Halo's and Fuzzy Dice

I woke up a little after midnight on Tuesday morning to find myself in ICU with my mother and sister by my bed. They'd had to argue with the security guard when they arrived at the hospital, he tried to tell her I wasn't there. I had been registered under "Waulsby" instead of "Maulsby". She persisted, telling the guy that her kid was here someplace and she damn well wasn't leaving until she saw him.

I was in a lot of pain, but instead of it being  intense pain concentrated in a small area, now my neck and upper back felt like somebody had been beating on me with a 2X4. My head had snapped forward in the crash hard enough to break my neck, which also gave me an incredible case of whiplash. Any muscles that hadn't torn had been severely stretched.  It was with great relief that I discovered I did not have a Halo, merely a neck brace. It was to be my constant companion for the next 6 weeks. It's made from several pieces of plastic held together with plastic screws and velcro, and wraps completely around my neck. Well padded, its as comfortable as could be expected under the circumstances, but everywhere it touched my back and shoulders it felt like a sharp edge digging into my bruised muscles. It's purpose is to prevent me from turning my head from side to side, or moving it up or down. Although there was no strength in any of my limbs, about 80% of the feeling in my left arm had returned, and when I tried the wriggle test, everything moved.

The Surgeon had gone in through the front of my throat, moving my larynx aside to get to the vertebrae and spinal cord. He'd ground away part of a vertebrae to get better access to the cord and moved everything back to where it was supposed to be, filled the part he'd ground away with a bone from lord only knows what, then installed 2 plates and 4 screws to hold it all together before closing me up with a series of staples going sideways across the base of my throat. I was flipped over, and 2 more plates were installed with 4 more screws to make sure that the next time I turned my head it wouldn't snap off and go rolling across the floor. He closed that with another series of staples going vertically up my neck.

Tuesday and Wednesday passed in a fog. The nurses were checking on me regularly, and a constant supply of morphine kept the pain down to a manageable level. The biggest immediate problem was being barely able to swallow. The swelling from the surgery left my throat almost closed, and I had to focus and concentrate to simply swallow sips of water. I was brought food at the normal intervals, but there wasn't the slightest chance that I could eat most of it as there was no way it would have gone down my throat. The food itself was another problem altogether. Most of it would have been inedible for a starving man, let alone one who could barely swallow liquids.The mystery meat that was part of my first dinner looked like a hamburger patty that had been run over by a car and then left in the sun for a couple of days. For 2 days my only nourishment came from puddings, soups, and tea. Even that was a struggle as it's not part of a nurses job to feed a patient. I could barely get the lids off the bowls let alone use a spoon to convey food to my mouth. My mom and sister showed up for dinnertime but the rest of the time I was on my own. When the nurse saw how little I had eaten she gave me a lecture on the importance of nutrition to the recovery process, and pointing to the mystery meat said it that I should have eaten the protien first. I tried asking for some protein shakes or something that I could drink that didn't require chewing and could be swallowed easily, but she insisted I eat what I had been brought. By the time I left the hospital after 5 days I had lost 15 pounds.

Every hour or so a crew would come in and carefully roll me to to a new position to prevent bedsores, and I was wearing some kind of hydraulically actuated pants that were constantly writhing about my legs. They were to prevent blood clots, and although they were far too warm, not to mention creepy as hell, the constant motion served to distract me from the pain elsewhere.

After repeatedly being hung up on by a switchboard operator who didn't speak English, Diane was finally able to get through to my room late Tuesday. It gave me a real lift to hear her voice, without my cell phone I had no idea what her number was, and without my laptop I couldn't send her an email. I had been without any way of contacting her. She had found out about the accident on Facebook when Scott Simpson, who had been training at Farnham with his team the Gan Sky Cows, which is where Matt and I had been going to jump, sent her a message asking how I was doing after the accident. She dealt with it well. Probably better than I would have if the roles had been reversed. From the description of the injuries she got the impression I would be fitted with a Halo, and with her usual sense of humor said she had bought some fuzzy dice and battery powered Christmas lights to hang from it. She was checking flights to Ottawa and decided she would wait until I was being released before she left Winnipeg. She had already booked some time off as I had planned to visit her after Matt and I had returned from the airshow, and she got some emergency leave as well so she could spend as much time as possible in Ottawa to take care of me.

Through the fog, 3 things stood out crystal clear. The first one was the first time I peed without a catheter. It might seem trivial to everybody else, it's something most people do many times a day and never give a second thought to. To me it was an important milestone because it meant that despite whatever damage my spinal cord had suffered, I still had control over my basic bodily functions. It happened on Wednesday afternoon after I had been transferred to a lazyboy chair, hours after the catheter had been removed. When I felt sufficient pressure had built up, I asked for a jug, which the nurse quickly brought me, and then stood over me as she looked down expectantly. Suffering from performance anxiety, I asked her for a little privacy, so she went outside the room and watched me through the window. I finally got her to draw the curtain and close the door and after several false starts decided to try an old trick from camp and asked for a glass of warm water. I dangled the fingers of one hand in the water, and finally after several long minutes, a trickle began, that quickly turned into a raging torrent. I could wax rhapsodic for hours about the beauty of the sound of my pee splashing and gurgling in that jug. If the ceiling had parted and a host of angels singing The Hallelujah Chorus had descended from the heavens, the sound would not have been as beautiful. It was The Best Pee Ever! After a minute or so passed I started to be concerned about the capacity of the jug, but I couldn't tilt my head forward to check the fluid level. There was no way I was going to even try and put the process on hold (so to speak) while I called for a second jug, but fortunately I was emptied before the jug was filled.

The second thing I remember was getting a phone call from Matt. I was happy to hear his voice, and expected him to tell me that he had been released from hospital and was at home in Ottawa. He wasn't. In fact he had barely moved from where I had last seen him, more than 2 days before. He was lying on a bed in the hospital corridor, his only treatment for that entire time having been regular doses of morphine and repeated admonishments to not move, "Or you could be paralyzed." They had decided to ship him back to Ottawa for treatment, and for three and a half days he lay in that corridor while various bureaucracies argued over who would pay for the trip and the extra insurance required because the ambulance was going to have to leave the province, and what authority would accept responsibility for Mathieu's health while he was being transported. The Civic Hospital Orthopedic unit in Ottawa had agreed to take him on Monday and held a bed for him the whole time.

That's when I found out about all the crap that reporters had pulled trying to get some info about the crash. One had taken the identification numbers off the plane and looked up the registration with Transport Canada. It's registered to Matt and his father, so his father found out Matt had been in a crash when the reporter called him to get information about the pilot. Once Matt's name was out, someone Googled his name, found out that he had been a participant at Mission 100 the week before and had helped set a new Canadian Skydiving record, and called Nouvel Air where it had taken place. He wound up Talking to Michel Lemay, the guy we had been going to be skydiving with. "Can you confirm that Mathieu Belanger was a participant in Mission 100?"

"Did your newspaper cover Mission 100, the biggest accomplishment in the history of Canadian skydiving, something that every participant in it is very proud of?" Michel asked. "Why would you not cover such a great story, but then be in such a rush to cover an unfortunate accident?" When his question was met with silence, Michel hung up the phone. I must remember to send that man a case of beer.

Some news outlets used pictures lifted off of Matt's Facebook page, and one reporter even had the gall to call the hospital and try to pass herself off as "A very good friend of the pilots wife, just trying to help the family by getting some information." The nurse who took the call turned and handed the phone to Kim who happened to be standing right next to her, and when the reporter stopped lying and identified herself Kim promptly hung up.

Matt was speaking in a near whisper as he was afraid the hospital staff would take  the phone away from him if they found out he had it. It was his lifeline to the world at that point as he tried to get transferred to Ottawa. Kim had been waging war with all the people who passed the buck for responsibility for getting him transferred, and it wasn't until they threatened to take the story of the survivor of the plane crash being left lying in a hallway to the media that they finally got action. Matt was finally transferred late Thursday, arriving in Ottawa that night.

The third thing was the steady parade of doctors, interns, residents, and surgeons that came by to see me. Every single one of them told me over and over how lucky I was, and how close my spinal cord had been to being severed. "First, ya gotta fall into the manure pile....."

Scott, Jan, and Dave, of the Gan Sky Cows came to visit on Tuesday night. They had finished training for the day at Farnham and fought their way across town from the south shore through Montreal traffic. As an indication of how stoned I was, at first I didn't recognize Dave Gransden. I've known Dave for 20 years, he was the first person who ever pinned me in free fall. That night I couldn't recognize him from 10 feet away.

Late Wednesday afternoon I was moved from ICU into a regular ward. The distance covered was only about 50 feet, but it was like moving into another world.