Accident Prone
By Nate Bender
3/25/14
Spanning my grade school years at St. Peter’s, through high school, college, military years into present-day doings, I can recall innumerable mishaps resulting in sometimes serious injures. Let me indulge you! Perhaps we can all learn about cause and effect relationships from their being revealed.
Starting with earliest grade school events, a big one was when I fell out of a icy school play-ground swing before the start of classes one wintery morning. I was in the 4th or 5th grade then. The fall resulted in being knocked unconscious. Later I learned that a fellow student’s parent was in the area and retrieved by limp body, transporting me home, where I gradually awakened several hours later, lying on the living room sofa. Apart from a big lump on the back of my head and a numbing headache, I became embarrassingly aware that something traumatic had happened! A trip to the doctor was deemed unnecessary, and I was left to rest for the remainder of the day. The next day I returned to school, feeling self-conscious as classmates eagerly sought a status report on my wellbeing. To this day I wonder if permanent damage was done to my brain, possibly explaining my often-times eccentric ways!
A year later while playing co-ed softball during school recess, an eighth grade girl running the base paths collided with me at third base while I was attempting to tag her out. The result was fractures of my left collar bone. Again, no medical intervention was initiated, and when the pain grew unbearable I gingerly walked the half mile home, holding on to the front of my shirt for support. Finding a comfortable position became a trying undertaking. For weeks thereafter I walked to and from school, holding on to the front of my shirt in lieu of a sling, The natural healing process resulted in the collar bone finally becoming straight again, though requiring more than a year.
During the Fall of my 7th grade school year, brother Tom, a year younger, and I were home alone after school and began playing around with brother Reuben’s 22 caliber rifle. I don’t remember the sequence, but the result was my sustaining a wound to my right leg, marked by two holes in my pant leg, confirming that I had been accidentally shot by my brother! Scared about informing our parents, and wanting to protect Tom from blame, I secured a rag and wrapped it around my injured leg concealing it under my pant leg. After sleeping through the night and trundling off to school the next day, mounting fears of an infection led to medical help being required. Informing my parents didn’t generate any undue drama, as Mom simply drove me to a doctor in the neighboring town of Sumner. A clear memory from this doctor-visit was the excruciating pain incurred from his passing a sterile device through the entire wound. Thereafter, no further conversations occurred around this accident. Nowadays I can be found showing the two scares off to any interested party!
My formative years contained a goodly amount of unsupervised outdoor activities, as adults were busy at work, including mothers keeping the home fires aglow. At one point, I believe it was around my 8th grade year, I was dangling from a trapeze-like swing hung from a branch of a pine tree in our front yard. Upside down, suspended by my legs, I decided to see it I could brace myself with my arms if I released my legs. Well, in the fall I was not able to withstand the weight of my body. Falling head-first resulted in snapping my head and neck in the collision with the ground. Suddenly, I was aware that I was blind! My mother drove me to another neighboring town of Oelwein where a chiropractor had set up a practice. The magic of the good doctor resulted in a full return of my vision, requiring a goodly number of return visits to secure the adjustments.
Another accident occurred during a hotly contested basketball game in my senior year of high school. An inadvertent elbow created a gapping wound over my right eye. Blood gushed out of the wound, down my face and onto my white uniform top, quickly becoming crimson. Rather than being rushed to the doctor, gauze was secured by tightly wrapping tape around my head so that I could complete the game. After the game, a doctor was rousted from his sleep to close the wound with 12 stitches. The bandage covering the wound made me look like a war survivor!
Years went by without major injuries or accidents until I was in the Army during Basic Training. When a request went out for volunteers to play on a Unit flag football team, I immediately volunteered, primarily to get out of military training. During the final game of the season, on a cold and rainy Autumn day I sustained yet another head injury. This one resulted in my being evacuated to the local hospital, where I spent three days being monitored. Four of my top front teeth were jarred loose, rendering me semi-conscious. These teeth ended up forming infections requiring root canals and bridges to be put in place. These dental procedures spanned a whole year of dental office visits.
Sometime in the year 1984 I had put glass jars into bags and commenced to take them down the front steps and out to the tree-lawn for recycling pickup. Unfortunately, it was winter and the steps were snow covered over a layer of ice. Surely you know what happened next! Yessiree, down I went with my arms full of glass jars! In bracing my fall, my left hand came in contact with a piece of shattered glass just above my wrist. The wound was a good one, emitting a goodly flow of blood, requiring immediate compression and a trip to the emergency room for another stitching job.
The final injury I’d like to report occurred in January, 1973. Freshly into my first year of graduate school in Los Angeles, I decided to drive to Mount Baldy to test my recently acquired interest in down hill snow skiing. On a beautiful, sun-drenched day, the conditions were ideal and exhilarating. Just before noon, I decided on one last run, a run that would be my final down hill skiing endeavor. Shortly after getting off the chair lift and into the first curve in the course, I some-how lost control and incurred a twisting fall, shattering my tight leg tibia and fibula with what is called a comminuded fracture. I mustered an urgent plea for help, to which the ski-patrol people came promptly. The pain was horrendous, made even worse in the emergency room of a local Kaiser hospital when my ski boot was removed. Thank goodness for a numbing anesthetic! This was the most debilitating of my injuries, resulting in a distortion and shortening of my leg. This condition ultimately led to forming arthritis in my right knee, requiring replacement in 2012.
There are a few other traumas not worthy of great elaboration: A head-on collision with a tree in full view of my wife and step-daughter, on a icy side street in Cleveland, Ohio; weed wacking in our wooded property area wearing shorts and tee-shirt, and encountering a hornets nest. The results of the many bites required medical care to alleviate the immense pain.
So what are the take-aways from this short story? First and foremost, know your boundaries, and operate within the limits thereof. For a number of reasons, conscious and unconscious, I have had a need to test limits and not conduct preliminary assessments before launching into new territories. Often I was unduly confident in my own physical prowess, only to learn of the limitations along the way. So, taking risks are fine, especially when enough calculation has taken place. And every day I count my blessings, knowing I’ve made it into my 71st year of life. Writing has become one of the safest undertakings of my life!
