The Hardest Slam That I Have Ever Taken While Skating
By: Lester Kasai
If
you play with fire long enough there is a good chance you could get
burned. Equally so, I realize that
skating concrete pools can put me down a path where I can get hurt. Occasionally I just get a scratch, bruise
or bump. However, every so often
it is a big bad slam that takes me out of the game for awhile.
Recently,
I was prepping for the Bowl-a-Rama contest at the La Kantera pool in Getxo,
Spain and that is where I experienced the hardest slam that I have ever taken
while skating. I was just having
fun as usual skating with my friends and doing backside airs over the face wall
deathbox. Unfortunately, I came up
short on one of the airs. I could
see that there was a good chance I was going to hang up in the deathbox but I
went for it for some stupid reason.
Oh yeah, I hung up solid, missed most of the transition and slammed
pretty much on the flat bottom head first. The majority of the impact was to my left shoulder. The secondary
impact was to my elbow into my ribs and the back of my head. Luckily, I didn’t get knocked out. Straightaway, the first thing I
realized was that I could not breathe and started gasping for air. It wasn’t quite like knocking the wind
out of yourself. Oh no, it was much
more extreme than that. It felt like
I couldn’t get any lung movement for over a minute or two. My left shoulder and the area all
across my chest felt torn up. My
right index finger felt strange so I lifted it up to look at it. My finger was bent backwards and looked
like the letter “Z”. That’s when I
knew I really hurt myself and that I better just nap at the bottom of the pool
until help arrived. My good friend
Sergie Ventura kept me calm and collected at the bottom of the bowl while we waited
for the paramedics.
Eventually, the police and paramedics
showed up, strapped me in a gurney and pulled me out of the pool. I was then transported by ambulance to a
hospital in Bilbao, Spain. I was
alone and I did not speak much Spanish.
In addition, no one working at the emergency room spoke much English at
all. Let me break it down. I was
shirtless, in a wheel chair, couldn’t use either one of my hands, a towel
wrapped over me, couldn’t communicate with anyone and literally sweating
bullets in a crowded emergency room in a foreign country. I guess now I can laugh about how
overwhelmingly helpless I felt.
A half an hour or so later, a local
friend Manu came to my rescue and his translation managed to get me to the
forefront of the crowded emergency room. Nonetheless, I received emergency care and x-rays in
the ER. I was diagnosed with a
left fractured clavicle and a dislocated right index finger. ER doctor reset my dislocated finger
and soft casted my right forearm to immobilize my finger. He also bandaged braced my fractured
clavicle. The doctor told me I
didn’t need surgery and that it wouldn’t be a problem for me to travel on an
airplane. I told the doctor that I
still had trouble breathing but he said that is because of my broken collar
bone. The doctor shot me up with
pain killers and released me.
Nevertheless, I remained in Spain for
4 days in extreme pain, with shallow breathing, no use of my arms and not being
able to lie down or get up by myself.
My Spain roommates Pat Ngoho and Steve Alba really helped me survive the
last few days. Likewise, our
accommodations office employee Gaizka kindly went out of his way to help me out
by driving me around and looking after me. I did manage to get myself to the bowl and I got to
cheer on my bros in the contest. After the weekend, my good friends Marc
and Irka helped me pack and took me to the airport. I took my flight to Hamburg Germany where my wife is living.
After arriving in Hamburg, my
physical condition seemed to be getting worse since I took my airplane flight. It was harder to breath and fluid
seemed to have built up in my lung.
I stubbornly felt that I would be just fine with some rest but I
arranged an office visit with an orthopedic specialist for a second
opinion. After x-rays and an
examination, the specialist said that he could not help me with my situation
and that I was in need of urgent care.
He referred me to a local hospital in Hamburg and advised me to go there
straight from his office.
All of a sudden, I found myself in
another emergency room of a large hospital. The emergency room doctor did an extensive examination of my
internal organs and x-rays of my injuries. The doctor informed me that it was extremely urgent for me
to have surgery for my injuries. All
in all, the list of injuries I sustained were multiple fractures of the left
clavicle, 2 broken ribs, punctured & collapsed left lung, dislocated right
index finger, various large bruises along left torso from shoulder to hip and a
nice bump on the back of my head. Furthermore, the doctor informed me that I shouldn’t have
flown with a collapsed lung. There
was a possibility that I could have died within 3 minutes after takeoff from
lung expansion pressure on my vital organs. I basically had no choice but to have surgery. The doctors and staff couldn’t believe
that I have been walking around for a week in my condition with no pain
killers.
Once I was in surgery, they inserted
a titanium metal plate and 8 titanium screws to set my fractured clavicle. They
also inserted a tube into my left lung in order to drain and expand my
collapsed lung. To sum it up, I
now had 2000 dollars worth of titanium hardware in my shoulder. Following surgery, I was a disaster
with sutures, bandages and tubes in my body. I was connected to a pump to expand and fix my lung. Consequently, I had to remain in the
hospital for an unforeseen amount of time for recovery.
Despite my downtime in the hospital,
I talked my way out and was released in 5 days. Surprisingly, the kicker in this situation is that my wife
was about to give birth to our baby boy.
She ended up admitting herself into the same hospital that I was in and our
baby was delivered 3 days later. All
things considered, it was a crazy month but in the end all is good. I am still alive and I got to witness
my son’s birth. I am healing well
and I am thankful that I had all my gear on when I fell. That made all the difference to my
survival. Most importantly, the
selfless help from old and new friends in Spain really gave me strength. After all is said and done, everything could
have been far worse for me but I have no doubt that I will be back on my board
soon.
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| Broken Collarbone |
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| XRAY of a titanium plate |
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| This story has a happy ending. Lester lived and got to witness the birth of his son. Lester is a Dad! |
