Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler My story

What the guy with the drill said!

Story's like yours, and the tales of those who have lived through war, famine, earthquakes etc. makes me feel insignificant in a very zen (ie: good) way.

I'll have to remind myself of this the next time somebody in the office is driving me up the wall.

Thank you for sharing your story! Awesome attitude!

Remember to buckle up.

Thanks for taking the time to share your story Cam.

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.

Good story Zimm. Back in my immortal days, I was lucky enough to be surrounded by people that were appropriately careful. I did a lot of out of bounds skiing, but always with other people.

One of the guys I skied with pulled a guy out of a tree well (a hole around the tree where no snow settles). He was skiing by himself and had dumped into the well head first. All my buddy saw was a pair of upside down skis sticking out of the well. Had my buddy not happened a long and found the guy when he did, the guy would have ended up suffocating.

I thought you said "back in my IMMORAL days" for a minute, Fred!

A similar story to the one you just brought up. One of my freinds brother's was snowmobiling with his buddy up north a few years ago when buddy took off real fast ahead of him up the trail. My freind's brother took off to try and catch him but couldn't seem to do so...he was nowhere in sight, so he doubled back thinking he had somehow passed him, but still couldn't find him. He spent a good time asking around if anyone had seen him on the trails or at any of the stops along it, nada. To get to the point...buddy had flown off the trail at high speed up the trail and hit some evergreens, which dumped a considerable amount of snow on him and completely buried him and his sled leaving virtually no trace of him. They found him a couple of days later, not sure if the collision killed him or if he suffocated or not.

Well, that too...

That sucks. To us southerners, snow seems so nice and soft. Don't know how yall keep getten stuck under it?

Its a true Canadian skill eh. Beers, touques and getting stuck in the snow.