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The snow storm was growing fierce; my eyes were cold, my lashes matted to the point I could hardly see my former husband who was guiding us rapidly down from lift 15 toward 12 at Mammoth.  It was tough skiing for me.   My hampered vision did nothing to assist me through the short cuts my husband was taking us.  Quick turns on steep slopes were hard for me especially in powder snow.  Though my ski suit was new, I was freezing and frightened when we seemed to be the only people on the slope.  How can this be, I wondered, when just this morning I stood in rope-lines filled with families celebrating the Christmas vacation? 

My thoughts turned to panic and excruciating pain as my body was thrown to the ground.  I attempted an S curve, over-corrected and jammed my right ski into the up-hill slope while my left was facing down hill.  I lay flat on my back.  I could hear myself screaming though I was unaware I was in charge of it.  The horrendous noise continued, mixed with hot tears that melted the snow falling on my face.

There appeared a tall male figure.  He was standing over me, his nose and mouth covered with a scarf.  He was just staring at me, not saying a word, as if he were in shock.  He was picking up his pole and jabbing it into the snow over and over while watching me suffer, saying nothing.  Then he disappeared; I hoped to get help for me.   

Then another figure was at my side.  It had taken my husband, an orthopedic surgeon, ten minutes to side-step up the slope, in order to find me, following the agonizing noise I was sharing with the world.  He then did what we are told not to do.  In his panic, he grabbed my leg and ripped it from its burial ground in the deepening snow.  My ear-piercing screams became shouts of horror, even louder than before. 

Due to the severity of the storm, it took twenty more minutes for the ski patrol to find me.  Being a person who has an unusually high threshold for pain, I was now experiencing what I had never felt before. I thought the overwhelming agony would soon kill me and I was anxious and ready for it to do so.  When the ski patrol arrived, a young man removed my skis with care and placed my leg in a cardboard cast.  He kept telling me I could stop yelling now; he did not know that I could not. 

“She can yell all she wants!” my former husband shouted at him.  It was one of the nicest things I ever heard him say.

After I was buckled and covered in the basket that was to deliver me to the emergency room at the bottom of the hill--there was no hospital at Mammoth then--we began our trip down the steep hill through the mounds of powdered snow.  When the basket began to careen back and forth, I knew something was terribly wrong.  We began to go faster and faster.  The basket started to bounce and with every slap on the snow, I felt the broken bones being placed and replaced in my leg.

In that I could not see anything other than a touch of light through the blanket wrapped around me, I don’t know if there were any other skiers on the slope.  I do know that, if there were, they had a hard time ever skiing again when they recalled the sight of a out of control ski basket racing, bouncing, and chasing its leader down the mountain with its contents blaring high-pitched, devastating shrieks.

We made it down and the driver of my basket was ashen.  The brakes on the basket had broken and he had to race to keep the basket from running over him.  He thought we both would be killed.  I was unable to thank him; my voice was gone.

I was grateful, very grateful, to received pain medicine.  A flood of relief flowed through my body and yet, with it came the questions.  There were so many questions.  Had I been receiving signs regarding this accident since waking up this morning?  Where are my boys; are they O.K.; how will I be able to take care of them; will we stay here or will we go home?  

We had come to Mammoth for a week of skiing with Mark and Rob, our 10 and 12 year old boys, who loved to ski.  We had rented a condominium with another orthopedic surgeon, and his family.

My mind pondered the first question—had there been a forewarning of this accident?  We were having coffee when the first negative sign occurred.  Our family was using the upstairs condo quarters. Descending the stairs, I slipped and spilled hot coffee on the new robe my girlfriend had loaned me. 

Next, my husband got up early to rent skis for the boys.  On the way back to the condo, not having secured our camper’s door, the newly rented skis had fallen out.  I don’t remember whether we found them or had to pay for them and rent more!

The third sign happened after taking my boys to ski school.  The adult lift line looked like a brilliant, painted snake that was curled in every direction and moving with hesitation.   I had waited in the sinuous line for over an hour, and, when I was next, just before stepping onto the lift, the loud speaker called my name saying, “Would you please come to the children’s ski school office for your son, Rob,?”

Thinking that Rob had suffered an accident, I waddled, as fast as possible in my skis, working my way through the crowd to the ski school.  There my younger son announced that he was cold! 

I asked my higher self if there were something wrong I had done which had created this very negative and unfortunate day!  In hindsight I know these were signs saying: Go back to bed and get up on the other side; listen, someone is trying to tell you something or this is your last chance!

My reverie was broken by my husband telling me there was an x-ray machine at a chiropractor’s office he had been given permission to use.  On the chiropractor’s table the two orthopedic surgeons cut off my new ski suit, took an x-ray and told me I had a double spiral fracture of the tibia and the fibula.  They put the chiropractor’s old cast material on my leg--all the office had--carried me to our camper, and took me back to the condo.

I was placed on a sofa in the living room of the condo for the rest of the week.  There I relived the accident every time I fell asleep—awaking with horror and shouts from my dreams.  Jerking awake, I also re-experienced the pain.  I was alone during the day while the others skied.  When I complained that it felt like a knife was stuck in my ankle, I was assured there was nothing in my ankle and given another pain pill.  The pills turned out to be out of date and without potency.

To heal myself and to get to total forgiveness, I must also report the day, when the in-house doctors, my husband and our friend, were discussing my condition one afternoon in the living room.  They had placed a portable potty for the week next to my sofa.   I had to use it and was mortified that they chatted while I, a Southern, modest woman sat on my condo throne.  It seemed they never thought of leaving the room or were aware of my embarrassment.  Even at 38, I was not able to tell my husband and friend to leave the room.

On the sixth day of lying on the condo couch, a friend from Santa Barbara came to visit me.  Mary was a nurse and the wife of another orthopedic surgeon.  She looked at me with sympathetic eyes and asked if I had had a bath.  When I answered no, she did her nurse thing, making me feel loved, cared for and clean.

The trip home was what I had longed for from the time of the accident.   I lay in the back of our camper for almost six hours.  When I was given my pain pill every two hours I was horrified that I began to steal more than one.  I was still aware they were out of date and were giving me very little relief.  Yet, I was afraid I had become addicted to the medicine.

            After having a real cast placed on my leg, getting my crutches and wheel-chair, I was told that I would be in a cast for six months.  There was no way I could go to my business; I could not even dress myself.  I read books, stayed in my home alone while my children were in school, untied my kids’ scrambled kite strings, and became sad and angry.  I lived with unresolved anger churning inside of me for 31 years. 

This month four orthopedic surgeons tell me it is too late for healing; my X-rays show the break had gone into my ankle and was never set.  Now I’m walking bone on bone having worn away all the cartilage.  Their advice is total ankle replacement. 

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