1
It was October '06 (I believe), and my church youth group was on a fall retreat north of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. On Saturday night we played the traditional 1 o'clock in the morning game of capture the flashlight-in-a-bucket. The location and conditions were optimal that night—we played in the woods and the sky was overcast, making the visibility low. As usual, there were two teams—the members of one wearing pink glow-bracelets and those of the other wearing green ones—whose primary goal was to find their flashlight in a bucket and return to the clearing that served as base/jail. The team members were told that they must never ever, under any circumstances, hide their glow-in-the-dark bracelets. They also had to avoid falling victim to the stealth shadow cunning and sneaky terror agents of darkness and possessors of unnatural speed (or, simply, the secret agents), whose sole point of existence was to prevent either of the teams from winning. Anyone tagged by a secret agent would usually scream or shout in terror, and was then obliged to proceed directly to jail. In accordance to the tradition of the game, there were only two secret agents, and they did not wear glowing accessories—they dressed in black.
After the previous fall retreat of 2005, in which a team member fell headlong into a wooden bench and bit through his lip while fleeing desperately from a secret agent, the youth were encouraged to use caution and restraint while playing.
After the fall retreat of 2006, the game was never played again.
2
I always loved playing as a secret agent. By fall 2006 I was notorious for my ability to sneak up on or run down anyone wearing a glow bracelet. I was very chivalrous, never intentionally frightening ladies. I would generally just jog silently up and tap them on the shoulder, at which point they would scream in surprise nonetheless. Should my prey notice me and run, I would give chase and mercilessly chase them down. However, with the memory of the guy I chased into a bench still fresh in my mind from the year before, I was very careful. After a while, people started to surrender rather than be put to the chase.
On that fateful Saturday night (well, technically it was Sunday morning) in October, I was a secret agent and my brother, who was finally old enough to be at the retreat with me, was a member of the green team. As the night progressed I tagged many people and established myself once again as the terror of the night, but, as is always the case, the teams drew closer and closer to their inevitable victory. Finally, at about 1:30 am, the green team managed to get their bucket and flashlight onto a main path through the woods—the path that led to the base. With the base clearing in site, the only obstacle for them to surmount was me, the lone secret agent that stood on the path. When I saw a horde of seven or eight green bracelets and a flash-lit bucket jogging my way, I broke into a sprint, desperate to stop them. I was running at about fifteen miles per hour, closing in rapidly until the leading bracelet was only forty feet away. Thirty. Twenty… At about fifteen feet I was about to hit the brakes when I suddenly received such a massive blow to my forehead that my head was stopped cold while my feet flew out in front of me. Still under the effect of some serious momentum, my body sailed parallel to the ground for about six feet before my back finally hit the dirt. They say the collision sounded like two large rocks hitting each other with a hint of watermelon hitting asphalt. I didn’t hear it.
3
In fact, not only did I not hear it, but other than a dull feeling of shock, I felt little pain. I did not lose consciousness. When I hit the ground everything was sort of hazy and I was seeing stars, but I stayed aware. Then I started to hear someone wailing in pain. I realized in quick succession that, 1: that thing my head had smashed into was a person, 2: that person sounded seriously injured, and 3: that person sounded a lot like my little brother. I rose up from the ground and staggered over to the figure lying on the ground, joining the growing crowd gathered in concern. It was Daniel. My brother was on his back moaning and wailing with pain, his hands on his forehead. I was terrified. My voice joined the chorus of concern, asking him if he was all right, calling his name, asking him to let us see, holding up fingers, asking him if he could sit up, asking him if he could move anything. I noticed that my nose was bleeding. Great ... just great.
After a few minutes, Daniel was able to catch his breath and overcome the shock and pain. Everyone was much relieved—it seemed that no one was seriously injured. By this time, everyone knew the game was over and we started to pack up. Although I was rather miffed at my brother for stowing his glow bracelet in his pocket, I was happy that he had not been hurt badly. Like my usual self, I was determined to let everyone know I was all right. It was just a bloody nose—I felt my face—and a black eye. Ugh. To prove my state of being all right, I insisted on carrying the hot dog/bun/marshmallow container back. Someone else insisted otherwise. I wound up giving in. It was about a quarter mile back to the recreational/dining building that was the center of our activities. By the time we arrived I was getting rather irritated at my bloody nose and was starting to feel a little tired. My brother didn’t feel too hot either, so we went into the dining room to lie down for a while. Our youth pastor, Chris, and my father, who was also at the retreat as a cabin leader, came in with us and encouraged everyone else to give us space. The rest of the youth, assured that we were fine and just needed some recovery time, went downstairs and watched a movie.
Armed with a thick accordion of paper towels, I laid down determined to conquer this bloody nose. Usually this tactic works. However, this time the blood was thinner than I remember it ever being, and instead of coagulating, it just kept flowing back into my throat. I did the only thing I could think of doing—I waited for it to stop. Meanwhile, I was starting to get cold. My dad had some emergency response training and told me that I was going into shock. It didn’t surprise me much, considering the impact my head had experienced. I probably had a concussion, but that was nothing new. I hadn’t even lost consciousness, so it couldn’t be that bad … But the black eye … I was rather irritated about that. It takes so long for those stupid things to go away. So I wrapped myself in my jacket and shivered away, irked at the disfigurement of my face and impatiently awaiting the moment when the flow of blood from my nose would stop. I waited, and waited, and waited, but it would not stop. Chris was long gone, having the responsibility to get all the other youth to sleep. My brother eventually got up and went to his cabin to go to bed. By two thirty in the morning it was just me, my dad, and my persistent nosebleed.
4
I began to lose track of time. At some point I began to feel very nauseous, and because everyone had gone off to their cabins to sleep, my dad and I went downstairs where it was warmer. The movement pushed me past the verge of nausea and I staggered to the nearest trashcan. Bent double over the can, I began spewing dark pink vomit. The taste and smell of blood was overwhelming. My nose had been bleeding steadily into my stomach for hours, and for ten or fifteen minutes I did nothing but vomit it back out. My nose, in the meantime, did not stop bleeding.
At this point, both my dad and I decided that this might be more serious than a simple nosebleed. A couple who had driven up to the retreat separately drowsily offered their car, and my father and I began the drive to the Harrisburg hospital. That drive was miserable. I had a small trashcan between my legs, and though there was really not that much left in my stomach to throw up, I did manage to empty it further. Every time we hit a bump I felt my stomach turn. I had never felt this nauseous before. I have always had a rather strong stomach, but ever since that day I feel slightly nauseous at the smell or taste of blood.
By the time we got to the hospital it was light out. As we walked through the front door I noticed with relief that my nose, after probably four or five hours, had finally stopped bleeding. I was ecstatic. We were escorted to the emergency care unit at the hospital and I was put in a bed and hooked to an IV to replace all the vital nutrition and fluids I had lost. Eventually, they unhooked me, led me to a CAT scanner, performed a scan, and led me back. As I lay there staring at the ceiling, wondering what had actually happened to my head, I felt surprisingly at peace. I was prepared to hear the worst, prepared even to let go of life if necessary.
When I heard a nurse whispering to my father in a very subdued manner, I knew the diagnosis was not good. After a few minutes, they came into my room. I made eye contact and assured the nurse that I was ready to hear whatever news she had. She looked down at her clipboard for a bit, and after warning me that the news was not good at all, began explaining. My skull had been fractured in four places around the left eye, including both the front and back walls of my left sinus, which had allowed air to get into my brain. Having air in the brain is apparently a very bad thing, as it can and often does lead to infection, meningitis, and death. The nurse informed me that there was nothing anyone at that hospital could do to help me, but that they had written a referral to Johns Hopkins; if anyone could help me, she said, they could. In the mean time, there was a crack between my sinus and my brain that could let more air in. She told me to not exert or strain myself in any way, to avoid sneezing, and to never, under any circumstance, blow my nose.
5
I don’t remember much of our drive back to Maryland—I had not slept at all the night before and the stress caused by the whole debacle had further drained me of energy, so I drifted in and out of consciousness. I think I spent that night in my own bed before going to Johns Hopkins in the morning. Once at Johns Hopkins, I remember being transferred between departments over and over again, and being examined and placed through various imaging devices multiple times—it was all a blur, rather surreal. There was a tangible chance that death was imminent for me, and although I definitely wanted to live, at the same time I think I was preparing myself to let go.
As it turned out, by the time I got to Hopkins, the air had already started to recede from my brain. The doctors explained that the big risk now had to do with my sinus. There was a chance that due to the nature of my injury, I could wind up being stuck with an incurable and non-stop migraine headache for the rest of my life. I probably would have seriously considered opting for death if given a choice between the two. Traditionally, the doctors would have preformed a very extensive and invasive surgery that would have involved peeling back my forehead and filling my sinus with fat. However, the doctor said that there was a chance that, if left to its own means, my body might heal itself properly. This sounded nice, and although I wasn’t too keen on risking death or immitigable migraine, I wanted to avoid surgery if at all possible. I decided to trust it would be healed without event.
While at Hopkins I received a very large card from everyone at the retreat, wishing me well. Also, because I stayed there a few nights, I had to call in to my boss at the college and call off work. I casually apologized and told her that I wouldn’t be able to make it because I had broken my skull. We still get a kick out of that phone conversation.
Within a week the swelling had completely disappeared, and I noticed with fascination that if I pressed lightly on my forehead above my left eye I could feel the broken sections of bone grating against each other. I loved telling that to people and watching their reactions. I was restricted from strenuous activity in any form for a few months and was still highly discouraged from blowing my nose or sneezing, but it healed well. My brother, having received the blow on the strongest part of his forehead, and with the impact being softened by the fact that my bones had given way a bit, had gotten off with nothing more than a bump on his head. It did not even discolor.
I have told this story many times to many different people since that retreat, and have in doing so discovered things about myself I may not have realized before. Although I appreciate the sensationalistic value of such traumatic, near-death injury stories and fully capitalize on this to hold my audiences captive, I have realized upon retrospection that actually experiencing it first hand was much different, much less dramatic than what I may have expected. From the time I ran into my brother to the time my life resumed normalcy, I took every big and threatening new development in stride and accepted it. There was a peace in being absolutely helpless and unable to control my fate. For me, the big stuff didn’t seem like a big deal—it was just what had been dealt me. It was the little stuff that irked me. Having to deal with that bloody nose and the prospect of having to walk around with that black eye irritated me. It is the little things in life that have always had a way with me—the irksome, the irritating, the uncomfortable—those are the things I struggle to accept and get over. I want to get to the point where I can accept doing that next little, irritating task that needs to get done just as easily as I could accept having air in my brain.
