By the time that the fire department and the paramedics arrived at the scene of my accident, I was over 40 minutes into what rescue workers and trauma center personnel call, "The Golden Hour"; that period of time following an accident where a victim's chance of survival are greatest if they can begin to recieve treatment.
Aside from my wrists being destroyed, I had shattered my pelvis into four separate pieces of bone. I learned a few interesting facts about the human pelvis in the following weeks. I learned that it is a most difficult bone to break. In fact, my surgeon informed me that, if I took a human pelvis and hit it with a sledge hammer, chances are it would stay intact. She also said that it is the most painful bone to break and the shock associated with the pain kills a huge percentage of people who experience a broken pelvis.
At that moment, however, it was an almost ethereal experience for me. While people frantically tried to cut me from my car, I could tell that I had one foot in this world and one foot in the next. I instictively knew that I had to fight in some way to stay in this world but the temptation was almost overwhelming to let go and slip away into the next.
In the time where I knew with an absolute certainty that I was closest to death, I have never been more aware of my immediate surroundings, (even what I could not physically see...it was as if I were somehow connected to all things and everyone around me) and I have never felt more at peace. I knew with an absolute certainty that my existence would go on because, in a strange way, as I lay dying, I never felt more alive. I lost, forever, my fear of death
I have likened the experience to being in a river and holding onto a rope while the current tugged at you. If you let go of the rope, the current would simply transport you away to another place. It was odd, but I held onto my life by concentrating very hard on a spot just below where my throat melds into my chest.
Although I am not a follower of eastern religions,(and I was completely unaware of it at the time) the Hindus refer to this region as 'vishuddha', one of their seven 'chakras', or states of existence and equate this one to being on the 'physical plane'.
I do not now nor did I then ascribe to any beliefs in any religion but my own but I do find it strangely coincidental that I would cling to life by instictivly concentrating upon a spot that some believe to be the spirit's gateway to this physical existence. Joseph Smith once said that all religions have some truth to them. Perhaps this is one of the Hindus.
A rescue worker, a tiny guy with a bushy red moustache broke the rear window of my car and climbed into the back seat. He placed a collar around my neck and began to check me for injuries. He touched my thigh and pain shot through me like I had never felt before. I screamed and cursed at him and told him to leave me alone. He cursed back and told me that he was there to save my life and that he was going to touch whatever he damn well felt like touching.
I didn't see why I had to be the only one with a broken bone that night and so I whipped back with my elbow and gave the mouthy little guy a shot in the face, breaking his nose. The fireman with the jaws of life outside of the car laughed and said, "he told you not to touch him".
My left foot was jammed up against the driver's door of the car and they were afraid that while cutting off the door, they might cut off my foot and so I could hear them planning to cut off the passenger's door and pull me out that way.
"If you do that", I said, "you'll rake my hip over the console and I'll lose my concentration and die". I discovered then that rescue workers, at least those without bushy red moustaches, know when to listen to the people they are trying to save.
They gave me time to try and move my left foot from the door. I won't go into how difficult it is to try and move your leg when the bone it's supposed to be connected to is destroyed but, let's just say that I felt a lot like Luke Skywalker must have felt when he was stuck upside down in the ice trying to get to his light saber before that monster got to him. I can't say for certain but I'm pretty sure that "The Force" had a lot to do with my left foot moving away from the door.
The cut the door away and spread the car apart and then told me to fall out into thier arms. I feared the pain of moving but took a deep breath and leaned out into my rescuers.
I was grateful to learn that their movements were quick, deliberate, and fluid. The pain was inevitable but they lessened it drammatically by thier expertise.
As soon as I was situated on a gurney, four pairs of scissors, weilded by four practiced hands came out and snipped away the arms of my shirt and the legs of my pants. Then, in what was reminiscient of one of those amazing magician, tablecloth, flower vase tricks, they whipped away my clothes leaving me strip stark naked on a gurney beside the busiest freeway in the U S of A! (With all of the traffic stopped to boot!)Continuing with the Star Wars theme, it wouldn't have been so bad if I looked more like Luke or Han or even Chewbacca instead of Jabba the Hut.
I heard a paramedic ask, "Did we make sure that the television crew was far enough away?" I thought, "Yes...please....Lord....let them be far enough away" and I screamed, "Can I have a blanket?" They covered me up and hustled me into the waiting life flight helicopter that had landed on the freeway. I said goodbye to one set of paramedics and hello to another.
The flight from Katy to Hermann Hospital was only a few minutes but it was some of the most painful moments of the night. They had jammed my hip up against the side of the helicopter and all of the vibrations of the ship and rotor were transferred to my broken pelvis and shot right into me.
I began to feel as if I was going to slip away again and I knew I had to do something to take my mind off of the pain...so I began to sing.
If you're ever a passanger in life flight and you ever feel like singing, you should choose a different song than I did. I began to sing, "Abide With Me". That's not a song that instills a feeling of confidence in the life flight nurse who attends you. In fact, it freaks them out.
The nurse yelled at me, "Don't you die! If you die...you die on the ground, not up here!"
It struck me as odd that the nurse should be more concerned with where I die and not if I die and so I felt like this was a nurse whose head deserved to be messed with...so I asked in a feeble voice, "do I go towards the light or stay away from it?"
Excited now, the nuse asked, "Do you see a light?"
Motioning with my hand towards the helicopter's console I said, "Yes, I see a green one and a couple of red ones and there's a pretty blue one that keeps blinking"
She looked at me hard and then began to laugh, "You might very well be the only one I've ever heard of joking while on life flight"
I thought that my rescue efforts were tortuous but that was a pittance compared to what lay in store for me in the trauma room.
A nurse began to try and tug my boot off of my foot causing pain to stream out of every pore in my body. I screamed and cursed in several languages, including a few that I made up on the spot, and told the nurse that they were just a thirty dollar pair of boots...cut them off!.
She finally got the boot off and then, in a strange paradox, whipped out a pair of scissors and cut off my sock. (I still have the sock...if I ever run into that stupid nurse I'm going to make her wear it on her nose for a day)
Red Duke was my attending physician that night and, in his Texas ranger drawl came up and said, "Now Tom, we're gonna have to do some things to you that are apt to hurt quite a bit but we'll try and get them over with as soon as possible. We have to set your leg in traction and so we have to drill a hole in your shin to set a bar in there. We gave you a local anesthetic but we can't do a general 'cause you're still in shock. The local should numb it up a bit but you're still apt to feel it a might when that drill hits the bone". I was half expecting him to give me a bullet to bite down on.
I looked up and there was one physician standing on the gurney with his butt in my face, holding my pelvis together while a second held my foot under his arm and leaned back. A third held up a drill.
Revelation comes to different people in different ways...for me, it usually takes the form of a scripture that I'd read springing into my mind at the appropriate moment.
Just before the drill went into my shin, D&C 19:16-18 popped into my head:
For behold, I, God, have suffered these things for all, that they might not suffer if they would repent;
But if they would not repent they must suffer even as I;
Which suffering caused myself, even God, the greatest of all, to tremble because of pain, and to bleed at every pore, and to suffer both body and spirit—and would that I might not drink the bitter cup, and shrink
The drill bit into my leg and I thought, "Tom is gonna be a good boy from now on"
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