One Broken Leg

Ok here is my best account of me breaking my leg. Starting the wonderful pain free afternoon at Colville Flats on Lake Roosevelt to the very pain filled next couple days. Note: if you get squeamish you might to take breaks... I also tried to keep it as clean as possible. I am not really sure how much cussing I was doing… But I know it was at least a few times. To start off with if you are not doing things like back flips and back rolls I honestly don’t believe you will ever have to worry about this. I had my weight positioned at the wrong place at the wrong time. The typical border wouldn’t have the energy needed to do such a thing. In this case I was attempting a nice front flip.

A front flip is where the front knee comes up on the jump and the back knee (my right leg) stays straight. During this pop off the wake you tilt your head and shoulders towards the wake. This allows the pop to throw your feet up and around. After this pop and tilt you just hold on and wait for the legs to rotate and eventually make it all the way around and meet the water. This is where my not so fun evening started.

I would say my landing was not ideal. If landing on the "Down" side of the wake you get most of the landing shock absorbed by the wake itself. We commonly refer this to “butter” or “landing on butter” as it feels that silky smooth. This, as you can imagine, is the best way to go. If you land on the "Very Top" of the wake you don’t get quite as much energy absorbed by the landing. However it is definitely not the worst place to land either. It is not the same “butter” feel as landing on the down part of the wake but it will not make you wreck by landing on it. Which if you land on the front/inside of the wake with enough force you will crash. This is the front or the "Inside" of the wake where there is the most water and the least amount of give to the landing. As you can imagine by now this is where I landed. I was also landing slightly back on my board in an almost upside down "7" sort of way. All that landing pressure was sent straight into my lower leg just above my boot with enough force to easily snap the two bones

On the landing I could feel my right leg give so. I quickly let go of the rope motioned for the cut signal a couple times the wonderful “throat slash”. As the boat looped around me they asked me what was up and I told them “I am pretty sure I broke my leg” (or something like that). This was as the boat was starting to float further from me. They asked again “What”? I replied “I broke my leg”. At that, it seemed that the entire boat emptied as two brothers and a sister dove into the water after me. I did take the time to see that there was at least one person in the boat. Thank goodness there was :D. As Tyler, Mandee and Matt swam up they are asking “what was up” and if “you (were)ok..” at this point I was doing fine. I had some pain but I figured that first thing first was to get into the boat. I was sort of going for the boat coming to me not me going to the boat. But, whatever works right? I had my lifejacket on so was having no trouble floating and keeping my leg stable at the same time. The three drowning rats finally drug me into the boat where we met our first major challenge.

Once we got to the boat the next challenge was evidently apparent... how do I get my fat butt up on the swim deck. To start we had to get the board off. I had Mandee take my left foot out of the board binding. Then we looked at right leg binding (which was the broken on and I was still stabilizing). I told her to take the binding off the board and leave the boot still attached to my foot. This just consisted of taking out two screws and it would be free. I was a little worried we might lose one of them but with me being bitchy and telling them to "dont drop any in the water" we succeeded on getting boot off the board. (Of course they had to cut the boot later, Sorry guys)

At this point being free from the board had an upside and a downside. The upside was the potential to individually situate the feet to actually get up and out of the water. The down side was some of that same mobility. My foot was now loose and not nearly as stable floating loose in the water. It was basically a bobbing lake buoy. This made it harder to keep my leg stabilized and keep the pain down. So basically I was getting tired.

With me getting tired I decided that we needed to get my foot out of the water. I told matt to help me get my foot up on the swim deck. I essentially held the break and lifted from underneath and he stabilized the top. Once he set my foot down I think I heard a couple "Oh dang…”’s when he realized that my foot was really really…... dangling out there with absolutely no support at all. (Sorry bro, you did a good job)

So this position did not work. I had room for my foot but not any place for my body. We needed to get my leg off the ski deck and get it up on the deck perpendicular to the position we were currently in. Basically we need to be able to lay logway along the swim deck.. not the short way. So again Matt helped stabilize my foot from on the boat and Ty and Zee helped keep my body stable and we lifted my leg back off and into the water. Matt lets go as well as the other two. In this process I lose a little bit of balance and not being able to let go of my leg yell out "It floats... it floats.. it floats"... of course their reply was "what floats? "; “it is my foot... my foot floats" This was a pretty painful point as the boot was floating up and my body was spinning down from my loss of balance. I was in the middle trying to hold them both together.

I finally got my balance back and my breath back as well and we were ready to try and get me out of the water. In this position I had to give over full control of my foot to Matt as I was not going to be able hang on to it and get up on the boat. Matt was a good choice as he definitely knew what state my leg was in. So he did me proud and I really didn’t have much pain from him holding my leg as my leg got on the boat. We got my leg up and next was my butt. I know Tyler and Mandee were behind me and had been stabilizing me the whole time... not sure if Kristen was down there or not. Somehow they managed to push up enough to get my butt on the swim deck. With my body out of the water I had a lot more control over my foot and I wasn’t doing too bad pain wise. I moved up off the swim deck and laid down on the sunning platform as we headed towards the boat launch. The ride in wasn’t very eventful Kristen Held my foot so that I could lay back and matt got ready to handle the boat into the dock.

I know that Naomi was on her way around to pick me up. But I was already starting to think that the ambulance might be a better option. The prime reason was stabilization. My leg really would just flop if you didn’t hold on to it. We had a couple park rangers help out at this point. One got me some Oxygen and the other was looking at my leg that he took from Kristen. So after the one million questions that all of us had been answering for the last 20min the guy holding my foot gets up to make room for the Ambulance crew. This really was not cool as he didn’t ask anyone to take control of my leg… so… yeah it flopped!... and it hurt. Kristen wasn’t far away so she quickly grabbed it but… oh man it was not cool. After stabilized my leg then most everyone lugged my 170+wet weight off into the ambulance. It was much appreciated everyone! A grown man’s dead weight is not an easy thing to lug around.

The trip in to the Colville emergency room was as uneventful as you can get. We would go as slow as possible so that there were as few bumps as possible. This was to keep my pain down. This was much appreciated.

I had taken NO pain killers at this point so they decided that they wouldn’t give me any until they got me into the ER. So it was a nice painful ride full of gritted teeth and a constant update on street names.

Once in the ER (which was packed and acting like some big city ER for some reason) I finally got some medicine. This finally brought my pain level down from the 9/10 to about the 7/10 pain level. Boy that felt wonderful. They kept my boot on for the x-rays as the break was above the boot level. After all the hype they confirmed that yes I did have a broken leg. To get me into surgery they had to get my boot off.

To get the boot off the tried just loosening it up and seeing if we could slide it off... but it wasn’t going to work. So snip snip and pull... followed by a nice grunt from me. Boot was off and was ready to go get my leg fixed up. I think the surgery took a couple hours or so. They placed a hollow titanium rod inside the bone and attached it at the bottom and top with titanium pins I have all the x-rays posted so you can see exactly what they did.

There is another bone that is not weight bearing and my leg will basically absorb any stray pieces and re-attach to the bone that it needs to for stabilization. So that is how I am now pretty well drugged up with a rod in my leg. I apparently won’t need a cast the rod takes care of the stabilization.

I would like to give a big thanks to everyone that helped me get in to the ER. It was definitely an eventful afternoon. Also a big thanks to Naomi for taking care of me like she always does.