2010 - Starting it off with a bang, Uncle Steve style

Earlier this week we were excited to hear that we were getting a surprise (and all-to-infrequent) visit from one of my two far flung sisters - the one from Texas who makes up almost 3/4ths of Noah and Elliot’s cousins. We planned for a New Year’s Day get-together, along with Todd, Tammi and Dylan, initially intending to ski beforehand at an area “resort” (we’re in Missouri, remember) and then convening at our house for dinner. The upside of having ten kids is that it’s a party no matter where you go (or maybe a riot). The downside is the expense of ten kids, and in this case, the cost and effort to outfit that many kids in skis, boots, and ski passes for a couple of hours, combined with the two hours of travel to and from the ski place wasn’t that practical. Instead, we opted for Suicide Hill a few blocks from our house. We figured an afternoon of sledding would be fun enough and enough to work up a good appetite.

Noah was (thankfully) taking a nap as the hordes descended. He woke up grumpy that morning, and we had been trying like heck to get him to sleep before we put him through the effort of an afternoon of sledding and post-sledding chaos at our house. Finally he awoke around 2:00 and we set about getting everyone suited up for the cold and snow.

The temperatures were in the low teens, and with 12 kids, our kitchen looked like a garage sale with all the coats, snow pants, boots, hats and mittens strewn about, ready to be donned. We eventually got everyone dressed, at least enough not to freeze to death, and headed out.

Steve getting Luci ready for sledding

Steve and Katie getting ready to race

Racing down headfirst

Bella getting an assist from Steve

Bella on her way

E watching all the action on his sled. He was content just to be pulled around the top.

Todd getting ready to launch. You can see how slick it is in this picture.

Todd rocketing down the hill

Braden pulling Greta back up the hill. Vivi is just over his left shoulder.

Todd and Tami on the tube.

Dylan about to come off his sled.

Dylan off his sled

Bella trying (unsuccessfully) to get back up the hill. It was too icy even for me to help her walk up here.

Noah getting ready to go down with Mandy

Noah is winning the race. He's probably just more aerodynamic with his mouth closed.

Mandy pulling Noah back up the hill

We’ve talked about Suicide Hill as a place before, but never really described it well. The park that contains it is called Brookside Park, and is a trapezoid-shaped area approximately 125 yards on the north end, 170 yards on the south end and bounded by Brookside Blvd – a four-lane road - on the west boundary. The north side is very steep, with a substantial drop that runs east to west (towards Brookside Blvd) over some pretty big bumps and hills.

The south end has a much more gradual slope and a much longer runout area. Towards the bottom there is a flat area where you lose speed, right before a final small (but fairly steep) downhill that gives you one more final thrill. There are a few trees at the bottom of this side, but you are typically traveling slow enough to either bail, or not hit them fast enough to do any damage. Shortly beyond the trees, the path begins to move uphill as it approaches Brookside Blvd, which further slows your progress. When it’s snow-covered, you almost have to push yourself down the hill on the extreme south side.

The past few visits, unless one of us was actually riding on the sled with him, this was the area that we let Noah go down on his own because it was difficult to get up to a critical speed. The inevitable crash would throw him off at such low speeds, it wasn’t a concern.

My first inkling that sledding this hill today was going to be different came shortly after everyone exited the cars and started heading down the hill. We stuck to the south side of the park, partly because the north side was worn thin at the top, to the point that you could see several sections of dirt, but also because we had several young kids with us who were first-timers. I was armed with a camera, and mainly trying to document the fun. I watched as Noah and Mandy went down their first run, and noted oddly that Noah’s trajectory took him quite a bit nearer to Brookside Blvd than it should have. In hindsight, this should have been sounding some alarm bells, but at the time I simply thought that it was odd that he went so much farther than he had at any time in the past on the same run. And at higher speeds. After a second time I decided to head down to the bottom, just to make sure that neither he nor the other kids got too close to the street. As I headed downhill, slipping and sliding, it occurred to me how slippery this slope really was.

A few days after the 7-10 inches we received Christmas Eve and Day, and after our decision to go sledding on Suicide Hill, there were a couple of days of freezing rain and 38-40 degree temps that warmed the snow significantly. This was followed by two days of near-zero temperatures that turned the hill into a solid sheet of ice. At the time I was more worried about having enough snow to have a good time instead of worrying about the safety of sledding on ice in the direction of a major thoroughfare, with trees and telephone poles as obstacles.

At the bottom of the hill, camera in hand, I watched (and took pictures of) the many Johnson/Thomas kids that were careening down the hill, and dodging many of the other families that were there that day. As I tried to help a couple of kids back up the hill on what was essentially (as I belatedly realized) a solid sheet of ice, it occurred to me that this could really get dangerous. The ‘noise’ increased, as I tried to keep track of the 17 or so people on the hill, and the alarm bells were getting louder. We'd been sledding all of 10 or 15 minutes. Later, Mandy and I both agreed that we should have called it quits and gone back to the house when we realized how much different it was today.

The following took place in the matter of a couple of seconds, although it seemed like it took an hour. I was shooting everyone’s favorite Uncle Steve as he and 22-month-old Luci came flying down the hill on an inflatable tube. After snapping a few pictures, I realized how fast they were going, then looked up to see that their trajectory put them headed right into the path of a telephone pole, at a speed that I thought was impossible to survive. The tube was rotating, so Steve did not see the pole until the last possible moment.

Three...
two...
one...

My dad (in the red coat), next to the pole Steve hit.

His son Eli, who was standing near me, only had time to yell “Pole!!” as they headed straight into it, Steve’s body exactly perpendicular to the pole. A millisecond before they hit, Steve incredibly shoved Luci away from his body and took the brunt of the hit at full speed. The impact at his midsection wrapped his body around the pole at an unnatural angle. Try touching the left side of your head to your left foot, without leaning forward, and you can get an idea of both the angle and the force at which he hit it. The sound of it, which I won’t describe here, was almost as bad as the image. My first hope was that he live, and my second was that he only broke a few ribs.

At the time I wasn’t sure Luci had been thrown clear of the pole - it was really close - and I dropped the camera in the snow and ran the 15 or so yards to make sure she was ok, even as I could see Steve gasping for breath and writhing in pain. Eli made it to her before me, and swooped her up off the snow after her flight through the air and onto the ice, scared, but ok.

I went back to Steve, and found him rolling back and forth, still struggling to breathe. Even in extreme pain, his only words were, and only concern was, “How’s the girl?” and “How’s Lu-lu” over and over. A bystander immediately called 911, and as I looked up I saw my dad running down the hill (in what may be dress shoes?). He quickly got him off the snow and onto the sled as he was going into shock, and his wife (my sister Lisa) appeared soon after at his side - I think Todd drove her down from the top of the hill.

Fortunately they have years of emergency medicine experience between them both – my sister as and EMT and then an ER nurse for many years, at Dallas' largest children's hospital and my dad as an EMT and teacher of emergency medicine. Even more fortunately the ambulance responded quickly and was there within five or so minutes. Lisa rode with Steve in the ambulance, and we quickly got everyone in a car and headed to our house.

Lisa and Dad. Katie is doing a head count. Braden, Bella and Eli are helping.

Today's ride home arrives.

As I write this, he is in ICU at a Level 1 Trauma Center here in Kansas City with an epidural to manage the pain of breathing. He’s got five or six broken ribs and they are still looking at the possibility of a chest tube because of the blood around his lungs, and surgery for the removal of his shattered spleen. Despite all this, my sister kept telling me how blessed they both felt. Because of her background, the CAT scan nurse let read the results with her as they got them. Lisa said she started crying, not from worry, but from joy. Joy that he was not injured worse, that he didn't hit that pole with his head, that their daughter was uninjured and that despite the massive pain he will endure for the next 6-8 weeks (or more), everything is 'fixable'.

This certainly wasn't the way we envisioned the afternoon going. It really is all fun and games until someone puts an eye out, or lacerates a spleen, whatever, but the kids put a brave face on and we all enjoyed the hot cocoa and spaghetti dinner afterwards. Steve's dad arrived later to take them all back to their place for the night. As always, we enjoyed seeing them and having them around, and missed the opportunity to visit more with Steve and Lisa.