"You have about 10 minutes to live": Colorado rancher shares story of survival and gratitude for life-saving doctors

Every day on Ryan Keen's cattle ranch is defined by long hours, heavy lifting and the wind that never seems to quit.

"We also raise a little bit of wheat, if it ever rains," he joked recently, brushing off the kind of hard‑luck reality that comes with working the land on the eastern plains of Colorado.

But just about three years ago, on Father's Day 2023, a routine chore on his property nearly cost him everything.

"I was just going to kind of take it easy for once," he said. "Mow, burn trees, and cook a prime rib on the smoker."

Within minutes, the quiet day he'd imagined was shattered.

"I decided to light the tree pile on fire, and I was standing there and pretty soon there was an explosion," he said.

Inside the house, his wife, Tandi, felt the boom.

"It shook the house," she said. "I remember looking at my kid, 'did he blow up the mower?' And then, the screams."

Keen said he kind of remembers the explosion throwing him to the ground.

"And I was on fire," he said.

Badly burned and desperate, he ran at least 100 yards to his home and went straight into a cold shower.

"Skin was just falling off my arms into the bottom of the shower. It looked like Jello," he said. "I told the wife then, 'You probably oughta get me to town.'"

Some 15 miles from the nearest hospital, Keen said there was no time to call and wait for 911. Instead, one of the couple's teenage sons got behind the wheel of their truck and raced down the dirt roads toward it while Tandi held her husband in the back seat.

"I was trying to talk to him because I was afraid he was going to go into shock," she said.

Doctors in Sterling moved quickly, but the burns inside Keen's throat and lungs made the situation even more urgent. He still remembers the moment an ER physician gave him a terrifying warning.

"She said you have about 10 minutes to live [unless] I can get this tube in your throat," he recalled.

Because of his extensive injuries, the rural hospital couldn't provide the advanced care he needed. He was then airlifted more than 100 miles away to HCA HealthOne Swedish in Englewood, where a Level 1 trauma and burn team waited.

"He was all bandaged up and he had pretty severe burns of the face and the body," said Dr. Benson Pulikkottil, the Medical Director of the Burn and Reconstructive Unit at HCA HealthONE Swedish. "That lung injury added more severity to his burns."

Keen spent 10 days on life support before waking to the reality that he would have to relearn how to walk, talk, even eat. But he was determined to get back to his ranch.

"I [told the nurse], 'I'm getting out of here. The cattle need me, it's farming season, and the family needs me home'," Keen said.

His medical team was equally determined. Over the course of several weeks, doctors performed a number of surgeries, including skin grafts and other procedures to help with reconstruction.

"That was a lot of work," Pulikkottil said. "We used amniotic membrane, his own skin, we used spray skin, we used techniques of mobilizing tissue so that we could hide scarring."

Today, Keen's remarkable recovery shows little evidence of the trauma he endured.

"I still have some breathing trouble, like asthma, but for the most part I can function normally. Luckily, Swedish was there for me, and their team is amazing. I took 'em some beef and Tandi brought them cookies," he added with a smile.

Yet painful reminders still linger on the rancher's land. Where the explosion happened, the ground remains charred.

"Still black, still pieces of twigs," Keen said, nudging the burned earth with his boot and noting he likely won't burn debris piles again, "I think I'm done with that."

That small patch of soil is a stark contrast to the man standing above it -- a third-generation rancher who came close to losing his life, and who now counts every day as a gift.

"Just grateful to be alive," Keen said. "Every day."