Some of you Park City guys may remember my accident up in Jonesey's park about 4.5 years ago.
I got the injury skiing. I cased a 35 foot jump and my right ski came off and stuck sideways in the snow about half way down the landing. Ski brake somehow got lodged in the icy landing and after I hit the knuckle, i sort of bounced from the impact and when I came back down, I landed thigh first on the top edge of my ski. I slid all the way down it then rolled down the landing to a stop. It was a total yard sale.
So, first things first, I hurry to get all my stuff so I don't get landed on by another skier/boarder. I try to stand up and my leg gives out and as I look down I see blood shooting (really it was like shooting/pouring) out of the hole in my pants. I look at the landing and see a 10 foot long red streak of blood up the landing and I almost pass out right there. I'd never been in a serious situation such as this before and as I roll over, I can see blood just pouring out of my leg and soaking the snow around me and dying it a deep crimson red. I panic and yell for help. Within about 2 minutes, I had 50 people standing around me as I'm trying to keep conscious and awake. Everything is very dizzy and about 10 minutes later, ski patrol arrives with a sled. They had to close the jump and clean it up because it looked like a murder scene. There was a long streak of blood and at the end of the streak, there was another streak left from when I dragged myself over to the side of the landing where a 2 foot wide puddle of blood had soaked into the snow.
At this point I hadn't even seen my injury yet. The first kid to show up (I'll never forget his face. Facial hair, long yellow hoodie, and dreads.) Asked to take a look and as he opened up the slit on my ski pants, he let out a ,"holy fuck" without even thinking about it. I knew it was bad and he yelled to his friends to go get patrol now. But anyways, I get loaded onto the sled and the ski patrol had twin tips so I got sprayed with snow all the way down to the First Aid tent. They told me there that they would stitch me up and they called my parents and explained the situation. In the room, the nurses stripped me down to my underwear. (In the picture it looked black because it was soaked with blood. It used to be a burgundy red color.) They called my parents back and told them that the ambulence was on its way and that they should meet me at the hospital. This is when I got the first glimpse at my gash. It was a straight clean cut that looked like it was done with a razor sharp knife, not the rusty edge of my park skis. I remember the nurses naming all of the different muscles that were severed in half in my leg and the other nurse made notes to give to the Ambulance paramedics which would be given to the doctor.
The ambulance arrives and the trip was actually pretty boring. I had a football of gauze on my leg and the whole trip I just talked to the paramedic about his job and stuff. He never did anything that helped me with my leg.
So I arrive at the hospital, (at this point i'm still alone) and i'm rolled through the ER into a exam room where a doctor is waiting to assess the damage. The Paramedic hands him the note the nurses made and he reads it while 2 new nurses cut away the gauze and get to work injecting me full of Lidocaine and a local Anesthetic. After about 150 shots of Lidocaine, the doctor starts looking at the damage. First thing he says to me is, "You missed your femoral artery by less than a centimeter. It looks like your femur took the brunt of the impact and saved your life. I'm even surprised you didn't break your femur. If you would've even nicked the artery, you wouldve bled out within 10 minutes." So that was good news I guess. I'm glad I didn't break my femur because I've heard that was the most painful thing you can do. But my parent arrive as they are taking x-rays and they later showed that there was a nice v-shaped notch in the side of my femur where the ski finally stopped.
The best part came when they were scheduling me for surgery. They asked me how long ago I had eaten and I told them I ate a protein cookie at 1 PM. It was about 8PM at the time and my surgery was scheduled for 1AM and they called in a plastic surgeon to do it. That damn cookie delayed my surgery 5 hours...
I go in for surgery and actually fell asleep on the laughing gas alone before they even started the anasthesia. I'm guessing the loss of about 5 pints of blood was a good cause for this because I was hella tired and the laughing gas just made it impossible to stay awake. So I fell asleep and then BOOM! I'm awake again. Thats the weird thing about surgery, you just fall asleep and wake up immediately after. It was around 4:30 am and by 5ish i was awake enough for the doctor to tell me what he did. He had to do 6 layers of stitches and used 2 different gauges of thread and he counted around 350 in total. He then told me that my femur should be okay and it isn't at risk of breakage in the future.
The next day I learned how to walk on crutches after breakfast and after I passed out getting out of bed too fast. (Luckily my dad was tehre to catch me.) And they sent me home only 9 hours after my surgery and about 24 hours after the accident. I was to use my crutches for the next 8-10 weeks and go to physical therapy for 6-8 months depending on how everything heals up. And with that they send me off the door.
I spent about 5 days straight in bed with the occasional piss break and then 5 more days at home. Then on Monday, I was back to school.
The rest is history!
TLDR: Read it, its a story about how I almost died.
