Chapter 6 - One trivial decision
I remember sitting on the couch watching League Of Legends [a computer game] on my laptop and debating if I should just stay home or if I should go down to my spot, just up Boulder Creek past Eben G. Fine Park; It’s almost comical how vividly I can remember that moment, given how bad my memory can be. After a short, somewhat awkward, period of deliberation I said, “fuck it, I’m going down there,” and I loaded my backpack with some extra clothes, my camera bag filled with cans of beer, and my ultralight packable hammock, hopped on my bike and took off towards the creek.
Within minutes, I was on Boulder Creek path cruising up the two-lane bike path. To this day I can still remember the smell of the trees, the grass, and the creek and still distinctly remember that particular weight of the pedals on my fixed gear bicycle; perhaps because it was one of the last times I would remember having actual control over my body.
Given that it was late August and the students of CU Boulder had yet to return (Boulder is a town of about 100,000 people, 30,000 of which are students who leave during the summer) there were only a few people up at the park, and even fewer people as you continued up the creek and into the woods. My favorite spot was just past a small sandy area where larger groups of people/ families typically hung out. The spot was just past all of the commotion, but before the area where younger groups hung out, smoked, and drank.
To hang my hammock up I would climb up a small tree that laid against a large (oak) tree which was probably 2.5 – 3 ft in diameter, and I would sling the webbing for the hammock around the tree, hoping to catch it with my other hand as it came around the other side. Once I had attached that side to the tree as high as possible (about 15 feet up) I would clip one side of the hammock to that webbing and clip the other side to my belt loops so I didn’t lose it while climbing the other tree. I would then climb down and traverse my way up a set of three smaller trees to be able to loop the other side of the webbing around the medium-sized tree about 10 feet from the first.
This is where things would get sketchy. I would then have to climb above the level of the hammock, hang on to a smaller branch, and lower myself into the hammock below, which when no one was in it, wasn’t more than 6 inches wide. I had done this move dozens and dozens of times and had become quite comfortable, possibly overly comfortable, with the maneuver.
Once inside the hammock, everything felt quite stable and the thought of somehow accidentally ending up not being in the hammock quickly faded from my conscious thoughts. I always wanted to be social and hang around people, only to quickly realize that I don’t like people and these interactions make me uncomfortable. My hammock spot perfectly reflected this mentality. I was essentially positioned just in place to people watch large groups and have other people pass underneath my hammock, unaware I was even there. Every now and then, someone would look up and realize I was there and might make a comment in passing, just brief enough of an interaction to satisfy my ego, while not long enough for me to get significantly uncomfortable. Besides, I had noticed that the type people who looked up and noticed me were already more likely to be people I despised a little less (for example, one guy, impressed with my spot, climbed up to check it out, and as an offering for the intrusion handed me two tabs of acid, wished me a good day, and disappeared off into the woods - a very “Boulder” interaction/experience). The hammock was set up high enough to where, on multiple occasions, people would hang their hammock underneath me without ever realizing I was there; once, people double stacked their hammocks under me and didn’t notice I was there until they managed to climb into their hammocks and look up.
The temperature on that day was just on the borderline of T-shirt weather and sweater weather, where, as long as you are moving it felt like the world was specifically designed for you to wear T-shirts but as soon as you stood still for more than two minutes your body constantly received tiny little signals that something was off “are you cold? No, it’s fine, right? No, I think you might be cold...” Laying in my hammock, facing downstream, my gaze would go back and forth between the book I was reading (deep down things - Schumm) and the handful of people who had set up shop in that small sandy area. Honestly, I was mostly just watching the dogs run up and down the banks of the creek. After building a light sweat setting up and getting in the hammock, I had been reading for 10 or 15 minutes when I started to notice the breeze was perhaps a little too refreshing? I was starting to get cold, something I had prepared for (thinking back to my days of NOT being in the Boy Scouts, the motto “always be prepared” was burned into my memory). I reached into my backpack and grabbed my gray wool sweater, which in retrospect looks good and fits well, but was objectively a bit uncomfortable. I turned sideways in the hammock to let my feet hang down, making it easier to put on my sweater. I laced my arms through the sleeves, pulled the sweater up to my shoulders, and went to pull the sweater over my head and pop my head through the neck hole.
That’s about point when shit hit the fan, I heard a large tear, as my stomach hurriedly made its way into my throat. Fuck, I was in freefall. They say time slows down when things like this happen, but I think it’s just our brain expanding the memory, because as soon as I realized I was falling my body had been folded in half from sliding through the hole in my hammock and my feet had exited and rotated my body 180° and the earth punched me in the back of my head. I went back and calculated that, as it turns out, I was in freefall for almost exactly 1 second and reached a speed of just over 21 mph. Even with my background in physics, the idea of me hitting the ground at 21 mph seems much less significant than getting hit in the back of the head by a planet moving 21 mph [they are functionally equivalent]. Perspective is a hell of a thing.
I had landed in a spot just next to a medium-size boulder, in a little ditch where a tree had been uprooted. I could feel small twigs and rocks sticking in the back of my head but couldn’t really assess the full extent of what had just happened. I saw a younger hippie guy walking by and tried to call out, but there was that familiar inability to breathe or make sounds. Honestly, thank God he didn’t hear me or see me (I don’t actually believe in God) because moments later a woman and her daughter popped into my field of view and she introduced herself to me as a nurse who is on vacation here with family. To this day I don’t remember her name but wish more than anything I could tell her thank you. She kept everyone away and wouldn’t let anyone move me, despite me stating numerous times how uncomfortable of a position I was in. The only reason I have any function below my neck, given my 0 years of medical experience, is because she prevented anyone from moving me and further damaging my neck.
She asked what she could do and what I wanted to do next. At this point she had been sitting with me for a few minutes, her daughter was holding my left hand, which I couldn’t feel at all. It became fairly clear that not only could I not move anything except for my right arm, I also couldn’t feel anything. The obvious answer was to call 911, the realization had already set in that I really fucked up this time. Oddly, there was very little panic, mostly because I had been diagnosed with severe panic disorder and the number of other anxiety related issues. My anxiety seems to work a bit like flying a small plane in a storm, in that the higher you go the more severe things get, but at a certain point you burst through the top of the clouds and things suddenly calm down, providing an odd moment of clarity. I remember the nurse asking me what I wanted to do more than once and just being shocked no one had called 911 already; I still had the awareness to turn on customer service mode and politely ask for someone to call the paramedics.
I’m not sure how much time passed before they arrived, that portion of my memory is definitely a little bit suspect. I remember detailed flashbacks in chronological order, but how much time passes between those moments is entirely unclear. Two minutes, five minutes, half an hour, have we been waiting for four hours? In reality, it was probably only about 15 minutes. I think the paramedics showed up expecting some sort of mountain rescue for a fallen climber. I remember the sticks, rocks, and roots sticking into my neck and the back of my head and wanting desperately to move. The nurse, to her credit, reassured me that it wasn’t causing any significant damage but moving me could be really dangerous. Her daughter sat, holding my now useless hand, trying to reassure me things would be ok.
Throughout all of this, the nurse and her daughter, as well as the paramedics, asked me a number of times who they should contact. At this point I guess I should explain that at that time my dad was living in France, my sister was living in Tokyo, and my mother had passed away a number of years before due to ovarian cancer. It almost made me giggle thinking about how to explain to them how to get a hold of my family. Honestly, I don’t remember who I told but they managed to send emails to my sister and dad telling them that I’ve had an accident and was in the hospital/going in for surgery. Probably not the email you want to receive at some ridiculous hour in the morning or having it be the thing you wake up to.
With all the contact information out of the way it was time to get down to business. At some point I remember being wheeled through the hospital after having x-rays taken, with the surgeon standing over me giving me the rundown on the extent of the damage. I had sustained burst fractures to the C5 and C6 vertebrae and a Jefferson fracture of the C1 vertebra, though, I think the Jefferson fracture is just a burst fracture of the C1 vertebra. If you imagine the C1 vertebra as a ring of bone at the very top of the spine surrounding the spinal cord, I basically snapped that ring in the front and back. It may seem strange to say but I got lucky, I should probably be dead this point. Which, makes me all the more grateful for the anonymous nurse and her daughter who quite literally saved my life by doing nothing and making sure nobody else did anything. To whoever you are, wherever you are, thank you, from the bottom of my heart, thank you.
Snap back to reality, it’s decision time.
“You have two options: you can go in for surgery now or you can wait and allow the inflammation to possibly go down.”
All I could think was, how the fuck am I supposed to know the implications of either option? What a bad time to realize you are unprepared for a pop quiz. Though, my life of procrastination and inability to properly prepare for anything scholastic had trained me well… cheat off of the smartest kid in proximity (or perhaps a more politically correct twist might be, have the smartest kid in the room tutor you).
So, I turned to the surgeon and asked, “What would you do?”
“I’d go for the surgery.”
I guess the surgeon going for the surgery seems fairly obvious. But then again, to assume anything is actually obvious is a great way to fail the quiz. Also, thinking back, it’s a bit funny to have someone who just dropped 15 ft. onto their head, make such a critical decision, but I’m sure they had evaluated my competence at some point...
“OK, let’s do it then.”
Fade to black, falling into the rabbit hole (abyss)…
It wasn’t until 5 years later that the idea that I could have died during the surgery to repair my spine would even register. I think my natural sense of invincibility from my childhood (I was convinced I could step into the street because I could stop the oncoming truck or climb into the lion pen because they would play with me; I’m sure most parents of boys are familiar) was reinforced by my extensive medical/ accident history; leaving me to essentially never question my own mortality. Not even when my mom died in front of me, did I ever think about my own death. I definitely joked about not making it passed 30 years old on a regular basis, and despite only making it 18 days past my 30th birthday before breaking my neck, dying just didn’t occur to me when it came down to it.
