50 Years Ago Today

I remember it like it was just yesterday sometimes and I still feel the effects of it at times. The day of injury that took the most amount of time to recover from in my life. 

I was out playing touch football with some college guys on the intramural fields where Mountainview Rehabilitation Hospital currently stands on Van Voorhis Road. It was a rainy night, but I didn't care I just loved to play ball and I was playing ball despite the rain and soaked field. 

It was a play where I ran to my left and swung wide to avoid being touched and my left slipped out from under me and I ended up doing a perfect split in the mud. What had happened was I had what they called a green tree fracture on my left thigh. The college guys I was playing with put me on a ball bag and carried me across the street to where we lived (beside where starbucks is now) and put me on the couch until Dad got there and ran me to Mnn General Hospital when it was still on Van Voorhis Road. 

I was fortunate, the orthopedic surgeon on duty that night was Dr Pickett, who was famous for operating on Audie Murphy a number of times. Turns out I was in the hospital for a month, in traction where a Pin was drilled through my leg for the traction. I went home and spent the next 6 weeks in a body cast similar to the one above, bit it went midway up my chest. When the body cast was removed I was at home and didn;t do any rehab and my leg locked into place which required me to go back into the hospital in traction again (just weights pulling on my leg this time) to straighten my leg out, to being put into a straight leg cast for 2 more weeks to rehabbing the range of motion in my left leg until it was usable. 

Do you know what I was most upset about that night? By the time they finished with me in the emergency room and got me into a room, it was 8:30 and I missed Maude. 

Hi ho hi ho?