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	Wisdumb
	Temporary 3rd Knee (08-05-06) Just a pulled muscle…Just a pulled muscle…pulled muscle… “Please return your seat to the upright position (and do something about that drool…)”. When something exciting happens and I am not there, I am sad. Like, say I had to go to work, while my friends with more flexible schedules went to the beach. If it is a place I have surfed before, I can pretend I was there too if I know the conditions. But if it was something new, I need more details. I want to feel like I was there. Therefore, when I tell a story, I want the reader to feel like he or she was there too. On the other hand, when a friend goes on a boat trip to some island reef break I have never heard of, I get pissed when I get no details. “So how was it?” “Uh... it was good”. Who taught you to speak, Mick Fanning? I learned more in one episode of Sesame Street. Doesn’t mean I stopped going to school. But this level of detail I provide in each exciting episode of ‘Wisdumb’ has now come to haunt me in ways I never imagined. You may recall from the previous installment entitled “28 Inches of Scar” that I have a rare bone disease that affects a few, but not all, of my bones by making them more prone to breakage. Thusly, I tend to break a lot of bones. Since I lead an active lifestyle, I am constantly keeping this in mind to temper my actions and avoid serious injury. But I don’t want to walk the earth in a thick, protective foam suit, bouncing off danger and sweating puddles. I just keep an eye out for stuff and try to have fun, as long as fun doesn’t require a skateboard, mountain bike, snowboard, chalk bag or parachute. Instead, I focus my risk on surfing. Usually this approach works out pretty good… So, unlike past stories, this one is particularly heinous since I am still suffering for it, 2 months later. The problem is, I wrote up a detailed report of the incident but it is too mentally difficult for me to read without losing my st. Hence, I can’t edit it to fit the format of a typical Wisdumb account. So work with me here. I broke my leg (right femur) surfing my favorite beachbreak on May 20th. It snapped right in half in a freak accident. Oh, and I almost died doing it. When I was in the hospital, I got a bunch of phone calls from friends in Hawaii and San Diego after reading an account of the incident on www.805bbr.com. So, when I got home, still wasted on morphine, constipated, and in a world of hurt, I wrote up what was on my mind in raw form. It has only been 2 months but reading it takes me back pretty fast, so I won’t. But you should: --------------------------------------Cut ‘n Paste----------------------------------------- Ok, I don't know where to start so I will just do it chronologically. Friday night Jamie (my rockstar chick) and I went to Hollywood to see Ministry and the Revolting Cocks. (I noticed that no one cares if you cuss on this site). Got back to Goleta at about 3:30 AM, rattled. I was still hungover a bit from 2 days earlier so I was off the sauce but I still had the jitters when I rallied to this spot (which hasn't been named yet) a few hours later. I jump over the rocks and am dumbfounded how good it is. Essentially, take the best beach break in the world as far as I am concerned and get it as good as you have seen it. 5-10' on the face and you couldn't draw a better peak on your PeeChee folder in class. I bolt out there and I see a big pack of surfers I didn't recognize mobbing around a photographer. I don't want any part of this so I paddle about 40 feet to the south and get a fun one right away. The photographer is right in the pit and it kinda throws me off cuz I am not used to this. I paddle back to my spot and right away get another slightly bigger one, taking off deep. A couple surfers paddle to burn me (typical) but to no avail. This part gets kinda blurry. I remember feeling that one of these punks was going to burn me so I took a lower line than I would have liked to avoid them landing on me. Then I was eating it and looking right at the photographer, thinking "I am going to hit that guy under water". Sure as shit, I hit him on some part of his body under water and instantly know my femur is busted straight through. No, I didn't hit the fucking sand or a seal or some rock or a UFO like they tried to get me to admit at the hospital. I have been bodyboarding for 30 years. I have lived in fear of this happening for 25 of them. I am in touch with my wipeouts on a deep level for this reason. As some of the other posts have mentioned, I have a rare bone disease. I have broken my femur 2 times before and a vertebrae and a rib. I was in Mexico in late march and 'pulled a muscle' that now I suspect might have been a hairline fracture. Who knows? The metal in my leg (and on my iPOD!) was holding things together so let’s surf. I am deep, getting tossed around with my leg busted straight through. (the femur is between your knee and your hip). I try to kick to the surface but,,, my fucking leg is broken. I finally surface and am in psycho pain, disbelief and technically total panic. I begin by unleashing a torrent of profanities at full volume. Then I try to prone a wave in but as some of you know, this spot has lots of juice and the churning whitewash is rattling my leg around. I can’t take it and fall off. Under water it is now only 3-4’ deep and my foot hooks the bottom bending my leg the wrong way at my ‘new knee’. I am struggling to stabilize it and breathe at the same time which is tough. I am nearly drowning in 2’ of water 20 feet from shore. I finally get my head up and scream for help. Guardian angel #1 drags my sorry ass out of the water. He gives me his shirt to bite down on because my muscles are contracting and pulling my femur where it shouldn’t go. The pain is supernatural. I am screaming holy terror with no relief. Each 6” little whitewash moves it around making it worse. Guardian angel #2 Jason comes over and I somehow recall he is an EMT. He pulls my ankle and sets the bone back to where it sort of should be and stabilizes things. The ambulance is here now and they bring a portable traction thing that goes in your crotch, down your leg with a loop for your ankle. They strap me to that and things are doing better. Now I am on a board being lifted up the rocks. (picture this at ulu watu, or anywhere else with no services, or big shore pound.). At some point I remember screaming a few more times before being dumped in the ambulance. I am sweating a crying right now as I write this because it is too soon and there are way too many ways I could have died. They take me to some hospital in Oxnard and everyone is really nice. They are in disbelief that all I have is a broken bone. They insist on rolling me over to check my spine. The lady sticks her finger in my ass, and I laugh cuz, ‘what the fuck is she doing that for; to check my colon?!?” It turns out that even though my toes wiggle, my butt has to ‘work’ to assure my spine is intact. I was trying not to pucker because I figured if someone needed to get in, no use locking the door… I get sent to Santa Barbara and am hustled into a new emergency room. The morphine is making things bearable so I am able to talk to my friend who works there and give the lowdown. My first visitor shows up and it is Jamie wearing a hooters t-shirt with a bag of supplies including 2 surf mags, Adbusters, Mad Magazine and two XXX porn mags. Bless her heart. In her cooler are some beers and M&Ms which I have to pass on since I am fasting before surgery. They do surgery that night. The doctors ask if my other hardware was installed in the 60’s or 70’s because it is so old school. Hey, give me a break. They take off the last small piece of my shredded wetsuit. I blink and it is done at midnight. Essentially, they cut a tiny hole below my knee and slide 320mm of titanium rod up my bone. No body cast, just a few band aids. I get up to hobble around on crutches the next morning (!) and there is a 12” wide puddle of blood on my bed. No wonder I felt light headed. I got lots of visitors and was stoked even though it was hard to stay awake in a morphine haze. The guy in the bed next to me is Shawn, the former guitarist of Lagwagon. He had an AC unit fall on him at work. Normally I post this sort of shit on www.toobs.com wisdumb but since I received 3 phone calls based on the note from Jim on 805bbr.com, I will put it both places. I am not blaming anyone here. Shit happens. This is such a one in a million thing that I am going to just take a break and work through it. I have wiped out waaay worse with no consequence before. Bad luck caught up to me. Anyone need a photographer? I think Ernie took some pix of me in the ambulance but I don’t have those yet. Thanks for your good words. It means a lot. --------------------------------------End Cut ‘n Paste----------------------------------------- I am at home now and have been hobbling around on crutches for the last 2 months, depending on when you read this. It’s getting old. The pain has decreased a bunch and, after throwing my vicodin pills in the trash, I strangely stopped feeling depressed, bordering on suicidal. The physical therapy was rough and still is. The first place I went was fine for the first 3 visits. On the 4th visit, they bent my knee with a lot of force and made me cry. I got over it, sat up, got off the table and an intense pain went up my leg and around where I broke it, bringing me instantly back in pain and vision to that very moment on the beach. I went straight to the emergency room for an X-Ray to see if they re-broke it. They didn’t, but I didn’t get to see the x-ray. A few weeks later, they tried the same force method. This time, I split my lip and cut the inside of my cheek screaming in the back room. People wondered if it was part of the song on the radio. That is when I decided to change physical therapists…I now spend 2 hours instead of 1 and get the same results. Do the math. The other day I drove for the first time, using my left leg. I was inspired by my friend Craig’s story of driving a manual transmission, pushing the clutch with his cane. That same day I went in the ocean for the first time. Despite some mild hypothermia, no new bones broke and I didn’t drown so it was a complete success! After this experience, some might wonder about my level of bitterness. While I am grateful for your gracious offers to beat the photographer to a pulp and make him eat his camera, I am mentally in more of a Zen position. As I said before, I likely had a hairline fracture before this happened and it was a total freak accident. It would have been better if he tried to get out of the fking way or didn’t deny that I hit him underwater, but that is all water in and out of the sinuses. The silver lining, which took me about 4 weeks to appreciate, is that my leg is now straighter, longer and stronger, after being repaired with the metal rod. When I say ‘longer’ I mean there was a ½” difference in leg length causing me to walk funny like those dopey jocks do with their sports clothes on. This break was bound to happen eventually and I am lucky to be able to be here complaining (still). The pain was more than I could handle, but the end result is a better me. I admit I am secretly intrigued by the T1000 ‘liquid metal’ dude in the second Terminator movie but that is ‘future work’. I WILL be back in the water one day soon. Catch all the waves you can until then while you have a chance. My goal is to be rushing Razors on the Ranch by winter. So, take nothing for granted, don’t take vicodin, and surf every wave as though it were your last. You are my inspiration to get better, and I am your inspiration to BE CAREFUL. Send notes to drbrokenman@hotmail.com and someone please find me one of those shirts that says “I do all my own stunts.” more stories >>