Friday the 13th

Friday the 13th turned into one of those dreaded ones for Jim. Here he is at the Sonora ER following a snowboarding injury. Here is how it all went down....

I got up at 5:45 am to take a work call (I was working from the cabin that day) and after the call sent Jim, the kids and 2 other families off for a day of snowboarding. It was one of those unbelievably beautiful sierra winter days. The sky was bright aqua blue and it was 67 degrees. I was having a quiet productive work day and feeling quite lucky to be able to work in such an exquist environment.

I checked in with the group of snowboarders in the middle of the day and all was well. The kids who were in lessons were doing great and the ones on the slopes were tearing it up. The only down side of the day was the snow conditions were not great. Not enough snow and icy. Next I heard was a phone call on their way home at about 5:30pm - they were going straight to the ER.

Jim decided to take one last run by himself. Up at the top while speeding down the hill, his board caught an edge bringing him to a sudden stop and launching him forward. Picture when you were a kid and would skid sideways on your bike. If the bike hit something in the skid, it would come to a complete stop and you would keep going - like a missile. That is what Jim did. The problem is that Jim is 6 feet 5 inches and 215 pounds which makes for quite a missile when it hits the ground! Plus he is 40 years old --- that makes him and old brittle missile!!

So he is launched thru the air and lands on his left shoulder - causing a grade 2 separated AC (shoulder). That is out of a grade 3. He separated the shoulder and tore one of the 2 ligaments. If he had tore both it would have been a grade 3.

He managed to get down the mountain on his own and went to the 1st aid station. They packed snow on it and sent him to the hospital.

At the hospital, he quickly became known as the "Kaiser Guy" because it was an out of network hospital. He became a favorite of the nurses when he told them that he gauges his pain on his wife giving birth and that compared, the shoulder pain was a 4! After a few hours of back and forth to the xray lab, they sent him home with a fair amount of vicodin. But he preferred beer therapy the first nite!