The fall itself was underwhelming. I caught my tips on a steep side hit, and slammed sideways onto a cat track. No Chad’s gap carnage and glory unfortunately.
Unbeknownst to me, I had ruptured my spleen and was bleeding internally. The pain was especially deceiving. Localized in my left shoulder (which later I would learn was referred pain from a nerve that runs through the abdomen), I assumed I had simply torn something, and decided the best game plan was to sleep it off and re-assess the next day.
In hindsight, this was the worst of all possible plans, and would have been a free ticket to ski heaven according to the great trauma surgeons at the U’s hospital.
Returning to my apartment, I did a few things: took a bath, tried to take a nap, and massaged gunned my shoulder. Eventually I decided to rummage for some food before settling down to sleep. This whole time the internal bleeding was secretly chugging along and fIlling my belly with blood. Standing near my kitchen sink, I for the first time felt something was really wrong.
My legs grew weak and I noticed I was starting to sweat profusely. My body was evidently yelling at me that it couldn’t pump blood to my upper extremities anymore. I knew I was seconds away from fainting and wanted to fall on the soft cushion of my bed which was about 10 feet away.
I made a Hail Mary attempt to get to the bed, but passed out right before I was able to sit down. I fell forward and smacked my head on the adjacent wall. When I regained consciousness, I was laying in the bed, albeit in a crumpled position. Being parallel to the ground helped stabilize my blood pressure, enough for me to search around for my phone.
I had turned the lights off in my apartment earlier due to their bothersome effect, making the search for my phone extra stressful. I remember beginning to panic, but was lucky enough to feel the corner of my phone before the emotion could become incapacitating.
I still didn’t know I was fighting the ticking clock of bleeding out. However, I was finally scared enough to call for help. There are more stressful details, but I’ll spare writing a novel. I was lucky enough to be brought to the trauma center, and was operated on immediately. My spleen was removed and I had lost about 2.5 litres of blood prior to surgery.
Im not one to post long and sentimental stories online, but here we are. I have been lucky to ski with reckless abandon with no serious injuries up until this moment. For those of you that might share this mindset of invincibility, be safe out there. I am still surprised how little of a fall led to a near death situation. And also, if your shoulder or stomach feels funny- go to ski patrol!
ps. Ski hell does exist, but entrance depends on the number of kfeds you have performed, and time spent switch pizza’ing.
**This thread was edited on Feb 7th 2022 at 6:38:51pm
**This thread was edited on Feb 7th 2022 at 6:39:29pm
