Julius Caesar had his Ides of March, I had my March 7th. Early on this day in 2002, Ruthie and I took our Great Pyr, Floyd, to the vets to be put down. Floyd, only 5 years old, had cancer of the bone on his right rear leg. Unlike smaller breeds who can get around on three legs, giant breeds cannot. We lifted Floyd up on the table, and embraced him as the vet administered the medication. Floyd’s death was immediate. Ruthie and I were both crushed. She went home to sleep (she had worked that night), and I called in to work and took the day off.
Luke had a class at the Eden Prairie VoTech that day. Around 7 pm, I left New Prague to pick him up from school. The weather was one of those drizzly/sleety days, so I was taking my time traveling north on highway 21. A string of cars passed me going south on 21, when all of a sudden, the last car in the string passed over the medium strip and hit me head-on. My Saturn was sent careening down a ditch and came to rest in a middle of a frozen corn field.
As the car came to rest, I checked to see whether I could wiggle my fingers and toes, and move my limbs. It was at that point I saw the dashboard jammed high on my left leg. I found my cell phone in the darkened car, called home and told Beth to wake up Ruth so that she could get Luke from school. Then, I phoned in the accident to the dispatcher. I calmly explained that I was trapped in the car, that I had a high break of my left leg, and that the doors would have to be cut away on the drivers side. I had no clue as to where my glasses were.
The only thing I was afraid of was letting loose a stream of profanity when they would eventually pull me from the car. The ambulance crew from New Prague got there. Someone came and cut away the doors on the driver’s side of the car. Bill Van Cur, from the ambulance crew told me that they were going to lower the seat and put a board under my back. He told me they were going to pull me out from the car and, it was going to hurt like hell. He was correct. To my great relief, the only exclamation I let loose was “Geeeeeeeeeeez!” I must have passed out because the next thing I remember was being in the ER at Queen of Peace Hospital and Dr Miller telling me, “We need to straighten your leg, Bob.” I asked for some morphine and he said, “We have already given you as much as we can.” Another 1-2-3, and he pushed down on my leg, and, yes, that hurt like hell. They put an air cast around the leg, secured it with duct tape (it does have many uses, doesn’t it?), and because it was sleeting too much, rather than air lift me out, we made the very long, slow ambulance drive from New Prague to North Memorial in Robbinsdale. Ruthie rode with me in the ambulance. Andy and Olivia followed the ambulance up to North Memorial.
It was a long night of pain, followed by surgery early in the morning for a femur nailing, and a two week stay in the trauma ward of North Memorial. I had a very high femur break. The only other thing that got hurt was my right hand and forearm. It really hurt. The hospital treated that with a brace. As I over heard the surgeon saying to another doctor later, the femur break was so high, the surgeon was surprised that the shock of it breaking didn’t kill me. It was a very long and slow recovery.
When I saw the surgeon at week eight following the accident, he wondered why I was still wearing that arm brace. I told him that my hand and arm hurt when I didn’t have it on (I was getting around on crutches at that time). He took and x-ray and said, “You need to the a hand surgeon ASAP.” Two days later, the hand surgeon told me that the impact of the accident shredded all the ligaments in my right hand. He could have restored my hand 100% had I had surgery around week four following the accident. The best he could do was restore 60% of my hand. Two days later, I had the first of two surgeries on the hand. Long story short, he was able to restore 60% of my right hand.
The news about the hand upset me more than the broken femur. As a professional pianist, I knew that with only 60% of my hand intact, I would never able to play at the level of performance I had once played. That was the greatest and most devastating loss I had from that accident. I read in the police report that the driver who hit me was a teenage boy who had no car insurance. He got distracted as he was changing the radio station in the car he was driving. Of course, he walked away from the accident unscathed and was sentenced to community service. My career as a musician was over.
After a lot of time, I could play piano but was very limited as to what I could play. Over time, my hand surgeon explained to me, arthritis would set in and eventually end my ability to play piano altogether. He gave me 15 years more years of being able to play. I reached 17 years before it got to be difficult to play because of pain. Can I play today? Somewhat, enough to fake it for some people.
As far as the left leg is concerned, in 2011, the effects of the accident forced me to go in for a left hip replacement. The surgeon first had to remove the femur rod that had been pounded into my left leg in 2002 (the rod went from my left hip to my left knee). Because of a MRSA infection when I received the artificial hip, I soon was without a left hip for @ 6 months as the infectious disease doctor found an antibiotic that would kill MRSA and not kill me. From April of 2011 to the end of January 2012, I ended up having six surgeries. Since January 2012 to the present, I have had to have an additional seven more orthopedic surgeries. All of these can be traced back to March 7, 2002, 21 years ago.
It is amazing the memories that can get imprinted on a body. Every year on March 7th, my body aches. I went to the grocery store today and as I was pushing that cart around the store, I could really feel it. As I type this out, my right hand is aching and the long scar that goes from my middle finger and down my forearm is still very prominent.
The day after the femur nailing surgery, the pastor with whom I was ministering, visited me in the trauma unit. He looked at me and the first thing he said was, “Where is the grace?” I told him that my initial impulse to his question was to punch him in the nose. However, trussed up by wires and tubes, that was not going to happen. I told him that I didn’t have a clue of where the grace was, but I would come to know.
So where is the grace from all these surgeries, pain, and injuries? I have lived to see my grandchildren born and grown up (the youngest just turned 13 years of age). Because my own body is broken in so many ways, it has enabled me to better minister to people who are broken themselves. As a broken man I am one with them in their own brokenness. As one who has physical limitations, I understand the frustration felt by others as they encounter the inability to do the things they use to do. And, over time, instead of slipping into bitterness over the loss of being able to do what I use to do, I have embraced gratitude in having once been able to do what I use to do. I am also thankful in being led by God to ways of performing, through computer programs, at the level I once was able to perform.