Unexpected things happen in life all the time. No one ever gets up in the morning and decides it is a good day to have a car wreck or break a bone. Most assuredly, on a September day back in the year 2000, BDC did not roll out of bed with the intention of spending the afternoon having his left ear sewn back onto his head, but alas…without further ado…and by popular demand…Collins Chronicles is proud to present…the “ear story.”
In the summer and fall of 2000, I was working at an equipment rental store in Lenoir City, Tennessee. Those of you who know me best are already chuckling at the notion given my disdain for manual labor, lack of even elementary mechanical skill, and overall distaste for handling equipment that could potential kill me. Yet, for the most part I enjoyed working at the rental store, especially the hours and coworkers, and headed into work on this particular day in a generally good mood.
I don’t remember much of the day up until my head trauma, but I think it has more to do with it being uneventful than some lasting effects from the accident. I know I had a red shirt and red hat on that day, which was helpful as I am still able to wear them to this day despite the amount of blood they got on them. This may be a good point in the story to mention this one can get quite graphic. In telling the story to people in person over the years, I have generally gotten people fairly close to tossing their cookies from time to time, so if you are one who is prone to sickness over things like this, maybe you should skip this one and rejoin us on our next adventure here at Collins Chronicles.
Okay, if you are still reading, don’t worry. The story is not that bad. I just wanted to filter out the lightweights early. We rented lots of different types of equipment at the store, but the one item that I knew the least about (because it can really only be used in certain locations and under certain conditions) was the concrete trowel machine. If you have never seen a trowel machine, try to imagine the ceiling fan in your living room attached to a solid aluminum bicycle’s handlebars. You hold the handlebars and the blades of the “fan” spin rapidly and smooth down the drying concrete. (NOTE: To this day, I still know nothing about trowel machines, other than my bitter hatred of them, so this description may not be exactly right, but you get the general idea anyway.)
A couple of local guys came in together in their pickup truck and rented a trowel machine for the day. I got all their paperwork filled out, took their cash, and had them back around to the warehouse where we could load up the truck. Trowel machines are not all that heavy, so we had the sucker in the back of their truck in no time flat. At this point, I turned my back to the truck and began to tell Local Guy A the instructions for cranking and operating the machine (at least I told him what I thought he should try anyway, as I had never ACTUALLY operated the thing before). Little did I know it, but Local Guy B was behind me, still in the back of the truck, following my instructions as I gave them. As it turned out, I actually did know how to crank a trowel machine after all, because as I finished explaining it, I heard it rumble to life in the truck bed behind me.
Unfortunately for me, trowel machines are meant to operate in a wide expanse of concrete, not in the small confines of a truck bed. With no way for the blades to spin inside the bed, they stayed stuck in place and the large aluminum handles made one full (and quite rapid) revolution before whacking me with enough force to knock my ear into three pieces.
To be honest, it did not hurt at all. In fact, I turned back to Local Guy A and reminded him when the machine was due back and such, but he was not paying much attention to me. Apparently, he was too busy panicking and turning green at the sight of my head. I could not quite figure it out for a moment, because I honestly thought everything was still fine, and knew I had taken some solid blows to my head during my wrestling exploits, and come out reasonably fine. Then it started to rain, but only on my left shoulder and arm. It was still sunny out, so this did not make a lot of sense either until I looked down at my left side. It was covered in blood, and the pitter patter of drops was still falling steadily from the area around my ear hole.
If you have ever had the misfortune of nicking your ear while shaving or getting a haircut, you are probably aware that it bleeds profusely. Turns out when you smash the sucker into three pieces that your head tries to convert into a sprinkler system of sorts. At the sight of my own blood flowing at that rate, my adrenaline kicked in and the next few minutes are really blurry. I held a wad of paper towels against the side of my head as my boss from the rental store drove me to the nearest walk-in clinic in his Jeep. He would tell me later that I asked him about a dozen times how bad it was, but I only remember asking once and getting a sketchy look from him. Sad as it sounds, in my head, I was already considering the potential impact a lost ear could have on boosting my wrestling career prospects. “Cactus Jack” Mick Foley was hardly a household name until he left an ear in a German trashcan, so this could be a good thing after all.
When we arrived at the walk-in clinic, I still was not in a lot of pain. I remember wondering to myself if a walk-in clinic in a strip mall in Lenoir City was really the best place to go, but it was the closest by miles. We walked in and the wad of bloody paper towels against my head got us a free pass from the shocked receptionist at the clinic. I was ushered in to the first open room and sat down. Seconds later, the first nurse came in and smiled and asked me to have look at the damage. I carefully pulled the towels down from my head and got a little disheartened when the nurse (trained medical professional that she was) threw a hand over her mouth and ran out of the room. This was the point in the story where I first got a little nervous that things were more serious than I had self-diagnosed.
Luckily, the second nurse was more prepared for what she saw, and help me get situated and get the bleeding stopped. I then caught another huge break when the main doctor at the clinic that day came into the room. Turns out he was formerly a missionary doctor and had years of experience in stitching up wounds. In all of Lenoir City, I can safely assume there was not another person more qualified to sew my ear back together and reattach it straight, and he was working the walk-in clinic just a stone’s throw away from the rental store. That, dear readers, is the grace of God in action, and I will not be convinced otherwise.
Several hours, roughly a dozen injections to the head and ear, and fifty or so stitches later, I was looking a lot more normal. Sadly, the numbing shots had worn off and we were one stitch away from being done. It had been rather nerve-wracking to have to listen to each stitch go into my ear and get pulled tight, but that was without feeling it simultaneously. The doctor asked if I minded taking the last stitch without any additional numbing, as he did not want to have to inject any further so close to be done. I played the macho card and told him to go for it. Sadly, the last stitch remaining was the one going deepest in my ear canal, so I got to listen CLOSELY as the needle made its way down, felt AND heard it break through the skin, heard him deftly forming the final stitch, then listened and gritted my teeth as he pulled it tight and cut it.
I considered that one of the most painful moments of my life (that is until the stitches had to come out later). The doctor was worried that I would have residual jaw pain or hearing damage from the blow, which he referred to in his report as “massive blunt force trauma,” sounds cool, huh? He gave me some pain pills and sent me home. In the entire process, somehow, the only pain I felt was during the stitching and stitch removal process. I lost and regained an ear in one afternoon without losing consciousness at any point. (A point of pride I might add, that I got hit with that kind of force and was not knocked down or out, so who wants to come spar at my place?)
I went home and only used one pain pill out of the whole bottle (at the insistence of the girlfriend and mother who seemed much more torn up about the ear than I did) and got to start showing off the gnarly stitches the very next day. For years, the ear healed so well, it was only when people sat behind me in class or in the car that anyone noticed the scar. The back of my left ear in not pretty and never will be. As I get older, the spot on the outside of my ear where the doctor connected all the pieces continues to protrude a little bit and make a bump. My wife tells me I should have something done about it, but I enjoy the occasional questions and subsequent opportunity to tell the story. Besides, she is the only one who sees me enough and is close enough to notice that my left ear is smaller than my right. (Until I just put that on the internet anyway…dang…no cracks about that, people.)
The funny part to me is that, at the time of my “massive” head trauma, I had been dating my future wife for over two years. All it took was that blow to the head to knock me silly and I proposed to her within a couple of weeks following. I can’t say it was staring death in the eye or anything like that, but I did learn that you never know what is going to happen in life, so you live every day as best you can and enjoy the people around you. Had that handle hit me a few inches higher, it would have been my temple, and who knows what happens? As it stands, I made it through with very little pain and came out with a good story AND got a great woman to agree to marry me out of the deal (who is now stuck looking at the bump on my tiny ear “‘til death do us part”). All in a day’s work at an equipment rental store.
