The Power of Faith When Tragedy Strikes

by Chris Norton

  “I’m good,” I said, because I sure as heck didn’t want a breathing tube or to cause any further damage.

  An X-ray showed significant damage to my neck. There wasn’t anything more they could do for me at Winneshiek, so they wheeled me up the elevator to a top floor to wait for the helicopter.

  As I lay there trying to process what was happening while still hoping it was all a bad dream, I craved normality. Like my dad, I was an avid Iowa Hawkeye fan, and the team was on my mind every Saturday during football season. Iowa was playing Michigan that day, so I asked if anyone knew the game’s score.

  Not only did I want to keep track of the game, but focusing on something ordinary helped to tamp down the fear that gnawed at my subconscious. I had a broken neck and was waiting on a helicopter to transport me to a Minnesota hospital I’d never heard of or wanted to visit. I was supposed to be on the football field, helping my team win, planning for a night out with my friends, not parked on a hospital gurney with my family’s worried faces hovering above me. When I heard Iowa won, I considered it a hopeful sign.

  As they ushered me onto the helicopter and strapped the gurney to the floor, the surrounding sights and sounds were overwhelming. Supplies and a first aid kit sat tucked inside netting along a dark gray ceiling, and the helicopter smelled like a new car after a fill-up at the gas station. The speed and whop-whop-whop-whop of the propellers made it difficult to hear and communicate.

  * * *

  “I remember hearing the helicopter flying in and I knew that he was going to be sent to Rochester, MN to the Mayo Clinic. Our team physician returned toward the end of the game and told me what Chris’s injury was and my heart sank.”

  ~ Chris Kamm, ATC, CSCS, Former Head Certified Athletic Trainer, Luther College

  * * *

  The pilot and the two EMTs wore helmets with earpieces and a microphone through which they conversed by radio. The helicopter EMT reiterated what the doctor had said inside the hospital. “If you’re losing your breath, let us know, and we’ll put in the trach tube. We don’t want to have to mess with your neck, so it would be a last resort, but let us know.”

  A last resort? Fantastic. I tucked that little grenade away and tried my best not to freak out.

  As we were taking off, I kept my eyes closed, again searching for a way to quell my deepest fears. Not five minutes into the ride, my panic spiked, forcing my eyes open. I couldn’t breathe! I was strapped to the stretcher with the neck stabilizer belt over my head. When I frantically looked over, neither EMT was paying attention.

  “Help,” I said. “Can you help me? I can’t breathe.” I could barely project my voice over the clamor of the helicopter. My voice was too soft to get their attention.

  This was it. I was at the point of no return—the last resort was necessary—and the EMTs weren’t responding! It was so loud in the helicopter I couldn’t hear myself breathe, and because of my neck injury, I couldn’t feel any air going in or out of my lungs. I tried to keep calm, but I didn’t feel like I was getting enough air. Fear shot through me. I needed oxygen down my throat. I couldn’t take it anymore!

  I closed my eyes and started counting every single breath just to be sure I was breathing. Every time I inhaled, I counted. One breath, two breaths, three. I kept going.

  Don’t panic. You’re breathing, or you’d be unconscious. Just count. I stopped trying to get the EMTs’ attention and focused on counting. Finally, after about a minute of timing my breaths, I started to relax. It was terrifying for the few minutes I wasn’t sure I was getting enough air in my lungs and the EMTs couldn’t hear me. Maybe it was a good thing I wasn’t able to get their attention. What if, in the process of trying to insert the tube in the helicopter, they’d moved my head or done more damage to my neck?

  The helicopter ride lasted between twenty and thirty minutes, and I spent most of that time counting my breaths and praying for the ride to end. When we landed at Mayo, the EMTs removed me from the helicopter and released me to Mayo’s transporter, who had the job of pushing patients to and from the helicopter. Once I was out of the helicopter, my anxiety subsided because I was more comfortable with my level of breathing and my surroundings were a lot quieter.

  However, the action was just beginning.

  The transporter handed me off to a physician and a nurse who then rushed me to an elevator. After a short ride, the elevator opened and I was wheeled into a big, sterile room full of people wearing white coats and masks. They were all waiting there for me, as if my entrance injected them all with a dose of adrenaline, setting them into motion. To say it was weird to see that many people attending only to me would be an understatement.

  People began taking off my socks and pants. Others began setting up an IV drip. Someone took a blood sample. There was so much going on at once, I felt dazed. Again, they started asking questions.

  “Can you make a fist?”

  “Move your toes?”

  “Can you try moving your arm?”

  “Can you compress your stomach?”

  “Can you squeeze your butt or push out?” That was a new one.

  They were poking me and touching me as they peppered their questions, but I still couldn’t feel anything until someone jabbed me in the butt. “Oh!” I said. “I felt that.” They didn’t respond, but it was encouraging to feel something below my neck.

  My head, neck, chest, and waist were X-rayed to make sure I hadn’t sustained other injuries. Once it was clear the rest of my body was okay, the doctor told me I had a grade IV dislocation requiring surgery. He wanted to get an MRI of my neck and body, but first they needed to realign my neck using traction. I didn’t know what that was or what it entailed, and I’d never been very good about seeing blood or hearing bones crack, so I wasn’t too keen on the whole alignment process. I did everything I could to stay calm despite envisioning a boot on my head, a rope around my neck, and a leather strap between my teeth.

  They placed my head within a device that had screws on each end, rattling any composure I’d mustered.

  “This is probably going to hurt,” the doctor said.

  Awesome.

  He shot some numbing medication into the side of my head to reduce the level of pain. Then he began spinning something, perhaps the screws that were pressing into my head, and excruciating pain exploded in my brain.

  “Did you actually numb my head?” I asked in all seriousness. “I don’t know if this is numb yet.” It literally felt like someone was slowly driving a nail into my head, going deeper and deeper and deeper. I kept saying, “This isn’t numb at all. I feel everything. Do you have any more of that numbing stuff?” They injected more of the numbing medication in each side of my head, but I could still feel pain and warm blood trickling down my face.

  Once my head was secured and locked into place, weight was added by using a pulley system to push my neck back into alignment. The doctor explained he wanted the subtlest force to push the bone over, so he kept adding more weight in five-pound increments. Forty pounds, forty-five, fifty, fifty-five. He said they didn’t want to go any higher than seventy pounds. I heaved a sigh of relief when, at sixty-five pounds, I heard a crack, and my neck snapped back into place. That sound—like a bite into a celery stalk—would haunt me for the rest of my life.

  I was so thankful to finish with traction, as it was one of the most agonizing experiences of my life. After traction, they removed the head stabilizer and put me in a neck collar that was more secure and made transport easier and safer, but the new collar was terribly uncomfortable. It wrapped around my neck and chin, came up to the middle of the back of my head, and its lip dug into my scalp.

  The doctor explained that since my neck was now in line, they’d take pictures with an MRI. The procedure would take approximately an hour, and from there we’d go into surgery. The neck collar continued to bite into my head. It was so uncomfortable, I finally asked if there was any way we could readjust the collar or if there was something more comfortable.
The doctor told me to fight through the pain because it was important not to move my head or neck.

  They used a lift system to pull me into a tight-quartered, enclosed MRI cylinder. The MRI machine made a rattling noise that was super loud, almost like an air conditioner or furnace working double time. My neck brace made the experience extremely uncomfortable.

  Oh, God, this is going to be the longest hour of my life. I’m miserable. God, I need an escape. Please, if you could just let me have some sleep, some peace of mind, that’s all I want. Can I just sleep to get through this?

  As evidence of God’s hands resting on me that night, before I knew what had happened, I was lowered from the MRI. By the grace of God, even with the noise level duking it out with my anxiety and the shooting pain in my neck, somehow my prayers were answered and I was able to go to sleep, sparing me an agonizing hour in the MRI machine.

  After the MRI, my family and I had a quick exchange. My mom and dad assured me everything would be all right—we’d get through whatever we were facing. But their demeanor had changed. There was no hiding the concern on their faces and in their body language. They looked sad, as if they were in shock. And so was I.

  * * *

  “I wish I somehow could’ve known what I know now…that no matter what we as a family can get through anything that is thrown our way.”

  ~ Alex Norton, Chris’s sister

  * * *

  “We’ll be here when you wake up,” they said, blinking rapidly. “We’ll be out in the lobby. We’re here with you, Chris.” My dad glanced at the medical staff standing around. “The doctors are going to take great care of you. Don’t worry.” Then they had to leave the room.

  Seeing my family upset didn’t make me feel better, but it didn’t make me feel worse. I knew we were on the same level emotionally, feeling drained and numb. I knew we were all wondering the same thing: was this really happening?

  An optimistic person, I tried to see the positive side of things and tried to stay calm under most circumstances. I understood that before they ran their tests and knew the extent of the injury, the doctors couldn’t tell me anything. I respected that, and I knew they didn’t want to give me false hope, so I avoided asking any questions or demanding answers. I kind of maintained a wait-and-see attitude. But before they wheeled me into surgery, the doctor asked if I had any questions. There was only one on my mind.

  “Am I ever going to walk again?”

  I couldn’t find the words to explain the doctor’s expression. He avoided my eyes, bowed his head, and said in a very soft voice, “I don’t know.”

  The gentleness of his tone didn’t diffuse the sting. I felt fragile, as if he’d cracked open my chest, ripped out my beating heart, and threw it on the ground, stomping out all my dreams. I slammed my eyes closed and fought back the tears that wanted to flow, because that’s when it really hit me. Holy cow, this is my life, this is really happening. This shouldn’t be happening. I kept my eyes closed, praying and pleading for help.

  God, I don’t care if I ever play football again. I don’t care if I ever play any sport again. Just let me walk, and I’ll call it quits from athletics for the rest of my life. Screw sports, screw activities, just let me do the basics. I don’t need to run again, just please let me walk.

  Inside the OR, organized chaos ensued. The doctors and nurses prepped for surgery, starting me on fluids and setting up the gas mask. The surgeons donned gloves and masks, and carefully arranged their tools. They slid me across a giant platform with an opening at my neck in case they had to operate from both the front and back, and tied me down with straps.

  At that point, I understood the situation’s gravity. I could no longer keep my eyes shut and pretend I was having a nightmare. As the preparation continued, I lay there looking up at the nurses and doctors who stood over me with masked faces. These men and women held my fate in their hands. Some of the nurses seemed upset about having a young adult on the table.

  “Please help me,” I said. “Please fix me. I really want to walk again.”

  “We’ll take care of you, son,” the surgeon said. “We’ll do the best job we can. Don’t worry.” The doctor’s concerned but confident answer gave me comfort as the gas mask enveloped my face. Then it was lights out.

  * * *

  Chris is a fighter and I am so proud of his determination. He has his “game face” on.

  ~Terry Norton, CaringBridge, October 18, 2010

  * * *

  CHRIS WAS born March 20, 1992, in Des Moines, Iowa, three years after his sister, Alex, and four years before his sister, Katie. When we were in the hospital and Deb was in labor, we didn’t know the baby’s gender. When his head and shoulders were out, the doctor told us he was a boy. Wow, I thought, this guy was really good. Later, when I asked how he knew Chris was a boy, he explained he’d never seen a girl with shoulders that broad.

  Like a typical man, I was excited to have a son. I couldn’t wait to share my love of sports and the outdoors with him. I envisioned all the things we’d do together as he grew up—shooting baskets, playing catch, hiking through national parks, kayaking down rivers, and riding horses through our family’s pastures. Plus, after Chris was born, we had one of each—Deb had a shopper, and I had playmate.

  Chris was a very good baby. We were fortunate he didn’t have any health issues, and he was a good sleeper. We’d take him places, and he’d always nestle underneath a bunch of covers and go to sleep. As a toddler, he went through a challenging phase; if things weren’t perfect, he’d have a meltdown. For example, if I was feeding him a Pop Tart for breakfast and a corner broke off distorting the shape, he’d throw a fit. If Deb was feeding him a banana and a piece broke off, he’d have a tantrum. Fortunately, that phase didn’t last long, but it foreshadowed the intensity he’d bring to every part of his life.

  I was coaching high school basketball when Chris was a toddler, and he loved going to practice with me. He’d stand on the side of the court dribbling a ball while I ran the kids through drills. He used to wear a little team jersey and ride the bus after some of the games. The town rallied around the team, and Chris’s little eyes lit up when we’d attend pep rallies along our quest to win the state championship. Chris always had a ball with him. It didn’t matter if it was a football, a basketball, or a soccer ball, he was always moving and playing with a ball.

  When Deb took him to the pediatrician, she told the doctor, “He’s not potty trained, but he can dribble the length of the floor with the basketball.”

  Chris used to climb on everything. I’d come into the kitchen and find him up on the counter, searching the cupboards for something to eat. When he was a toddler, we had an above ground pool with a privacy fence around the perimeter. Of course we watched our kids, but Chris was so active and athletic that if I looked away for a second, he could get into trouble.

  One spring, I was out working in the yard, and on three occasions when I turned my back to do something, he had climbed up onto the filter and was hanging halfway over the pool. That night in bed as I lay staring at the ceiling, I said to Deb, “It’s got to come down.” The next day, I cut the liner open, drained the water out, pulled the sides down, and removed the whole thing within two hours. We just couldn’t live with the risk.

  Chris started playing sports before kindergarten and fortunately, his friends did too. Deb and I were excited to see him channel all that energy into something constructive. By elementary school, Chris was a good little athlete. He worked hard, and he liked to practice. He was a bit of a perfectionist, but not in a bad or unhealthy way; he wanted to do well in both school and sports. Whether he was kicking a ball, hitting a baseball, or practicing his spelling words, he wanted me to work with him every day. Our daughters were different.

  “You can go outside and shoot baskets for an hour a day and you’ll average four points more over the season.” I thought that possibility would encourage my children to practice.

  Alex had other ideas. “I think I�
��d rather go shopping with Mom.”

  On the other hand, Chris accepted the challenge. “If that’s how much I can improve in one hour, what if I shoot for two hours?”

  Katie put in more time than Alex, but sports weren’t an obsession for either of them.

  By sixth grade, Chris and a few of his friends wanted to play tackle football. We didn’t have a program in our area, so we signed him up to play in Carlisle, about thirty minutes south of our hometown. Each week, the parents took turns driving the boys to Carlisle for practice.

  As I sat in the stands at the first game, I questioned our decision to let him play in an out-of-town league. The rest of the players were all Carlisle kids except Chris and his three friends. The two coaches were parents, and I feared they wouldn’t give Chris a chance. I’d forgotten that youth coaches liked to win too. Chris, with his little glasses and big helmet, was small but shifty. He played hard, and he wasn’t afraid to tackle. Despite my worries, he got a lot of playing time, and his team ended up winning the championship.

  Chris continued his quest for perfection. One year during grade school basketball, he was unsatisfied with his left-handed layups. He was getting frustrated so I told him, “Chris, a left-handed layup is hard when you’re right handed.”

  “Dad,” Chris said with an all-too-familiar determined look in his eye, “I’ve got to do better. I’m going to get better at this.”

  The next night, we went to the YMCA to practice, and Chris announced he wasn’t leaving until he could make ten in a row. I tried to quell his frustration by pointing out that as the varsity basketball coach, I had varsity guys who couldn’t make ten in a row with their off hand, but he refused to leave. We stayed, and it took him a while, but he made ten left-handed layups in a row. That’s how stubborn and committed he was. When I’d take him to shoot and rebound for him, he wouldn’t leave if he felt he wasn’t shooting well. He’d just keep shooting and shooting.