Mark's Version

I was climbing at Lumpy Ridge with my cousin.  The climb went fine,
but we had to work our way down a sketchy descent gully.  We rappelled
off the top, but the ropes got stuck.  I scrambled up to free the
ropes, then scrambled back down.  On the way, I leaned on a
refrigerator-sized block that came loose.  I surfed down on it, and it
crushed my lower right leg between it and the wall.  (The rock kept
going, so it didn't pin me).  I landed sitting up with an open tib-fib
fracture and my muscles and such all hanging out. The incident
happened around 11:45 am, and some other climbers reached us around
12:10 pm(?).  Search and rescue got there about two hours later.  At
first, SAR tried lowering me vertically (feet first) - since it was a
technical rescue.  However, I went orthostatic (shocky, lost
consciousness), so they rigged up a horizontal lower.  They also
lowered me head first for a lot of the ride.  They gave me six liters
of saline in IV form and a few mgs of morphine.  I think they got me
to the chopper site around 7 pm.

The rescue team was excellent.  At one point, the chief medical person
called in for permission to tie a tourniquet.  I sort of begged not to
- I said that I could stand the pain, and that if they would back off
the morphine, I could focus on breathing a
lot in order to avoid getting shocky.  It seemed to work (in
combination with their horizontal and head first lowers).

They flew me to a trauma center in Loveland, CO - a fantastic facility
that has only been open 6 months.  I am really pleased with the care
that I have received here.  The staff is competent and pleasant.  I
went in for surgery the night I got here (Wed).  They put a "fixator"
on - which is basically a steel suitcase handle on the outside of my
leg which is screwed into the bone.

On Fri morning, they took me in for a second surgery.  Basically, they
said that they might just go in to clean the wound out, but that if it
looked good, they would put the bone together.  Well - they put a rod
in my bone (Tibula?) and screwed a plate into my ankle bone.

Well - the bone story is pretty happy, but the tissue story is not.  I
lost a lot of tissue, so they are talking about grafting a large
amount of muscle and skin from my back onto my calf.  We haven't
received a lot of answers from the doc yet, but we'll be insisting on
a face-to-face meeting before any of these procedures go forward.  The
upshot is that it's not 100% that I'm keeping my foot.

One extra twist coming out of this incident is that I had medical
insurance coverage that was due to kick in on Aug 15.  The accident
happened on Aug 8 - one week before.  Despite the craziness with
American health care, I feel unreasonably optimistic about this issue
as well.  As Melissa and I have been easing into the idea of raising a
family, I have been drifting towards a full-time career.  In a strange
way, I think this will provide a strong impetus to flesh out my career
(sorry about the pun).  Heck, I may spend a few years in the private
sector to help clear this thing out.  Somehow, I don't feel scared or
stressed - This is what life sent me, and Melissa and I are going to
need to figure out what this means.