No Pain, No Gain...

Here's how it went down (or, how I went down- literally)... it was last Friday night, 7-11, and our crew was stoked for our plans to go out on the yacht - thanks to Jimmy K. The boat was at maximum capacity with about 40 people or so, all looking forward to the night's festivities. We downloaded all of the latest from iTunes, and stocked up on tons of good food so that we could enjoy a long evening of dancing and fun out on the water. Dru and I were especially excited since we planned to do a little wake surfing as the sun was setting (and shark feeding time was beginning). We've done the wake surfing thing a bunch of times before, so this wasn't anything unusual. Below is an example of us wake-surfing on a Saturday back in May, just in case you don't understand the concept:

So you can see that it's pretty basic, not overly dangerous, and quite fun. Anyway, Dru went out first and had a few successful (meaning fun) runs, and then it was my turn. As I started to get going and we approached the optimum speed, I hit a wave that covered up the front of my board and sent me plunging head first into the water. This is where it gets ugly- and if you can't handle gruesome details, you may not want to continue reading...

There was some slack in the rope when I went diving forward into the water and for some reason I didn't let go of the rope right away... so when the boat took up the slack at full speed, the rope snapped up hard, along with my arm - (I must have had a wicked tight grip on that rope for me to have held on that long, or you'd think the rope would've slipped out of my hands..?) At the moment of impact I felt some crazy sensations in my arm- which I've never felt before... one was the complete lack of response from the arm to move, despite my brain sending the signal and the very top portion of my arm moving. But, from about my mid-bicep down, I had no movement and was experiencing extreme pain and lack of feeling at the same time. As I reached over to grab my my left arm with my right hand, I felt bones side by side knocking together, and immediately realized that my arm was totally broken and that I needed to re-align it right then while the pain was all there at once. So, I gritted my teeth and thought of my orthopedic surgeon buddy Christian Heywood from DC whose favorite part of his job is snapping broken bones back into place, and I jerked my arm down into place. That hurt a lot.

Meanwhile, as the boat made its way back to me, my friends started to notice that I wasn't moving. I just sat in the water waiting for the boat to get within earshot of me yelling- "I'm done- my arm is broken - I need help..." As soon as they heard that, Dru and Chris were swan-diving baywatch style off the back of the boat to come to my rescue. They swam me over to the boat where I was hoisted out of the water by Renfro, Chris, Dru and maybe a couple others.

The pain was now setting in even worse, and as I stood there for a brief moment looking down at my arm that was just hanging limp from my left shoulder like a piece of spaghetti, the mental agony began to set in. I sat down quickly and there seemed to be a bit of chaos in how to best handle the situation. Quickly though, the decision was made to race back into the harbor and get me to a hospital. The whole way in was a blur because I was going through different phases of shock... I couldn't hear very well and my vision was pretty off- everything was really fuzzy. I was having a hard time getting warm, and was shaking quite violently at times, though Mekenna and Melissa did a good job of wrapping blankets and towels around me to help fight the shivers off.

Apparently Jimmy, being the good man that he is, was trying to get me to the dock as soon as possible, and in doing so, we picked up a bogey on our way- the harbor patrol. They were not being very cool to us at all, despite having a man on board with a severely broken arm, experiencing the most excruciating pain of his life. So- they followed us all the way back and were hassling us the whole time.

We arrived back at the dock and the plan was for me to jump into Diana's car and have her race me to the hospital, but when I tried to stand up,the pain was too much to bear. So we called the ambulance, and they were there within minutes. The EMT asked me on a 10 scale about the severity of pain... now, I'm not usually one to just throw out the 10 out of 10, because I think you should always leave room for improvement, however, on this occasion I didn't even hesitate to call it a 10 on 10. With that, he stuck the IV in my arm and gave me a quick dose of morphine, "like they do in the old war movies when somebody gets shot and they give the wounded a quick shot to help curb the pain" - that's how he explained what he was doing for me. It worked to the extent that I was able to get on the stretcher with less pain, and then I was quickly transported in an ambulance over to Hoag Hospital, where I took these (despite not feeling too photogenic ha.ha. -periods indicating that I know it wasn't that funny):

The humerus bone should be one clean line from shoulder to elbow, but as you can see, it snapped into three messy pieces. And, today I go into surgery to get a couple plates and screws in there to put it all back together. Hallelujah too, cause this arm has been a real pain in so many ways just hanging as a useless appendage over the last few days.

Because I've been bedridden since Friday, it's been a good time for me to sit back and reflect on life a little, and I have to say I am so lucky and feel so blessed for everything in my life right now. From amazing family and friends to a great employer who are all sincerely concerned for my well-being. I can't thank everyone enough for helping me through a rough week.

Anyway, if you made it through this novel, then I feel your pain, cause it took me a whole lot longer to write it- pecking at the keyboard with only one hand!

In my next post I'm hoping to have the x-rays of my bionic arm with all the hardware... should be interesting...