Cam, thanks for the time spent. I'm going to make my kids read it when they get a bit older. While you are 100% correct that you can't let life pass you by, kids just don't think this kind of thing happens. An ounce of prevention can help - NOW I know that.
I was very close to sharing a ward with you. At age 18 I was mud-wrestling with a fraternity brother at a big year end bash. Dumb-ass figured he could flip me over (he just got back from Marine Boot Camp), although I was a fit 6'1" and 220 lbs. He was halfway right.
He got me to about 180 degrees and ended up dumping me on my head. Thankfully I was so trashed that the pain was only severe enough to know I had to get to a hospital. Numbness and needles over the whole body, but I could walk. I was not alone, in the waiting rooms were no less than 6 girls and guys from the party, all covered in mud, all injured from the mud party. I looked fine so I got to wait while the collar bones and noses got preference.
Based on my pains, they x-rayed my back [foreshadow sound], said no viable damage and sent me on my way. Numbness went away, and immortality was proven, while sharp pain remained. I helped the girlfriend move a week later. After three weeks I still was in pain so the neurologist ran an MRI. Mid-way through the test he said "don't move; your spine is fractured in two places!" WTF? The ER docs said nothing was wrong - with my BACK!
Turns out I fractured my C5 and C7 (in the NECK), but luckily they just cracked down the length and did not shift. Thus my spinal cord was fine. Dr. said five more pounds, or a slightly different angle and I would have been paralyzed from C5 down.
Two years later, while mountain biking by myself, I got my front week stuck in a broken bridge that shot me over the handle bars like a Muppet - whhhaaaapppp. No hand out, no helmet, right on top of my head.
Hit just hard enough to hurt like hell and scare the shit out of me - e.g., just hard enough to get through my hard head. All was fine, but the immortality was gone. I really ratcheted it down after that. Backed off the throttle a bit and reevaluated things.
Hopefully my kids will take your life story for what it is, a lesson for others, whereas my story is just "daddy walked 10 miles to school every day, up hill in the snow both ways!"
Thanks for sharing Cam, and don't stop fighting.
