turned a t-shirt into a tunicate to stop the bleeding before help arrived. He strongly believed divine intervention was a factor.

“God was there for me that for, for me and my kids,” he said. More than anything, he’s grateful he was the one pinned and not his mother, and that he lives to fight another day.

“I’m just so grateful that I’m still here, and I consider myself lucky and blessed,” he said. “I got people depending on me and I want to get back on my feet. I want to walk again and I want to be the person I was before.”

So, what’s next for Luis?

So far, Luis has endured three surgeries to amputate his leg and repair his left leg. He said he barely has feeling in his toes and deals with a lot of pain from the amputation.

He’s in a wheelchair for the time being but looks forward to a prosthetic leg.

“I’m basically going to start all over again, you know, at 36, it’s very hard for me,” he said. Attorneys working with Santana haven’t confirmed the identity of the driver who hit his mom’s SUV or the woman who saved him.

His twin sister started a GoFundMe to cover medical expenses, which have already added up to $10,000.