My Idaho Adventure

Welcome to my latest publication of Domestic Chaos Theory…

I don’t want to sound too dramatic, but I had a rather severe snowmobile accident on a recent boys’ trip to Idaho.

The good news is that I made it home safely and after 3 months I am now pretty much recovered.

The bad news is that my wife wasn’t there and therefore only shares bits and pieces (or general inaccuracies) about my story.

Here’s what happened.

My friend has a great place in McCall Idaho and often invites us to visit. We flew up to Boise early on 1.29, intending to stay 3 days returning late 2.2.

First day was skiing. Second day was snowmobiling. Third day was cow tipping or something like that. It doesn’t matter because I didn’t make it that far.

Our snowmobiling day was a ton of fun. Gorgeous bluebird day. There were six of us total. We picked up our machines around 1PM and took off on a 70-mile roundtrip ride along a snow-covered road that led to some very small (e.g., 10 person) villages. We ate lunch at one and then had literally one beer at the end of the trail at a place called The Baum Shelter. It was a dump but fun.

It was around 330 and since we had to book 30+ miles to return the sleds at 5, we got going. We drove in a procession, and I was fifth out of six. Everything was going fine and then it happened pretty fast. We were taking a right turn which I guess I cut too close because I caught an edge. I’d been leaning into the curve heavily so apparently flew off the sled right into a tree.

I don’t really remember what happened thereafter for a bit, but that never seems to stop my wife from pretending she’s an expert so I’m also just going to say things like I saw them. Basically, I was in a snow ditch. At first, I was goofy (once again like my wife) but then I cleared up a bit. For the record, my helmet got knocked off and had to be totaled. My friend who invited us on the trip was the one behind me and did all the talking. I wasn’t in major pain at that moment, probably because I was in shock.

The weird part was that I could tell my hand wasn’t where it should be. I could see it and I could move my fingers, but it was in a weird spot. So, I knew I’d broken my right arm. (At least it wasn’t a compound fracture. That would have been bad.)

There was a lot of activity going on around me. Fortunately, all my friends on the trip are super capable, smart guys. The type you’d hope to have around in case of emergency. One of them managed to get though on the emergency 911 system (done via text). Because we were way out there, help was going to be a long time coming.

In the meantime, it was starting to get dark and cold. I actually never felt cold personally due to the shock, but it was cold. Fortunately, someone secured some metallic blankets and firewood. As I recall, they kind of built a fire on top of me. Which was nice.

While I was in the ditch my friend sat by me with updates and encouragement. He likes to talk (and is good at it) so this was a great role for him. Plus, he is very comforting. He’s also kind of a bullshitter, so I wasn’t always able to separate truth from fiction. No matter. He did an amazing job.

Anyway, after about an hour in the ditch he tells me they’re going to try to get a helicopter to me. That was very welcome news. Because the alternative would have been on a snowmobile, which would have been tough because apparently, I also had 10 broken ribs. More on that later.

The trick would be to land the helicopter on the path, since things were tight in there. It took several tries but eventually this magician of a pilot pulled it off.

So, the first responders got to me in the ditch when they landed. The first effort of business was to give me painkillers, but because I had been sitting in the equivalent of a meat locker for 1:30, they couldn’t open a vein. They did throw some fentanyl on a huge qtip in the interim and stuck that in my nose, which helped a bit.

Not that much though. Because when they put a blanket under me and six of them lifted me out (I’ve put on a touch of weight) I gave out a respectable scream of pain. (I’ve been rewatching Band of Brothers lately which served as good training.) They then dropped me under the copter just like they do on MASH. That was cool.

Then we took off. They said it was a 45-minute ride to the hospital. There were two of them in there with me (it was a cramped space) and they literally spent the entire time trying to create a pick line for the meds. My broken right arm was obviously off limits, and they’d pretty much already beaten my left arm to shit with punctures, so they started on my neck. The entire flight consisted of them crawling on me (remember the broken ribs) trying to establish a pick line until they finally achieved success 10 minutes before we landed.

The next part was kind of cool. Just imagine an episode of ER from the POV of the patient coming in, camera facing up to the sky/ceiling. It was like a surreal roller coaster. These guys moved fast and soon I was in the ER with a team of like five people.

The first thing they asked is if it was OK to cut off my ski jacket. I said yes, gladly. I didn’t have time to tell them the entire story, but the ski jacket was a Christmas present from my wife. Basically, my youngest son needed a ski jacket, and she wanted to give him mine, so she bought me the EXACT same one and pitched it to me as a present. (One time my wife wanted to go see Phantom of the Opera so bought ME tickets to see it as a present. Not always a great gift giver.) Anyway, since my youngest son doesn’t really ski anymore, I can now just go back to wearing the blue version of the red jacket they were slicing to shreds.

They also cut off my ski shirts and long underwear but thankfully saved my cool ski pants. Then it was time to get to work. The big task was to maneuver my arm into something that once again resembled the normal shape of an arm. They told me they were going to give me ketamine as a painkiller. It was a weird experience, to say the least. First, I’m staring at a small sticker of a minion above the ER bay. Then, your mind begins to move and hallucinate. I held onto reality for a second, remembering my entire backstory. Then my mind went to a test pattern without any context of anything but a gentle buzzing feeling. It wasn’t bad but it also didn’t feel like there was a way out of it. I kind of assumed I died and that this was it. Then, all of a sudden, I popped out of it into total consciousness. My arm had been repositioned, and I had no memory of it. They told me the screaming was pretty good though.

I’ll continue to tell the rest of my story, although that’s really all the drama. They kept me in the ICU for the next several days. Honestly, the drugs there are damn good. And they needed to be because I required two operations. The first was to fix my arm, which was a 100% clean break that required a titanium rod and screws. Apparently, they flipped me on my stomach for this one. Thank God once again for Ketamine.

The next operation was the big one. You don’t technically need to operate to fix broken ribs (as I know from the last time I broke them) but recovery is long and painful if you don’t. Every cough feels like breaking another rib. Thankfully I was in a very cutting-edge hospital where they treat a lot of ski and mountain bike injuries like mine. Because my ten ribs were broken on both sides, they recommended using titanium and screws on all of them to secure the cage and speed my recovery. The surgery was a miracle success. On a positive note, I now also own a portion of a titanium mine.

After that they moved me from the ICU. I was released after spending 10 total nights in the hospital. On the positive side, the people there were fantastic. I have only good things to say about those Idaho types. On the negative side, I had to learn to wipe myself with my non dominant hand. (Try it, cocky people.) And I kind of never slept since I was constantly poked and prodded (the 4AM daily x-rays were my least personal favorite).

The flight back home was direct. I booked a first-class ticket, which for those of you who know how I don’t like to spend money actually maybe hurt me more than the arm. (Not the ribs though. They hurt.) They put me on the flight along with the other wheelchair bound old lady cripples. Everything was fine until about 15 minutes into the flight when I started to shake (like I was cold, but I wasn’t) for the next 1:15. Eventually I just passed out. They put me in an old lady wheelchair, helped me grab my checked bag and then my wife met me at the curb for an uneventful ride home.

That’s it. Since everyone asks, the snowmobile was pretty much fine. It went sailing into the woods and turned upside down but avoided severe damage. Thank goodness for small mercies.

To be honest, if Hell really did freeze over it would probably make for great snowmobiling.

FINAL THOUGHTS

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