April 21st, 2012

I was in the park at A-Basin trying to muster up the balls to throw a 540 on their relatively small kickers. It was an icy end to an icy season, and Max and I were practicing tricks all day. I was committed to doing it off the first one when they closed down the jump. They put up the flags on the ramp, but the roller was still open on either side. I hit the roller with the same speed I had been hitting the jump and over-rotated a 180. I was going to land with snowboard perpendicular to the ground and probably knock myself out. So I leaned back, sticking my hand out, hoping to revert out of the fall.

I landed with all my weight on my wrist. A kid next to me asked if it was broken. I didn’t think so. I took off my glove and changed my mind. It looked gross. Bones were knobbing out of both sides of the wrist. I screamed, “like a man of course.” (Lesson 1: Never stick your hand out.)

I got the brace from ski patrol and drove back to Denver. I had major medical and thought I might be able to keep the bill under $2500 if I just went to urgent care. The urgent care center took X-rays, couldn’t make much of them, gave me some vicodin, and sent me on my way. (Lesson 2: Beyond antibiotics and painkillers, urgent care is useless.) The urgent care people told me I should see a wrist specialist on Monday. My girlfriend at the time thought I should go right to the hospital, but I am kind of an idiot so I didn’t go.

I took some vicodin, and we went to a barbecue restaurant where I ate a few pounds of food and drank a few drinks. Around that time, I started losing feeling in my fingers. I thought the brace was too tight, so I took it off. My hand still felt numb. We went to the emergency room and they told me they needed to operate stat so that I wouldn’t lose my hand. (Lesson 3: If you’re an idiot and your girlfriend tells you to go to the emergency room, listen to her.) Unfortunately, they couldn’t anesthetize me because I had eaten a ton of barbecue and drank after taking vicodin, meaning I could vomit during surgery, asphyxiate, and die. (Lesson 4: Don’t consume barbecue, vicodin, and booze before you might need surgery.)

So they gave me morphine and I waited for the morning while the swelling pinched further on nerves in my wrist, and I prayed that I wouldn’t lose my hand.

December 9th, 2012

The surgery was a success. I’m back on the snowboard, but I have been nervous about it ever since. The first few times riding this year, I was so cautious that I made sure not to fall all day. But that just means I’m not pushing myself. The problem with today is that it snowed a foot, and I am way too happy to be here at Beaver Creek bursting through clouds of powder. I half-cut a rope and rip through a powder field. In the middle of it is a big snowball that looks like Frosty the Snowman’s lower segment. I don’t see it in time, and we both blow up. I go end over end. But I remember Lesson 1, and I pop right up and ride away.