Express yourself from 13,500ft., 200ft., or in a glass bowl :)
No Regrets-Part Three
"I don't know how else to put this.
It's taking me so long to do this.
I'm falling asleep and I can't see straight.
My muscles feel like a melee,
My body's curled in a U-shape.
I put on my best, but I'm still afraid.
I get to go home in one week.
But I'm leaving home in three weeks.
They throw me a bone just to pick me dry.
I'm following suit and directions.
I crawl up inside for protection.
I'm told what to do and I don't know why."
(Zzyxx Road-Stone Sour)
I'm home.
My own bed (although I've had to have a pad added to my bed, and I now have more pillows than a bordello).
My own kitchen with my own food and beverages (you think the hospital will allow you to pre-mix Kool-aid? Hell no!
My own toilet (which now has a raised seat)
iPod player in my bathroom.
No nurses every ten minutes asking (in a child-like, condescending voice)"on a scale of one to ten, how would you rate your pain?" (it's a 9 right now, but as soon as you leave, it'll be a 3) Don't get me wrong, it's not that I disrespect nurses, I've merely had my fill of them over the past three weeks.
Joey Allred had installed a seat in my shower shortly before my accident, so I've got a place to sit. I've got a child's life jacket that pads my butt when I get in the shower. Life is good.
Or so I thought. Maybe it's merely goodness, interrupted?
On my second day home, it was time to celebrate. I had a few friends over; we ate pizza and watched a movie. It was fun having everyone piled into my bedroom (where the Blu-ray player is) and pigging out a bit. That one night of fun re-presented itself in agony on the third evening.
When one takes pain medications and spends most of one's time lying down, the body tends to manage waste differently. Becoming constipated is a serious danger, especially for a guy that has a perforated colon. At some point, "constipated" becomes "impacted." The first remedy is to use an inserted wax bullet, called a "suppository." When a few of those don't work, move on to enemas. When a few of those don't work, desperation begins to set in and a spoon covered with KY jelly becomes the next option. Anything to avoid going back to the ER where they'll do all the same stuff, wait 4 hours to do it, and charge me 1000% more than I'd spend doing it at home. I'll work things "out" at home. At least now the term "Sh** a brick" has a new meaning for me.
The redness in my foot continues to increase, as does the pain. No matter how many drugs I tried, we couldn't arrest the ugliness that plagued my foot. The left foot and ankle are growing hair like a scene from a bad werewolf movie. A hint of air moving across my foot made me scream. No fabric can touch it.
And then I discovered "The world's most comfortable stocking" from Bath and Body Works. Walmart has a similar sock for about half the price, BTW. This stocking is infused with aloe vera and my foot loves it.
Even in Pink.
Although I prefer blue.
I've visited doctor after doctor trying to figure out what is generating this redness coupled with horrific pain and swelling. I'm convinced that my talus is broken on my left ankle, having experienced a broken talus before, but my ortho says the MRI doesn't indicate as much.
My PA (Physician's Assistant) Daren, does an Xray with his 1949 XRay machine and discovers that lo and behold!; my talus is indeed fractured. Five weeks after surgery, we discover it's fractured.
Turns out it's less than 1mm out of place, and it's behind the edge of the calcanus, so there is no point in attempting to repair it, but is it that the talus is causing this redness, extreme swelling and pain? Were my foot green and had four toes, it could be called "Shrek-foot." It's ugly, hairy, and hot.
We try a new regimen of drugs. All to no avail.
Now it's Wednesday, July 9. I got a phone call saying that the USPA Board of Directors Safety and Training Committee is going to kill my Wingsuit Syllabus proposal before it hits the floor. Then I got an email saying the same thing, naming names and pointing fingers. Shit. I had been working on this proposal for over a year, and had assembled a team that worked on it for nearly 5 months. Over my dead body were these guys gonna kill it before it was even looked at. Although drugged out of my mind and in tremendous hurt, Dallas became a destination.
Against doctors orders and recommendations of all close to me, I booked tickets to Dallas, Texas and flew down on Friday to beg the committee to at least hear me out. Taya Weiss had presented the technical side of the project to the committee; I needed to help them understand the "why" because she had so eloquently provided the "what."
I wheeled into the board room, and used my walker to stand. Tom Noonan suggested I sit down, but I felt that I literally needed to stand behind my proposal. Between the Shrek-foot, the drugs, and the fact that I'd had major metal insertions only two weeks previously...hell, I don't know how I stood up. I barely knew what I was saying. But I knew it needed to be presented and said. I tip my hat to Todd Spillers for not killing our proposal. Major props to JP Furnari for helping to further the point about why I believe the USPA needs a consistent, cohesive method for training wingsuit students. I think I fielded most of the questions from the S&TA committee fairly well, and the proposal was unanimously passed to go before the full board.
Sunday, Jay Stokes asked that I be able to present the proposal to the full board early on as I had a plane to catch and frankly, I didn't know if I would be able to stand up later in the day anyway.
Once again I stood and this time made my extemporaneous presentation to the entire Board. Taya had used a PowerPoint presentation for her part in this proposal; I spoke passionately and spoke from the heart (drugged nonetheless, but from the heart).
In the middle of my presentation, Shrek-foot went into spasms and I was embarrassed crying in front of the board. Taya stood with me and helped hold me up because I couldn't hold my walker and my leg at the same time. Speaking in front of executive committees and boards is commonplace for me; it's part of my day-to-day business, but this one had me reeling. Practically begging the board to see that wingsuiting is growing faster than any previous discipline's growth, and begging them to at least take a First Flight Course, I was shaking violently as the spasms kicked in. Mary Lou later told me she thought they were going to have to call an ambulance, I guess it was worse than I recall. Either way, the board voted unanimously to put our syllabus online for public commentary, and with some luck and common sense, we'll see it in the next SIM as standardized wingsuit instruction.
And then it was time to leave. Flying with Shrek-foot and the new metal in my body wasn't fun. Oh, did I mention I now have my own card to inform the TSA that I have metal in my body, and yes...it truly does set off their detectors. It's not a joke.
The weekend of the BOD meeting was also the weekend of the FreeFlock Utah boogie. All my friends were in Utah and I'd found myself in Dallas. I did get on a load as an observer with Will as the pilot and grabbed some great some shots of my friends leaving the Skydive Arizona Super Twin. It was fun shooting a Scotty Burns exit for a change (usually I'm one of his subjects on exit). Speaking of Scotty, dude, thank you SO much for the daily calls to check up on me.
After another week of no change with my foot I started talking on Facebook about the problem, and friend/fan from the Midwest sent me a text on my phone that I should look into RSD.
That was it! That was the answer. Seven doctors seeing me in person couldn't figure out what was going on , but a nurse in the midwest knew it immediately based on a photo and description. The next day I went to the Pain Clinic. When I walked in and removed my stocking, Dr. Raj looks at the foot and says "oh my! Do you mind if I bring in a photographer? I've never seen RSD at stage II before!"
I'm relieved to find someone who knows about RSD. RSD is "Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy." It was first discovered during the Civil War, and very little else is known about it. The military dealt with it by amputating up until recent years. In modern times, it's known as CRPS or Complex Regional Pain Syndrome. The Pain Clinic refers to it as "CRiPS" but I prefer calling it "CRaPS." Either way, it's the most painful thing I've experienced in three car accidents, two horseback/rodeo, one motorcycle, one rollerblading, one skiing, one paragliding, two climbing, and one skydiving accident. I've broken 58 of my 206 bones, or roughly 25% of my body. Nothing, NOTHING is as painful as CRaPS has been. I'd gladly undergo another pelvis fracture before experiencing CRaPS. I can fully understand why amputation is a preferred solution, but I wasn't about to lose my foot, and at Stage II of three stages....And the third stage rarely is recovered. It becomes a lifetime affliction, a island of agony from which there is no escape.
No one knows the cause. The majority of information seems to come from military doctors or former military physicians because they see the highest number of trauma patients. One physician told me it occurs in Type A personalities more than other types, but according to the CRPS Information Clinic this is a myth. Yet it is psychological and physically incapacitating, carries a high suicide rate, and unless you've experienced it, you'll never have a clue of how bad it is. Physical therapy is about the only way to reduce the pain and swelling, but since it can't be touched, therapy can't really ever get started. Sympathetic nerve blocks reduce the pain, but the swelling remains. The limited range of motion remains.
Additionally, the CRPS Information Clinic says that on average, at least five doctors are consulted before a diagnosis is made. This is ABSURD! Three of my doctors had never seen it. It hits about one in 250,000 people, and is exceptionally rare, but you'd think that orthopoedic surgeons see enough trauma that they'd recognize it or at the least know about it.
FWIW, I'm saying a lot about CRaPS because so few people know about it, and most skydiving accidents are traumatic. It could happen to you. And if it's not diagnosed early enough, it can easily become permanently debilitating, potentially necessitating amputation.
Regardless, doctors often ask what your pain level on a scale of 1-10 is. Rolling me over before my pelvis was bolted was my first "10" in my life. I'm told they could hear me scream through the entire floor in the ICU. The CRPS is easily an "11" in stage one, and a "22" in stage two (for all you Spinal Tap fans out there).
(Thank you Mel, for identifying what it was so fast. I still have it, but it's under control and with luck is on its way out the door.) One in 250,000 people show any occurance of CRPS, and fewer than 1 in 100,000 beat it. It's always there, it can travel up a limb and show up anywhere, any time.
Godd***mit! I've dealt with enough, haven't I? Why do I have to be hit with this rare dystrophy? If I could just get those odds in Las Vegas, I'd be a rich man! Seriously! This is absurd. Painfully so.
At the Pain Clinic, they performed a nerveblock that in theory, would shut down the signals from my foot's nerves to the sciatic nerve. The sciatic sustained a lot of damage in the landing.
The nerve block worked, in terms of making most of the pain from the RSD reduce itself to a tolerable level. The redness, the rawness, the heat is still there. I still can't bend the joints.
A skydiver who is also a therapist recommended water treatment. The local pool has a current pool that 'pushes' the body as one walks around it. It's a big circle that is 75% pushing, 25% stagnant water. It was curious the first time I got in, because I wasn't prepared to have the water shove me around quite so much. But it helped. A lot. Thank you Lori, for telling me to do this.
So begins the daily regimen. Therapist comes in the afternoon three days a week, go to pool most nights to walk the current pool. Crawl in bed and watch a little of "The First 48," go to sleep, and get up around 6 a.m.
Repeat.
Sprinkle in a generous helping of doctor visits, a few books, a bag of Kettlecorn popcorn, Kool-aid, and a few random phone calls....this is the routine into which I have settled. The occasional visit from a friend, or little surprises add some sunshine as well, but with any serious injury and time in bed brings some form of depression forward. It's normal, even expected. Yet sometimes its phenomenally overwhelming. If you've ever had an injury that involves extreme pain and long-term immobility, you know what I'm talking about. If you haven't, you won't understand. Regardless from where it comes, support is always appreciated, wanted, and there can never be enough. Posts from Dropzone.com, and Sony's corporate forums are a big help. The cards, letters, emails, visits, all helped overcome the funk and doldrums. For those of you that sent them, thank you very much.
The greatest depression of all comes from the CRPS. I went in for my second nerve block and this one seemed to help where the first one merely removed the pain. The second one allowed me to get massages, walk in the pool, bend the foot, and do ankle pumps (try 'writing' the alphabet with your toes). And the swelling has retreated by a lot. In fact, it's retreated so much that for the first time since my accident, on August 11, I wore a shoe on my left foot. It was swollen, it hurt, and it was tight, but I was able to wear a shoe. And the shoe seemed to help even more, as it put pressure on the swelling.
On Wednesday, August 12, a wingsuiter named Jason Carter called me on the phone. "What are you doing this weekend?" I told him I'd be doing the usual thing; lying in bed, leg propped up, watching movies and surfing the web.
"How about if you and I go to Pepperell for the boogie?"
Sweet! Jason had Buddy Passes for Southwest Airlines, and so off to Manchester we flew. My first "big boy" outing, and damn, it was going to be fun. None of my wingsuit friends at Pepperell knew I was coming. The flight out was a little tricky, flying standby all the way, and when we arrived in PHX, a family stole my wheelchair; many thanks to the Southwest Airlines gate agent for being able to run through the airport looking for who'd stolen it. Hell, there were five other wheelchairs in the jetway, none of them anything like my semi-custom sport job. They recovered my wheelchair in about 10 minutes.
Saturday morning we pulled into Pepperell and waited while the wingsuit crew boarded their aircraft. Jason and Stacy helped get me out of the car, Veggie Reggie helped me into my wheelchair and helped me work my way over to the landing area. I parked my chair near the peas, and waited for the wingsuit load to come down. Seeing the look on Justin Shorb's face as he landed made it all worth while. Justin, Scott Callantine, Taya, Jeff, Monkeyboy, Rob, Ricardo, Purple Mike, Andreea....seeing them and the surprised look on their faces was like taking a happy pill. I felt good. I think we all did. The wingsuit community is fairly close-knit and I've really missed my friends.
Cookie from Aerodyne brought me a luscious Red Velvet cake for my birthday; it was fun sharing with everyone else. Taya brought cupcakes.
Monkeyboy/Sean Horton did his 1000 skydive and was really edgy about being pied. The easiest way to pie him was for me to dupe him into eating some of my birthday cake, so I called him over to the concrete (my wheelchair didn't do so well on grass) and he was BOMBARDED with pies from every direction. I'd like to say I felt badly for my part in the ruse, but of course I don't. It was great being there.
Pepperell Manifest got me into both the Otter and the CASA as an observer on a couple of loads; it was a lot of fun to be on the aircraft with my friends. And coming down on the now-emptied aircraft was one of the most lonely feelings in the world.
On my return from Pepperell, the next week was spent working on my trailer, figuring out the production gear, and making decisions about how I wanted to finish out the trailer that I intend to drag from DZ to DZ over the next year. The most exciting part of this week was that I was able to abandon my cane and walk on my own. Perhaps I was walking like a Neanderthal, but walking, nonetheless. The more I walked, the more my foot started to dismiss the CRPS. It's still with me, but only just.
The next thing I knew, we'd arrived at my surgery date for my ACL/MCL repair. Which brings us to the present.
I've always been against organ donation for reasons of religion; my viewpoint has changed. My doctor gave me the choice of using my own hamstring or taking an Achilles tendon from a cadaver/donor. After weighing all the pros and cons of each, I opted for the cadaver/allograft. I hope I'll be glad I did. I'm grateful to the young person who made this tendon available to me, and as a result of my decision, I've opted to 'pay it forward' and will be an organ donor myself (assuming anyone would want body parts from this broken old man).
Wednesday, August 26, my ACL/MCL were operated on, the MCL sewn together, the ACL replaced with cadaver tissue, and I'm placed in an immobilizer and a cooling system that resembles a beer cooler with hoses. Keeping it filled with ice is the most challenging part of the system, aside from disconnecting it each time I go to the boys room.
This was the final hurdle, the last obstacle of meaning that stood in my way of flying again. The CRPS seems to be receding, and although I'll have to wear a brace for a while, I'll be able to skydive again, very soon considering the distance I've run thus far in this race. I can see the finish line.
June 8 seems like a decade past, and my urge to fly is greater than ever. This injury is a high price to pay for a sport I love, and love is a powerful thing. Napolean Bonaparte said "the only victory over love is flight." For me, love is flight, flight is love. I can hardly wait to take flight again.
To sum up; I'm a skydiver. I'm responsible for myself at all times. Was I injured because my hands were cold after flying through ice? Was I injured because I was looking across the field at a couple spectators and lost focus? Perhaps I became complacent. After all, I'd done 1400 consecutive landings without issue, so it's possible I had grown complacent? When I removed my hand from the front riser, perhaps I allowed my toggle to get caught on the riser a bit (On this particular canopy, I hadn't fully determined brake length yet, so had left excess steering line so I could lengthen the brakes should I choose too)?
The myriad possibilities don't matter. What does matter is that I walk away from these few months of extreme pain and sacrifice knowing that I'll not repeat this mistake. I'll do so in part by addressing each of the potential causes, being more conservative, and being more aware.
If you've read this far, thank you for walking this path with me as I've re-visited this life-changing experience. There isn't a night that goes by that I don't relive the accident so I've written this blog as a means of hopefully putting it behind me. More importantly, I hope that someone might learn from this incident and it might save even one person from suffering the same sort of rollercoaster hell I've endured over the past three-plus months.
And no matter how one looks at it, as mentioned in Part One of this blog, "The Best Is Yet To Come...."
"Go for it, run for it, dive in head first, live life with no regrets,
Put your heart out there, you might be scared, but it all works out in the end,
Because the best is yet to come..." (Hinder)
Even as I write this, I learn of another skydiver in an almost identical situation (filming AFF eval dives, lost a toggle at the bottom of his swoop, open-book pelvis, broken coccyx, sacrum, and some lower lumbar. Sound familiar? The bitterness in me towards the non-observer at my dropzone that told the television stations that I'd done a low hook turn using a toggle should learn more about accident results, or at least understand more about the forensics of various accident types (and thank you Sparky, for analyzing my accident based on the injuries, canopy, conditions, and effectively confirming what I believed to be the cause of my accident), but I'm trying to learn to let that go. The broken bones speak for themselves, as do the forensics of hundreds of incidents before mine.
Today is also the day we learned of Eli Thompson's fatal flight in Switzerland. While I didn't know Eli well, I had a huge respect and admiration for his work, his passion, and his creativity. My heart goes out to his family.
Bad things sometimes happen to great people.
Read Part One Here.
Read Part Two Here
It just dawned on me that I did not thank each of my "Spot-watchers" (People who spend entire nights sleeping in my room or entire days babysitting me). In no particular order: Debbie, Jason, Ken, Mike, Tiffany, Joey, Linda, Kim, Chris, Rae, Mannie, Raeda, Dru, Amanda, and the awesome RN's at IMC like "Guy in brown scrubs," Derek, Will, Todd, Kevin, Heather, Mysty.Craig, Spencer, Deena
And while I'm thanking, even though I mentioned cards, etc above....thanks to you that sent care packages, cards, foods, books, texts, PM's, emails, and the very rare visitor....Jack Guthrie, Jay Stokes, Nick Grillet, Dikla, Les, Cookie, Booth, Thank you again. Heapings of gratitude to Mannie, Linda, Chris, Dru, and Scotty. Y'all were the fuel and inspiration that kept me floating during those really bad times.
It's taking me so long to do this.
I'm falling asleep and I can't see straight.
My muscles feel like a melee,
My body's curled in a U-shape.
I put on my best, but I'm still afraid.
I get to go home in one week.
But I'm leaving home in three weeks.
They throw me a bone just to pick me dry.
I'm following suit and directions.
I crawl up inside for protection.
I'm told what to do and I don't know why."
(Zzyxx Road-Stone Sour)
I'm home.
My own bed (although I've had to have a pad added to my bed, and I now have more pillows than a bordello).
My own kitchen with my own food and beverages (you think the hospital will allow you to pre-mix Kool-aid? Hell no!
My own toilet (which now has a raised seat)
iPod player in my bathroom.
No nurses every ten minutes asking (in a child-like, condescending voice)"on a scale of one to ten, how would you rate your pain?" (it's a 9 right now, but as soon as you leave, it'll be a 3) Don't get me wrong, it's not that I disrespect nurses, I've merely had my fill of them over the past three weeks.
Joey Allred had installed a seat in my shower shortly before my accident, so I've got a place to sit. I've got a child's life jacket that pads my butt when I get in the shower. Life is good.
Or so I thought. Maybe it's merely goodness, interrupted?
On my second day home, it was time to celebrate. I had a few friends over; we ate pizza and watched a movie. It was fun having everyone piled into my bedroom (where the Blu-ray player is) and pigging out a bit. That one night of fun re-presented itself in agony on the third evening.
When one takes pain medications and spends most of one's time lying down, the body tends to manage waste differently. Becoming constipated is a serious danger, especially for a guy that has a perforated colon. At some point, "constipated" becomes "impacted." The first remedy is to use an inserted wax bullet, called a "suppository." When a few of those don't work, move on to enemas. When a few of those don't work, desperation begins to set in and a spoon covered with KY jelly becomes the next option. Anything to avoid going back to the ER where they'll do all the same stuff, wait 4 hours to do it, and charge me 1000% more than I'd spend doing it at home. I'll work things "out" at home. At least now the term "Sh** a brick" has a new meaning for me.
The redness in my foot continues to increase, as does the pain. No matter how many drugs I tried, we couldn't arrest the ugliness that plagued my foot. The left foot and ankle are growing hair like a scene from a bad werewolf movie. A hint of air moving across my foot made me scream. No fabric can touch it.
And then I discovered "The world's most comfortable stocking" from Bath and Body Works. Walmart has a similar sock for about half the price, BTW. This stocking is infused with aloe vera and my foot loves it.
Even in Pink.
Although I prefer blue.
I've visited doctor after doctor trying to figure out what is generating this redness coupled with horrific pain and swelling. I'm convinced that my talus is broken on my left ankle, having experienced a broken talus before, but my ortho says the MRI doesn't indicate as much.
My PA (Physician's Assistant) Daren, does an Xray with his 1949 XRay machine and discovers that lo and behold!; my talus is indeed fractured. Five weeks after surgery, we discover it's fractured.
Turns out it's less than 1mm out of place, and it's behind the edge of the calcanus, so there is no point in attempting to repair it, but is it that the talus is causing this redness, extreme swelling and pain? Were my foot green and had four toes, it could be called "Shrek-foot." It's ugly, hairy, and hot.
We try a new regimen of drugs. All to no avail.
Now it's Wednesday, July 9. I got a phone call saying that the USPA Board of Directors Safety and Training Committee is going to kill my Wingsuit Syllabus proposal before it hits the floor. Then I got an email saying the same thing, naming names and pointing fingers. Shit. I had been working on this proposal for over a year, and had assembled a team that worked on it for nearly 5 months. Over my dead body were these guys gonna kill it before it was even looked at. Although drugged out of my mind and in tremendous hurt, Dallas became a destination.
Against doctors orders and recommendations of all close to me, I booked tickets to Dallas, Texas and flew down on Friday to beg the committee to at least hear me out. Taya Weiss had presented the technical side of the project to the committee; I needed to help them understand the "why" because she had so eloquently provided the "what."
I wheeled into the board room, and used my walker to stand. Tom Noonan suggested I sit down, but I felt that I literally needed to stand behind my proposal. Between the Shrek-foot, the drugs, and the fact that I'd had major metal insertions only two weeks previously...hell, I don't know how I stood up. I barely knew what I was saying. But I knew it needed to be presented and said. I tip my hat to Todd Spillers for not killing our proposal. Major props to JP Furnari for helping to further the point about why I believe the USPA needs a consistent, cohesive method for training wingsuit students. I think I fielded most of the questions from the S&TA committee fairly well, and the proposal was unanimously passed to go before the full board.
Sunday, Jay Stokes asked that I be able to present the proposal to the full board early on as I had a plane to catch and frankly, I didn't know if I would be able to stand up later in the day anyway.
Once again I stood and this time made my extemporaneous presentation to the entire Board. Taya had used a PowerPoint presentation for her part in this proposal; I spoke passionately and spoke from the heart (drugged nonetheless, but from the heart).
In the middle of my presentation, Shrek-foot went into spasms and I was embarrassed crying in front of the board. Taya stood with me and helped hold me up because I couldn't hold my walker and my leg at the same time. Speaking in front of executive committees and boards is commonplace for me; it's part of my day-to-day business, but this one had me reeling. Practically begging the board to see that wingsuiting is growing faster than any previous discipline's growth, and begging them to at least take a First Flight Course, I was shaking violently as the spasms kicked in. Mary Lou later told me she thought they were going to have to call an ambulance, I guess it was worse than I recall. Either way, the board voted unanimously to put our syllabus online for public commentary, and with some luck and common sense, we'll see it in the next SIM as standardized wingsuit instruction.
And then it was time to leave. Flying with Shrek-foot and the new metal in my body wasn't fun. Oh, did I mention I now have my own card to inform the TSA that I have metal in my body, and yes...it truly does set off their detectors. It's not a joke.
The weekend of the BOD meeting was also the weekend of the FreeFlock Utah boogie. All my friends were in Utah and I'd found myself in Dallas. I did get on a load as an observer with Will as the pilot and grabbed some great some shots of my friends leaving the Skydive Arizona Super Twin. It was fun shooting a Scotty Burns exit for a change (usually I'm one of his subjects on exit). Speaking of Scotty, dude, thank you SO much for the daily calls to check up on me.
After another week of no change with my foot I started talking on Facebook about the problem, and friend/fan from the Midwest sent me a text on my phone that I should look into RSD.
That was it! That was the answer. Seven doctors seeing me in person couldn't figure out what was going on , but a nurse in the midwest knew it immediately based on a photo and description. The next day I went to the Pain Clinic. When I walked in and removed my stocking, Dr. Raj looks at the foot and says "oh my! Do you mind if I bring in a photographer? I've never seen RSD at stage II before!"
I'm relieved to find someone who knows about RSD. RSD is "Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy." It was first discovered during the Civil War, and very little else is known about it. The military dealt with it by amputating up until recent years. In modern times, it's known as CRPS or Complex Regional Pain Syndrome. The Pain Clinic refers to it as "CRiPS" but I prefer calling it "CRaPS." Either way, it's the most painful thing I've experienced in three car accidents, two horseback/rodeo, one motorcycle, one rollerblading, one skiing, one paragliding, two climbing, and one skydiving accident. I've broken 58 of my 206 bones, or roughly 25% of my body. Nothing, NOTHING is as painful as CRaPS has been. I'd gladly undergo another pelvis fracture before experiencing CRaPS. I can fully understand why amputation is a preferred solution, but I wasn't about to lose my foot, and at Stage II of three stages....And the third stage rarely is recovered. It becomes a lifetime affliction, a island of agony from which there is no escape.
No one knows the cause. The majority of information seems to come from military doctors or former military physicians because they see the highest number of trauma patients. One physician told me it occurs in Type A personalities more than other types, but according to the CRPS Information Clinic this is a myth. Yet it is psychological and physically incapacitating, carries a high suicide rate, and unless you've experienced it, you'll never have a clue of how bad it is. Physical therapy is about the only way to reduce the pain and swelling, but since it can't be touched, therapy can't really ever get started. Sympathetic nerve blocks reduce the pain, but the swelling remains. The limited range of motion remains.
Additionally, the CRPS Information Clinic says that on average, at least five doctors are consulted before a diagnosis is made. This is ABSURD! Three of my doctors had never seen it. It hits about one in 250,000 people, and is exceptionally rare, but you'd think that orthopoedic surgeons see enough trauma that they'd recognize it or at the least know about it.
FWIW, I'm saying a lot about CRaPS because so few people know about it, and most skydiving accidents are traumatic. It could happen to you. And if it's not diagnosed early enough, it can easily become permanently debilitating, potentially necessitating amputation.
Regardless, doctors often ask what your pain level on a scale of 1-10 is. Rolling me over before my pelvis was bolted was my first "10" in my life. I'm told they could hear me scream through the entire floor in the ICU. The CRPS is easily an "11" in stage one, and a "22" in stage two (for all you Spinal Tap fans out there).
(Thank you Mel, for identifying what it was so fast. I still have it, but it's under control and with luck is on its way out the door.) One in 250,000 people show any occurance of CRPS, and fewer than 1 in 100,000 beat it. It's always there, it can travel up a limb and show up anywhere, any time.
Godd***mit! I've dealt with enough, haven't I? Why do I have to be hit with this rare dystrophy? If I could just get those odds in Las Vegas, I'd be a rich man! Seriously! This is absurd. Painfully so.
At the Pain Clinic, they performed a nerveblock that in theory, would shut down the signals from my foot's nerves to the sciatic nerve. The sciatic sustained a lot of damage in the landing.
The nerve block worked, in terms of making most of the pain from the RSD reduce itself to a tolerable level. The redness, the rawness, the heat is still there. I still can't bend the joints.
A skydiver who is also a therapist recommended water treatment. The local pool has a current pool that 'pushes' the body as one walks around it. It's a big circle that is 75% pushing, 25% stagnant water. It was curious the first time I got in, because I wasn't prepared to have the water shove me around quite so much. But it helped. A lot. Thank you Lori, for telling me to do this.
So begins the daily regimen. Therapist comes in the afternoon three days a week, go to pool most nights to walk the current pool. Crawl in bed and watch a little of "The First 48," go to sleep, and get up around 6 a.m.
Repeat.
Sprinkle in a generous helping of doctor visits, a few books, a bag of Kettlecorn popcorn, Kool-aid, and a few random phone calls....this is the routine into which I have settled. The occasional visit from a friend, or little surprises add some sunshine as well, but with any serious injury and time in bed brings some form of depression forward. It's normal, even expected. Yet sometimes its phenomenally overwhelming. If you've ever had an injury that involves extreme pain and long-term immobility, you know what I'm talking about. If you haven't, you won't understand. Regardless from where it comes, support is always appreciated, wanted, and there can never be enough. Posts from Dropzone.com, and Sony's corporate forums are a big help. The cards, letters, emails, visits, all helped overcome the funk and doldrums. For those of you that sent them, thank you very much.
The greatest depression of all comes from the CRPS. I went in for my second nerve block and this one seemed to help where the first one merely removed the pain. The second one allowed me to get massages, walk in the pool, bend the foot, and do ankle pumps (try 'writing' the alphabet with your toes). And the swelling has retreated by a lot. In fact, it's retreated so much that for the first time since my accident, on August 11, I wore a shoe on my left foot. It was swollen, it hurt, and it was tight, but I was able to wear a shoe. And the shoe seemed to help even more, as it put pressure on the swelling.
On Wednesday, August 12, a wingsuiter named Jason Carter called me on the phone. "What are you doing this weekend?" I told him I'd be doing the usual thing; lying in bed, leg propped up, watching movies and surfing the web.
"How about if you and I go to Pepperell for the boogie?"
Sweet! Jason had Buddy Passes for Southwest Airlines, and so off to Manchester we flew. My first "big boy" outing, and damn, it was going to be fun. None of my wingsuit friends at Pepperell knew I was coming. The flight out was a little tricky, flying standby all the way, and when we arrived in PHX, a family stole my wheelchair; many thanks to the Southwest Airlines gate agent for being able to run through the airport looking for who'd stolen it. Hell, there were five other wheelchairs in the jetway, none of them anything like my semi-custom sport job. They recovered my wheelchair in about 10 minutes.
Saturday morning we pulled into Pepperell and waited while the wingsuit crew boarded their aircraft. Jason and Stacy helped get me out of the car, Veggie Reggie helped me into my wheelchair and helped me work my way over to the landing area. I parked my chair near the peas, and waited for the wingsuit load to come down. Seeing the look on Justin Shorb's face as he landed made it all worth while. Justin, Scott Callantine, Taya, Jeff, Monkeyboy, Rob, Ricardo, Purple Mike, Andreea....seeing them and the surprised look on their faces was like taking a happy pill. I felt good. I think we all did. The wingsuit community is fairly close-knit and I've really missed my friends.
Cookie from Aerodyne brought me a luscious Red Velvet cake for my birthday; it was fun sharing with everyone else. Taya brought cupcakes.
Monkeyboy/Sean Horton did his 1000 skydive and was really edgy about being pied. The easiest way to pie him was for me to dupe him into eating some of my birthday cake, so I called him over to the concrete (my wheelchair didn't do so well on grass) and he was BOMBARDED with pies from every direction. I'd like to say I felt badly for my part in the ruse, but of course I don't. It was great being there.
Pepperell Manifest got me into both the Otter and the CASA as an observer on a couple of loads; it was a lot of fun to be on the aircraft with my friends. And coming down on the now-emptied aircraft was one of the most lonely feelings in the world.
On my return from Pepperell, the next week was spent working on my trailer, figuring out the production gear, and making decisions about how I wanted to finish out the trailer that I intend to drag from DZ to DZ over the next year. The most exciting part of this week was that I was able to abandon my cane and walk on my own. Perhaps I was walking like a Neanderthal, but walking, nonetheless. The more I walked, the more my foot started to dismiss the CRPS. It's still with me, but only just.
The next thing I knew, we'd arrived at my surgery date for my ACL/MCL repair. Which brings us to the present.
I've always been against organ donation for reasons of religion; my viewpoint has changed. My doctor gave me the choice of using my own hamstring or taking an Achilles tendon from a cadaver/donor. After weighing all the pros and cons of each, I opted for the cadaver/allograft. I hope I'll be glad I did. I'm grateful to the young person who made this tendon available to me, and as a result of my decision, I've opted to 'pay it forward' and will be an organ donor myself (assuming anyone would want body parts from this broken old man).
Wednesday, August 26, my ACL/MCL were operated on, the MCL sewn together, the ACL replaced with cadaver tissue, and I'm placed in an immobilizer and a cooling system that resembles a beer cooler with hoses. Keeping it filled with ice is the most challenging part of the system, aside from disconnecting it each time I go to the boys room.
This was the final hurdle, the last obstacle of meaning that stood in my way of flying again. The CRPS seems to be receding, and although I'll have to wear a brace for a while, I'll be able to skydive again, very soon considering the distance I've run thus far in this race. I can see the finish line.
June 8 seems like a decade past, and my urge to fly is greater than ever. This injury is a high price to pay for a sport I love, and love is a powerful thing. Napolean Bonaparte said "the only victory over love is flight." For me, love is flight, flight is love. I can hardly wait to take flight again.
To sum up; I'm a skydiver. I'm responsible for myself at all times. Was I injured because my hands were cold after flying through ice? Was I injured because I was looking across the field at a couple spectators and lost focus? Perhaps I became complacent. After all, I'd done 1400 consecutive landings without issue, so it's possible I had grown complacent? When I removed my hand from the front riser, perhaps I allowed my toggle to get caught on the riser a bit (On this particular canopy, I hadn't fully determined brake length yet, so had left excess steering line so I could lengthen the brakes should I choose too)?
The myriad possibilities don't matter. What does matter is that I walk away from these few months of extreme pain and sacrifice knowing that I'll not repeat this mistake. I'll do so in part by addressing each of the potential causes, being more conservative, and being more aware.
If you've read this far, thank you for walking this path with me as I've re-visited this life-changing experience. There isn't a night that goes by that I don't relive the accident so I've written this blog as a means of hopefully putting it behind me. More importantly, I hope that someone might learn from this incident and it might save even one person from suffering the same sort of rollercoaster hell I've endured over the past three-plus months.
And no matter how one looks at it, as mentioned in Part One of this blog, "The Best Is Yet To Come...."
"Go for it, run for it, dive in head first, live life with no regrets,
Put your heart out there, you might be scared, but it all works out in the end,
Because the best is yet to come..." (Hinder)
Even as I write this, I learn of another skydiver in an almost identical situation (filming AFF eval dives, lost a toggle at the bottom of his swoop, open-book pelvis, broken coccyx, sacrum, and some lower lumbar. Sound familiar? The bitterness in me towards the non-observer at my dropzone that told the television stations that I'd done a low hook turn using a toggle should learn more about accident results, or at least understand more about the forensics of various accident types (and thank you Sparky, for analyzing my accident based on the injuries, canopy, conditions, and effectively confirming what I believed to be the cause of my accident), but I'm trying to learn to let that go. The broken bones speak for themselves, as do the forensics of hundreds of incidents before mine.
Today is also the day we learned of Eli Thompson's fatal flight in Switzerland. While I didn't know Eli well, I had a huge respect and admiration for his work, his passion, and his creativity. My heart goes out to his family.
Bad things sometimes happen to great people.
Read Part One Here.
Read Part Two Here
It just dawned on me that I did not thank each of my "Spot-watchers" (People who spend entire nights sleeping in my room or entire days babysitting me). In no particular order: Debbie, Jason, Ken, Mike, Tiffany, Joey, Linda, Kim, Chris, Rae, Mannie, Raeda, Dru, Amanda, and the awesome RN's at IMC like "Guy in brown scrubs," Derek, Will, Todd, Kevin, Heather, Mysty.Craig, Spencer, Deena
And while I'm thanking, even though I mentioned cards, etc above....thanks to you that sent care packages, cards, foods, books, texts, PM's, emails, and the very rare visitor....Jack Guthrie, Jay Stokes, Nick Grillet, Dikla, Les, Cookie, Booth, Thank you again. Heapings of gratitude to Mannie, Linda, Chris, Dru, and Scotty. Y'all were the fuel and inspiration that kept me floating during those really bad times.
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