Ten years ago today, my doctor looked at a set of X-rays and informed me that I probably would never regain full use of my arm again. I'm a steady, calm, level-headed person, but that was still a very large pill to swallow.
At only 27 years old, I feel way too young to start a story by saying, "Ten years ago..." however, one of the most life changing things I have experienced in my life happened on February 16, 2002. If you are squeamish, you may want to skip ahead to the third-from-last paragraph. I apologize for making this post so long, but I want to tell the whole story.
February 16, 2002, was the second day of a two-day wrestling tournament. At this point I was undefeated in the tournament and all of my wins had been quite convincing. My next match was against someone named Tsolomon Engkbayar. He didn't look that tough, but he had developed quite the reputation. His dad was the opposing team's coach and was also rumored to be a former Olympian on the Mongolian wrestling team, also I had watched Tsolomon injure two of my teammates in the first day of this two-day tournament. (Although, it's worth noting that he didn't wrestle dirty, he was just tough.)
My match with Tsolomon started well. If I remember correctly, I took an early lead. However, Tsolomon started scoring a lot of points and I knew that I needed to be more defensively proactive. While he was getting ready to perform a gut-wrench (a wrestling move designed to get quick points) on me, I tried taking a defensive position that I thought would block this move. I got my arm into the wrong position, and our combined weights (probably somewhere close to 450-500 pounds) rolled through my arm, shattering my left humerus (upper arm) bone.
The bone snap was so loud that everyone in the gym knew it was broken. Tsolomon jumped off of me, hoping to not injure me more. The referee saw my limp arm and thought I had dislocated my shoulder, so he started jerking my arm to try to pop my shoulder back in. I remained composed for a second or two; I remember I was in a seated position facing the stands and I remember the horror in the faces of some of my friends and teachers. I also remember seeing one of the teachers covering his young children's eyes and carrying them out of the gym. I learned later that I had given his little girl quite a scare. It was about that time that I started screaming uncontrollably.
The rest of the day is kind of a blur to me. I remember my arm was so badly broken that the school nurse was unable to splint it, so I was taken to the emergency room with my arm unsplinted. I was lying on the floor of a van when I realized that my fingers were rubbing something smooth. From the position I was sitting in, I could only see my shoulder, and it appeared that my arm should be resting on my chest. I realized that my arm was truly broken (I was still hoping it was dislocated, because I wanted to wrestle in the upcoming championship tournament) when I realized that my arm should be propped up on my chest, but the smooth surface I was rubbing was on the ground next to me. I was in constant pain the whole ride to the hospital, but I remember that it hurt the worst whenever the van turned.
Next I was in the ER and the doctors tried to splint my arm. This was very painful, but once it was splinted (and the wonder drugs started to kick in) my pain slowly started to subside. I was taken to my room and told that my doctor would be with me soon. Unfortunately, my doctor was in the middle of an operation, so he couldn't come for several hours. When Dr. Leo Caro entered my room, he was holding a few of my X-rays that were taken in the ER. He put them up on the light board and dropped the bomb on me. I had to choose between rehabilitating with a cast or with surgery. I had a slightly better chance of regaining use of my arm through surgery, but it was still likely that I would never regain use of my arm. He put a cast on my arm and requested that I spend the night at the hospital so that my swelling could be monitored.
I was a boarding school student, I was going to school in the Philippines and my parents were in Indonesia. My coach's wife went to my dorm and found my cell phone. She found my parent's phone number and sent them a text message explaining the situation. Unfortunately, my boarding school guardians (all boarding students had to have guardians who lived in the Philippines who could help in cases when the parents couldn't be reached) were with my parents at that time, because they were all attending a conference together in Indonesia.
Long story short, I did have surgery. I had to wait over a week to have the surgery, because my arm had already started to swell by the time the doctor decided it would be best to operate. I will have 2 plates and 12 screws in my arm my whole life and I have a 10-inch scar on the back of my arm as a permanent reminder of this whole ordeal. I worked hard to rehabilitate my arm, and I was able to wrestle the next year, my senior season, and play rugby in college. I still have a lot of pain in my arm on a very regular basis, but I have basically regained full use of my arm.
I mentioned before that this was one of the most life changing things I ever experienced. That sounds kind of like a dramatic thing to say, but let me try to list a few things this experience did for me:
-I have always been a loner, but this experience taught me how to ask for help.
-I was a tough, rude jock who was one of the "big men on campus" and this experienced humbled and softened me.
-This made me a better wrestler. I had never bothered learning technique because I was strong enough to win, but the weaker me had to learn how to win with technique the next year, which I did.
-This has given me confidence in my faith in Christ. I realize that I didn't experience a healing on a biblical level, but your perspective changes when you have full use of an arm that was supposed to be permanently crippled. I still see God as my healer--this has sustained my faith through many doubts and concerns.
