Snowboarder vs. Tree
This is the story I told at a Moth StorySLAM event in Washington, DC on April 15, 2019. The theme of the night was blunders. This story won that evening.
I remember feeling my ears and throat vibrating. I was covered in tree bark. And I was trying to figure out who was screaming.
It was me. I was screaming because I had just snowboarded into a tree. And I didn’t know it yet, but that was the beginning of my life changing forever.
We were in Breckenridge, Colorado on our last day of snowboarding. I was with my wife, Brooke, and our friends. And I was alone racing down a fast black diamond on my second run of the morning.
My snowboarding style is all-gas-no-brake. I loved pushing myself out of my comfort zone. That day I was riding switch. I was leading with my other leg because I wasn’t comfortable doing it and I needed the practice.
The bottom of a run called The American merges with a green trail called the Lower American. I saw ahead of me a skier to my right hugging the tree line, some wide open space down the middle, and a large tree to my left. I chose a line down the middle close to the tree.
As I approached, the skier took a hard left in front of me and crossed my line. I cut around to the left of the tree. On any other day I would have made it. But I forgot I was riding switch. I didn’t have enough control of my board.
Once I realized I was going to hit the tree, I fell down to take the impact with my snowboard. I hit the tree at 30 MPH with my board under my right foot. The impact pushed my foot through my tibia and shattered it into a thousand pieces at the surface of the joint. My fibula snapped in half. My foot was dangling from my leg. My snowboard was just fine.
When Ski Patrol arrived, I uttered my first coherent words.
“My wife is going to kill me.”
Earlier that morning, the last thing Brooke said to me was, “Tony, please be careful.” She knows me better than I do. I wasn’t careful.
We took a bumpy toboggan ride down the mountain to the urgent care center where I met up with Brooke (she did not kill me). I remember telling her, “I’ll be fine. I’ve broken my ankle before and I’ll be back on my feet and snowboarding again in no time.”
The doctor heard us talking and interrupted me.
“You need to understand something. This isn’t a normal injury. You may never walk on this foot ever again.”
I stubbornly refused to admit my life had changed. I was obsessed with the idea of snowboarding again. It was urgent and focused.
But after years of surgeries, spending months at a time in external fixators with large stainless steal screws drilled into my bones and protruding out of my skin, that dream was fading fast.
My focus shifted. I was worrying about less ambitious things. I suffered from debilitating ankle arthritis with no cartilage left in my ankle. I needed a cane to walk. If Brooke and I decided to have kids, would I be able to carry our children on my shoulders?
Three years after snowboarding into a tree, we decided to amputate my right leg below the knee.
Brooke organized a going away party for my leg. I got a pedicure to send it off in style. I explained why the pedicure wasn’t for both feet. And I was rewarded with the opportunity to be convinced not to amputate while I got my toenails painted. I was hoping to get half off as a reward instead.
Cutting off my leg did not take courage. I wasn’t afraid because of Brooke.
Brooke is a nurse practitioner. Her specialty is palliative medicine. She helps patients with serious and terminal illnesses pick from a devastatingly small list of terrible options. She helps them choose by starting a conversation about how they want to spend their remaining time on Earth.
I was Brooke’s patient. And because of it, I was excited about the amputation.
As I learned to walk again, something unexpected happened. We started meeting other people with severe ankle pain and new amputees beginning their journeys. We met them through a blog I started after the accident.
By sharing our story, I discovered we could help other people facing similar challenges. Through this process, I recognized the role hope and humor played in my own recovery and, in Brooke, what it meant to be a partner to someone in sickness and in health.
I thought when I snowboarded into that tree that my life had forked down this new and terrible path. But I’ve realized the worst mistake I’ve ever made in my life was the best gift I have ever received.
Five years after I snowboarded into a tree, through surgeries and focused obsession, I snowboarded again. The experience was incredible. I remember defiantly screaming to the trees as I flew by, “I’m back!”
But as good as achieving that goal felt, nothing beats being able to carry our three-year-old daughter on my shoulders.
