Humptey Dumptey had a great fall,
All the King's horses and all the King's men,
Couldn't put Humptey together again.
Rescue, and Ambulance Rides.
The clearing was flooded with Firemen, Paramedics, and Cops. The Paramedics quickly had us immobilized on back boards complete with cervical collars, and slapped a dressing on the small cut on my elbow that had bled so profusely. The fact that we had survived a plane crash was just starting to sink in, and was driven home by the comments of some of the firemen as they surveyed the crumpled mess that only minutes before had been a flying machine. They carried us out to the Autoroute where the emergency vehicles had parked, blocking the highway and backing rush hour traffic up for miles.
Contrary to the news reports, we didn't hit a milk truck, I am not a doctor, Mathieu is not my son, and while we did, after a fashion, walk away from the wreck, our injuries proved to be anything but minor.
It was a short ride to the hospital in Mascouche, and although the pain in my neck was getting worse and my arm was becoming more numb by the minute, I kept thinking everything was going to be fine, we were both going to be okay.
Really, how bad could it be? We both got out of the plane on our own, we'd passed the wriggle test (wriggle everything, does it all work?), and most importantly of all, I'd always been lucky. All my life I've been the guy who could fall into a pile of manure, and come out smelling like a rose.
The problem with that was....... first, you had to fall into a pile of manure.
At the hospital I was immediately the center of a flurry of activity. I was slid off of the ambulance gurney onto the examination table, my blood soaked clothing was cut off, various nurses and doctors began a series of rapid fire questions about where it hurt, how bad the pain was on a scale of one to ten, what I remembered, did I hit my head, whether or not I had eaten that morning, did I have feeling in and could I move all my limbs, what the date was, and, of all things, who was the Premier of Quebec? The ones about the date and the Premier were to help them determine whether or not I had a brain injury, and they got confused when I tried to tell them that I was retired and didn't care, much less know what the date was, and that I didn't follow politics and know or care who the Premier of Ontario was, much less Quebec. The main problem seemed to be that it was felt I was much too young to be retired and that I was confusing a vacation with retirement. I finally gave up and told them I was unemployed, which they seemed happy to accept and moved on to other silly questions.
Then a whole bunch of them started treating me like I was a pin cushion. Half of them were stabbing me with needles to put something into me, the other half were stabbing me with needles trying to take something out.
Through what was to me a scene of total confusion, my focus centered on one person, a doctor who told me his name was Olivier. As people rushed back and forth, he was speaking calmly, clearly in control, directing everything that was happening, his hand on my shoulder, constantly reassuring me. If the Firemen and Paramedics were the King's horses, this was the guy who was in charge of all the King's men. Humptey may have been screwed, but I knew I was in good hands. That was when I started to believe the bullshit I'd been telling myself about how everything was going to be okay. When Matt arrived he asked me if I could excuse him for a few minutes "To check on your friend". After assessing Matt he decided to send me off to x-ray first.
There were 3 people working in x-ray, and they were cheerfully laughing and babbling away about what they had done on the weekend, talking about their families, sports, the hot nurse that just went past the door, everything, except, me. They were polite enough, and slid me over to the x-ray table carefully enough, but I got the impression I could have been a side of beef for all the interest they had in me personally.
One of them came over and said "We're just going to check the pictures before we send you back." A minute later the conversation in the control room suddenly ceased, and I heard all three of them make muted gasps, followed by total silence. The one that had spoken to me reappeared above me, and with eyes the size of dinner plates said very solemnly "Monsieur, I will ask you to please remain very still." He repeated it several times with different wording to make sure I understood.
When they went to move me back onto the gurney to return me to emergency, there were so many people helping I couldn't even see them all. They certainly hadn't been rough or blase about moving me onto the x-ray table, but getting me off they treated me like I was a glass sculpture that had been broken into several pieces and they wanted to be sure the pieces weren't disturbed. I soon discovered why.
As soon as Olivier had examined the x-rays, he came to me and said in a serious tone, "Lawrence, you need to remain very, very, still. It's extremely important that you do not move at all." Like the x-ray technician, he repeated it with different wording, and then said "I can see I'm scaring you."
"Doctor, you're not scaring me yet, that will come in a minute. For now, you have my complete, total, undivided attention."
"Good. Lawrence, you have a badly broken neck. Your C5-C6 vertebrae are subluxated, which means dislocated, and your C4 is cracked. Any movement could cause your spinal cord to be cut. If it goes at C5-C6 you will be paralyzed from the neck down, and if it goes at C4 you will not be able to breathe without a ventilator."
"Oh."
"You need surgery that we can't perform here, so I'm going to find the best place to send you to have that done. Do you have any questions for me before I go take care of that?"
Questions? My mind was as numb as my arm had become. I could think of nothing to ask, except to say "If I need to remain still, then you better give me something for the pain, 'cause sooner or later, I'm going to start squirming."
With a smile he replied "Already on the way."
Matt was only a few feet away and had heard the entire conversation. The conversation that followed bordered on tears for both of us. For myself the realization of how close I had come to dying when we hit the ground, and how badly I was hurt, was devastating. Matt was wracked with guilt because he felt he had caused this. Somewhere in the conversation I found out Matt had a compression fracture of his L1 vertebrae, which is when I felt guilty because I felt I had caused it to happen to him.
That's when somebody came came along and dosed me with Fentanyl, which I found out later is 100 times stronger than Morphine and takes effect almost instantaneously. Pretty quickly I didn't give a shit about anything. "Pain? What Pain? Take more than a stinkin' plane crash to put me off my feet! Feet? Do I have feet? I must! I had them earlier, maybe they took them when they took away my clothes. Clothes? Holy Crap! Am I lying here naked?" I probably would have tried to get up and walk around if I could have formed a coherent thought to do so, but there was no danger of that. I was so utterly stoned I wouldn't have batted an eye if a squad of Nazi frogmen had burst into the room and kidnapped me.
Somewhere in that haze is when Caroline showed up. She had arrived at work and heard about a plane crash in Mascouche. She called Michel Lemay in Farnham, and Michel told her that all he knew was that we hadn't shown up. She jumped back in her car and headed for the nearest hospital. When she appeared over me I was glad I was trashed. She looked so worried that if I had been straight I would have gone to pieces. She held it together, moving back and forth between Mathieu and I, remaining calm even though she was obviously upset, trying to reassure us, just as much as we were trying to reassure her.
Out of all the questions I had been asked I hadn't been asked if there was anyone I would like notified about the accident. I didn't know Diane's phone number, so I asked Caroline to call my mom and let her know what had happened. She readily agreed, but later I felt guilty for having asked her to make a call like that.
Shortly afterwards Olivier returned to tell me I would be moved to Sacre-Couer hospital in Montreal. Before I left he stitched up the cut on my elbow, and while doing it he mentioned that he often took his kids to the wind tunnel at Skyventure Montreal. Throughout the time we had been at this hospital he had been a kind, calm, reassuring voice, and had displayed the best bedside manner I had ever seen from anyone involved in the medical profession. I told him that the next time he went to the tunnel he would find some extra time in his account, and he just laughed, I'm sure he thought it was just the drugs talking, but I meant it.
Matt and I weren't happy to be seperated, at least up until now we'd had each other for support and encouragement, I felt very lonely as I was wheeled down the hall to my ambulance. It hadn't yet been decided if he would be fitted with a front and back clam shell type brace and then shipped back to Ottawa, or shipped to Ottawa and then fitted with a brace. Either way, it was likely he would be home for Tuesday night.
The drive to Sacre Couer took about half an hour, and every single time we went over the smallest bump in the road I expected my spinal cord to finally give way and leave me dead, or a quadriplegic. Most of us have thought at one time or another about being the victim of an accident that would leave you paralyzed, or dead. The fentanyl had long since worn off and been replaced with morphine, which left me lucid enough to ponder the possibility for the entire drive.
The whole time I'd been at the first hospital, I was examined at regular intervals by a steady parade of interns and residents. They'd shine a light in my eyes, have me wriggle my toes, push with them, lift up with them, squeeze their hands with my hands, try and spread my fingers while they tried to hold them together, and on and on. By the time it started at the second hospital I had the routine memorized, which was a good thing, because it was repeated over and over and over again for the next five days.
To prep me for surgery they told me they would have to put me in traction. Sounded reasonable enough until somebody showed up with this great big C shaped piece of cast aluminum with screws at each end. They positioned it with the screws just above my ears, and then proceeded to twist the screws into my head. Normally, I'm pretty squeamish, so they must have dosed me with something other than morphine because it didn't bother me in the slightest as the points of the screws were driven in and I felt my skull being chipped away by the points. A cable was attached to the middle, it was fed through a pulley at the head of the gurney, and then they very carefully, began to add weights to it. They planned to add a total of 15 pounds but stopped at 10 because the screws started to shift.
Just before I was wheeled off to surgery one of the interns asked if anybody had explained to me how the Halo was going to work. That was the first time anybody had mentioned anything other than having to wear a neck brace following the surgery. When I said no, he replied that I should ask when I got to surgery. I knew what a halo was, a couple of people I know have had to wear them after a severe neck injury. It consists of a brace that sits on the shoulders, back, and chest, to hold a framework up around the head, that is topped by a circular frame resembling the halo on an angel, hence the term Halo. The Halo holds a series of screws that are driven in all around the skull to hold the head firmly in place. Just a few months ago I finished reading a book by Dan B.C. called "Above All Else", and in the very first paragraph he describes regaining consciousness in a hospital after a plane crash, wearing a Halo. He had written entire chapters on what he had endured in the process of recovery, and in rehab. Was I facing the same thing? There were 21 people on board that airplane, and only 4 survived. He had gone on to a full recovery, and in fact I had enjoyed the privilege of jumping with him many times in the last couple of years at his home drop zone in California. He was one of my heroes, and I admired him not just for what he had accomplished as a skydiver and for the advances he had made in the sport, but for his down to earth, approachable, easy going attitude. I could only hope that things turned out as well for me as they had for him.
When I got to surgery I asked everybody who got near me what I would be wearing when I woke up, a neck brace, or a Halo, and they all told me to talk to the surgeon. Before I had a chance though, I was given a general anesthetic and wheeled into the operating room.
Contrary to the news reports, we didn't hit a milk truck, I am not a doctor, Mathieu is not my son, and while we did, after a fashion, walk away from the wreck, our injuries proved to be anything but minor.
It was a short ride to the hospital in Mascouche, and although the pain in my neck was getting worse and my arm was becoming more numb by the minute, I kept thinking everything was going to be fine, we were both going to be okay.
Really, how bad could it be? We both got out of the plane on our own, we'd passed the wriggle test (wriggle everything, does it all work?), and most importantly of all, I'd always been lucky. All my life I've been the guy who could fall into a pile of manure, and come out smelling like a rose.
The problem with that was....... first, you had to fall into a pile of manure.
At the hospital I was immediately the center of a flurry of activity. I was slid off of the ambulance gurney onto the examination table, my blood soaked clothing was cut off, various nurses and doctors began a series of rapid fire questions about where it hurt, how bad the pain was on a scale of one to ten, what I remembered, did I hit my head, whether or not I had eaten that morning, did I have feeling in and could I move all my limbs, what the date was, and, of all things, who was the Premier of Quebec? The ones about the date and the Premier were to help them determine whether or not I had a brain injury, and they got confused when I tried to tell them that I was retired and didn't care, much less know what the date was, and that I didn't follow politics and know or care who the Premier of Ontario was, much less Quebec. The main problem seemed to be that it was felt I was much too young to be retired and that I was confusing a vacation with retirement. I finally gave up and told them I was unemployed, which they seemed happy to accept and moved on to other silly questions.
Then a whole bunch of them started treating me like I was a pin cushion. Half of them were stabbing me with needles to put something into me, the other half were stabbing me with needles trying to take something out.
Through what was to me a scene of total confusion, my focus centered on one person, a doctor who told me his name was Olivier. As people rushed back and forth, he was speaking calmly, clearly in control, directing everything that was happening, his hand on my shoulder, constantly reassuring me. If the Firemen and Paramedics were the King's horses, this was the guy who was in charge of all the King's men. Humptey may have been screwed, but I knew I was in good hands. That was when I started to believe the bullshit I'd been telling myself about how everything was going to be okay. When Matt arrived he asked me if I could excuse him for a few minutes "To check on your friend". After assessing Matt he decided to send me off to x-ray first.
There were 3 people working in x-ray, and they were cheerfully laughing and babbling away about what they had done on the weekend, talking about their families, sports, the hot nurse that just went past the door, everything, except, me. They were polite enough, and slid me over to the x-ray table carefully enough, but I got the impression I could have been a side of beef for all the interest they had in me personally.
One of them came over and said "We're just going to check the pictures before we send you back." A minute later the conversation in the control room suddenly ceased, and I heard all three of them make muted gasps, followed by total silence. The one that had spoken to me reappeared above me, and with eyes the size of dinner plates said very solemnly "Monsieur, I will ask you to please remain very still." He repeated it several times with different wording to make sure I understood.
When they went to move me back onto the gurney to return me to emergency, there were so many people helping I couldn't even see them all. They certainly hadn't been rough or blase about moving me onto the x-ray table, but getting me off they treated me like I was a glass sculpture that had been broken into several pieces and they wanted to be sure the pieces weren't disturbed. I soon discovered why.
As soon as Olivier had examined the x-rays, he came to me and said in a serious tone, "Lawrence, you need to remain very, very, still. It's extremely important that you do not move at all." Like the x-ray technician, he repeated it with different wording, and then said "I can see I'm scaring you."
"Doctor, you're not scaring me yet, that will come in a minute. For now, you have my complete, total, undivided attention."
"Good. Lawrence, you have a badly broken neck. Your C5-C6 vertebrae are subluxated, which means dislocated, and your C4 is cracked. Any movement could cause your spinal cord to be cut. If it goes at C5-C6 you will be paralyzed from the neck down, and if it goes at C4 you will not be able to breathe without a ventilator."
"Oh."
"You need surgery that we can't perform here, so I'm going to find the best place to send you to have that done. Do you have any questions for me before I go take care of that?"
Questions? My mind was as numb as my arm had become. I could think of nothing to ask, except to say "If I need to remain still, then you better give me something for the pain, 'cause sooner or later, I'm going to start squirming."
With a smile he replied "Already on the way."
Matt was only a few feet away and had heard the entire conversation. The conversation that followed bordered on tears for both of us. For myself the realization of how close I had come to dying when we hit the ground, and how badly I was hurt, was devastating. Matt was wracked with guilt because he felt he had caused this. Somewhere in the conversation I found out Matt had a compression fracture of his L1 vertebrae, which is when I felt guilty because I felt I had caused it to happen to him.
That's when somebody came came along and dosed me with Fentanyl, which I found out later is 100 times stronger than Morphine and takes effect almost instantaneously. Pretty quickly I didn't give a shit about anything. "Pain? What Pain? Take more than a stinkin' plane crash to put me off my feet! Feet? Do I have feet? I must! I had them earlier, maybe they took them when they took away my clothes. Clothes? Holy Crap! Am I lying here naked?" I probably would have tried to get up and walk around if I could have formed a coherent thought to do so, but there was no danger of that. I was so utterly stoned I wouldn't have batted an eye if a squad of Nazi frogmen had burst into the room and kidnapped me.
Somewhere in that haze is when Caroline showed up. She had arrived at work and heard about a plane crash in Mascouche. She called Michel Lemay in Farnham, and Michel told her that all he knew was that we hadn't shown up. She jumped back in her car and headed for the nearest hospital. When she appeared over me I was glad I was trashed. She looked so worried that if I had been straight I would have gone to pieces. She held it together, moving back and forth between Mathieu and I, remaining calm even though she was obviously upset, trying to reassure us, just as much as we were trying to reassure her.
Out of all the questions I had been asked I hadn't been asked if there was anyone I would like notified about the accident. I didn't know Diane's phone number, so I asked Caroline to call my mom and let her know what had happened. She readily agreed, but later I felt guilty for having asked her to make a call like that.
Shortly afterwards Olivier returned to tell me I would be moved to Sacre-Couer hospital in Montreal. Before I left he stitched up the cut on my elbow, and while doing it he mentioned that he often took his kids to the wind tunnel at Skyventure Montreal. Throughout the time we had been at this hospital he had been a kind, calm, reassuring voice, and had displayed the best bedside manner I had ever seen from anyone involved in the medical profession. I told him that the next time he went to the tunnel he would find some extra time in his account, and he just laughed, I'm sure he thought it was just the drugs talking, but I meant it.
Matt and I weren't happy to be seperated, at least up until now we'd had each other for support and encouragement, I felt very lonely as I was wheeled down the hall to my ambulance. It hadn't yet been decided if he would be fitted with a front and back clam shell type brace and then shipped back to Ottawa, or shipped to Ottawa and then fitted with a brace. Either way, it was likely he would be home for Tuesday night.
The drive to Sacre Couer took about half an hour, and every single time we went over the smallest bump in the road I expected my spinal cord to finally give way and leave me dead, or a quadriplegic. Most of us have thought at one time or another about being the victim of an accident that would leave you paralyzed, or dead. The fentanyl had long since worn off and been replaced with morphine, which left me lucid enough to ponder the possibility for the entire drive.
The whole time I'd been at the first hospital, I was examined at regular intervals by a steady parade of interns and residents. They'd shine a light in my eyes, have me wriggle my toes, push with them, lift up with them, squeeze their hands with my hands, try and spread my fingers while they tried to hold them together, and on and on. By the time it started at the second hospital I had the routine memorized, which was a good thing, because it was repeated over and over and over again for the next five days.
To prep me for surgery they told me they would have to put me in traction. Sounded reasonable enough until somebody showed up with this great big C shaped piece of cast aluminum with screws at each end. They positioned it with the screws just above my ears, and then proceeded to twist the screws into my head. Normally, I'm pretty squeamish, so they must have dosed me with something other than morphine because it didn't bother me in the slightest as the points of the screws were driven in and I felt my skull being chipped away by the points. A cable was attached to the middle, it was fed through a pulley at the head of the gurney, and then they very carefully, began to add weights to it. They planned to add a total of 15 pounds but stopped at 10 because the screws started to shift.
Just before I was wheeled off to surgery one of the interns asked if anybody had explained to me how the Halo was going to work. That was the first time anybody had mentioned anything other than having to wear a neck brace following the surgery. When I said no, he replied that I should ask when I got to surgery. I knew what a halo was, a couple of people I know have had to wear them after a severe neck injury. It consists of a brace that sits on the shoulders, back, and chest, to hold a framework up around the head, that is topped by a circular frame resembling the halo on an angel, hence the term Halo. The Halo holds a series of screws that are driven in all around the skull to hold the head firmly in place. Just a few months ago I finished reading a book by Dan B.C. called "Above All Else", and in the very first paragraph he describes regaining consciousness in a hospital after a plane crash, wearing a Halo. He had written entire chapters on what he had endured in the process of recovery, and in rehab. Was I facing the same thing? There were 21 people on board that airplane, and only 4 survived. He had gone on to a full recovery, and in fact I had enjoyed the privilege of jumping with him many times in the last couple of years at his home drop zone in California. He was one of my heroes, and I admired him not just for what he had accomplished as a skydiver and for the advances he had made in the sport, but for his down to earth, approachable, easy going attitude. I could only hope that things turned out as well for me as they had for him.
When I got to surgery I asked everybody who got near me what I would be wearing when I woke up, a neck brace, or a Halo, and they all told me to talk to the surgeon. Before I had a chance though, I was given a general anesthetic and wheeled into the operating room.
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