I broke my back at Alpine Meadows on March 17, 2001 - St. Patrick's day - taking too much air on a tabletop in the terrain park. That in itself wouldn't seem like a lucky thing. In fact it was not lucky at all, simply an error in execution on my part. But the luck started soon after.

As a bit of background, a tabletop is a terrain feature in snowboard parks comprised of a steeply upward sloping takeoff ramp, a flat tabletop portion, followed by a steep downward sloping landing zone. The object is to approach the takeoff at the right speed and angle, launch into the air, jump over the table top, and ride down the landing zone. My mistake was in taking too much speed and being turned the wrong way at takeoff. So instead of getting fifteen feet of air over the ten foot high tabletop and then riding gracefully on I took maybe 25 or 30 feet of air and flew over the entire thing in a horizontal attitude - eventually meeting the flat terrain far below on the other side pretty much flat on my back. So this wasn't lucky. Here is an MPEG video of the crash (1.3 Mb).

As I was coming down from my flight I was thinking "This is going to hurt". When I hit the ground I heard bones break in my lower back and felt a great deal of pain. This is where I got lucky. I was sliding down the hill on my back, my board an anchor behind me dragging me to a stop with my head pointed downhill. I was saying to myself "please don't be paralysed." As soon as I came to a stop, looking up at blue sky, I tested my arms to see whether they worked - I was able to raise my forearms off the snow. I then tried to move my legs - I wasn't trying to get up and walk, any movement would suffice - though the pain was intense and my legs felt like they were on fire, I wiggled my toes and moved my knees toward each other about an inch. I knew then that there was a good chance I would walk again - this was luck! I found out later that the force of the landing had broken not only my back but my snowboard.

The luck continued as the ski patrol responded. They immobilized my spine (some pictures: 305, 306, 307, 309) and put me on a backboard, then put me on the sled to first aid (MPEG video of me on sled, 1.3 Mb) where I was stabilized for transport.  An ambulance came to take me to Tahoe Forest Medical Center in Truckee.  I could feel pins and needles and a mild burning sensation in my legs from mid-thigh to mid-calf.  I took this as a good sign!

CT scans at Truckee Forest confirmed that I had broken my back but not severed my spinal cord. The extent of my injury was beyond the level of care they could give me in Truckee so I was transported to Washoe Medical Center in Reno where they have neurosurgeons and orthopaedic surgeons who specialize in these kinds of injuries. After arrival at Washoe I went for more X-rays, CT scans and some MRIs.  The radiologist reported an acute burst fracture of T12 (the twelfth thoracic vertebrae basically exploded into a bunch of small pieces) which was pushing on my spinal cord but had not permanently injured it. In addition, T8, T9 and T10 displayed mild acute compression fractures (they were flattened a bit but didn't explode - I'll just be a bit shorter). These images show the broken vertebrae (sc1, sc2, sc3, sc4, sc5, sc6, sc7). When I look at that busted up vertebra pushing against my spinal cord I thank God for not letting it move that final couple of millimeters and paralysing me.

I also fractured a bone in my right arm at the level of my wrist (a hairline fracture of the distal radius) and the thing made my right hand swell up quite a bit (hematoma). I'll have a cast on it for four to six weeks.

Sunday evening I was fitted for a removable back brace by Jay Murray of Hanger Specialty Prosthetics  - he took plaster casts of my torso, front and back, and returned a few hours later with a "Kydex jacket". It is a two piece plastic carapace that looks much like a teenage mutant ninja turtle shell that straps to the front and back of my body. I will wear it until my back is strong enough and stable enough to stand on its own.

I had surgery on Tuesday night starting at around 8pm to fuse the three vertebrae in my lower back ; the surgery took about 3.5 hours and was a great success. Here is an X-ray taken during surgery showing the positioning of the pins and screws (also visible is a clamp and some wires which they removed prior to closing). When they woke me up in the recovery room I got to feel a whole new level of discomfort.  For a while I thought aliens had abducted me and I had woken up in the middle of the dissection. A bunch of morphine took care of that in short order.

About 3pm, Wednesday afternoon, with the help of the physical therapist, I put on my brace and stood up and walked about forty feet! Over the next several days I walked longer distances, climbed and descended stairs, did some leg exercises and generally improved at a great rate. On Sunday, March 25, I negotiated my release from hospital.

I spent a couple of days at a cabin at Tahoe and flew down to Newport Beach on Tuesday where I got some rehab at California Rehab near the Hoag Hospital. My mother stayed with me until April 8 and helped me get used to functioning again. I returned to work at my project in Anaheim on Monday, April 9.  Sitting on my butt at my desk is pretty much the same as sitting on my butt at home so why not?  The first couple of days were very tiring but by the end of the week I was quite comfortable working a full eight hours.

I'll be fully recovered in a few months and look forward to full use of my body with little or no limitation on range of motion or flexibility in my back. I will snowboard again next season - but I will stay out of the terrain park.