Well, I considered myself one of those precious few that never experienced a grievous injury at one point in my life – but a couple years ago, I pretty much lost that privilege in the span of at least a couple milliseconds. Believe me when I say it, sledding can be a lot more dangerous than it'd seem.
Essentially, I live near Philadelphia, where snow storms are far and few between. In about 2003 or 2004, we got slammed with a major Nor'Easter that, overnight, blanketed our area with closer to a solid foot of padded snow –– perfect sledding snow. It was a Friday, and school didn't open their doors that morning. Of course, my best friend and I decided to grab our sleds and hit up a local construction site for some of the most killer hills in a good ten mile radius.
The few of us hiked for two hours in deep snow through forests and across precariously frozen creek beds until we came across le grand cigar: a recent construction site. Mounds of dirt were littered through the fields, forming hills that ski lifts would be green over. Overjoyed by our accomplishment, we spread high-fives around like butter and sprinted to the very top of the closest one to us.
Looking around at the top was a totally awesome thing, you know? Although the skies were foggy with lifting snow, we could easily see the entire town curling around us. Really, at the very top of that man-made hill, we likened ourselves gods of the teenaged world. Nothing could stop us, I remember recalling. In fact, I remember nearly everything from that day.
Exhausted from the climb and the scene in tandem, I threw my best friend's green toboggan sled onto the powder and sat inside it to rest. At this point, my glasses (made from cold, cold glass) had fogged up completely from the heat of my breath –– the most I could see was the area around my glasses, which, with my eye sight, hardly qualifies as 'seeing'.
As I take deep breaths and let the cold air circulate in my lungs, I turn, facing the front of the sled with my boots and begin to feel the ground beneath me shiver and quake. Miniscule liquids in my ear shifted slightly, and damnit, I knew where I was going – but I was powerless to stop it. My green coffin cut through the snow like a knife through butter and sailed me directly into an orange construction fence. Facing my crash, I instinctually put my legs up in front of my face in order to catch myself from getting tangled in the little plastic web.
But, of course, I overestimated my velocity, and my knees shot like bullets directly into my face.
I don't really recall the pain, but I do remember falling backwards suddenly. After the ringing of a loud 'WHUD' noise in my head, all I could hear was the silence of the snow and my friends sliding down into the same fence. I tried to open my mouth to say that I really didn't make the landing like I'd hoped, but unfortunately, the left side of my jaw felt like it'd been clamped shut. The only side that I could speak out of was my right, which was colloquial to how Popeye spoke. Except, I had no corncob pipe.
I sat in the snow, groaning about my jaw and the searing pain pulsing through my skull. After about five minutes of laying in the same spot, my best friend finally sledded down to ask me what's up, and I said that I can't open my jaw.
He stayed calm, thank God, but I knew that I'd had a serious concussion. I couldn't stand up, and all I wanted to do was upchuck whatever orange juice was in my stomach at the time. He and my other friend used a yellow nylon rope to haul me almost half of a mile to his house, where they called my family to take me to the hospital.
To make a long story shorter, I ended up shattering my cheek bone and the curved bone that runs beneath your eyes (the orbital). Consequently, what was left of the cheek bone was forced down into the left side of my jaw mechanism and locked it closed. I was also treated with a major concussion, which suppressed my ability to have an appetite, the ability for my body to retain core heat, my ability to walk and my ability to speak coherently.
To top it all off, we were in the middle of a serious snow storm – the only surgeons qualified to preform facial reconstruction surgery were in the city and took almost three days to find the time to pop in to help me out. I did manage to get five plates in my face, but I also got almost 30 stitches in my left eye to close the incisions needed to install the plates.
And as an icing on the cake, the surgeons were still pre-med – they left one of the stitches too close to my eye, and that, when I blinked, would get forced down my eye. I didn't sleep for three days, until they were taken out.
So, In total, I lost 30 pounds in three days, got lots of metal plates in my face and acquired some bitchin' scars.
On the lighter side, it cured my chronic migraine headaches.
@
SylverReZ:
@
Materia_tofu:
@
BakerMan:
