PAWPAW'S MESSAGES TO MY GRANDSONS 67 - What I Did This Summer or Falling Off A Cliff

PAWPAW'S  MESSAGES TO MY GRANDSONS

Pawpaw loves Connor, Bryson and Archer!

I miss you guys so much. I hope you find these messages some day. I want you to know that I love you. I never left you. I was no longer allowed to visit you. I hope these messages help you know your Pawpaw and your family better. All my love forever, Pawpaw

What I Did This Summer

or Falling Off A Cliff 

   I had gone to Nelson Kennedy Ledges Park with some friends and one of their dads for a day of hiking. Historians believe that glaciers deposited the huge boulders here. Some are three stories tall. Others are stacked so hikers can squeeze under them or walk on top of them. I ended up on a ledge separate from the friend’s dad who called to us to come to him. I took a few steps and jumped across the cliff. I made it to the other side but landed on some wet green slippery moss on the rock. I slipped and started to fall backwards off the cliff.

   I reached out with my hand to grab a rock but it ripped a two inch gash just below my thumb. I fell. The guys I was with told me that it was 15 to 20 feet. I don’t know how high. I was unconscious most of the time. I ended up in a cave with serious head injuries, slipping in and out of consciousness for days. The guys I was with say that I stopped breathing a few times in that cave. It’s all a blur to me. I remember waking up in the cave in incredible pain and disorientation. My brain didn’t work right. I couldn’t focus my eyes or my thoughts. It was a terrible feeling.

   I remember waking up again in the ambulance and the paramedics talking to me but I couldn’t get my brain to work to respond back to them. Then I passed out again. At one point the medics asked me to try to pee in a container so they could check for internal bleeding. It was frightening for me to find that I could not make my arms and hands work to do it. They would not respond. The medic finally held my weiner as I tried to pee. I don’t know if I did. I passed out again.

   I awoke again in the hospital emergency room as they were just starting to sew stitches into my hand. They were not using any pain medication. Wow. That needle hurt. I couldn’t think sensibly with my head injury and I tried to fight off the doctor who was sewing my hand so they held me down until he finished sewing me up. My cheekbone had broken loose and was down closer to my jaw. My upper eye socket had fractured too. After they wired my cheekbone back in place, I had stitches in my hand, under my left eye and along my eyebrow. I still have the wire in my face. I see it when I get x-rays. I was hospitalized for eleven days. I missed almost the entire first month of my senior year of high school.

   I have never jumped off a cliff since. Hopefully I am a little smarter now? Probably not.

This is me a while after surgery. You can see my left eye is swollen.