Mike’s Story: “I’ve just come up against a bit of ‘experience…’ “

“I’ve just come up against a bit of experience….experience is a brutal teacher.  But you learn, my God you learn!”  –CS Lewis

In my case I’m not sure a strong back is the end result of adversity, which is another story for another time, but there certainly is an adapted/personalized way each of us gets through our adversities.

Nine lives you ask?  I don’t know, but as one of my sisters said: “his guardian angels (it must take a team) are certainly working overtime.”  Or, as another sister put it: “That’s why I live a simple life, so my guardian angels are free to spend their time watching over Mike.”

I had been a mortgage broker by profession, but when the mortgage market crashed in 2007 I lost my business and my source of income, so in order to put food on the table for my family, I returned to my post-high school job of window cleaning. You might consider window cleaning to be a simple job and something that doesn’t take much training. However, I’m talking a 400 foot rope connected to the top of a building anywhere from 4 stories on up to 24 stories high.  Add a second rope for back up.  Attach yourself (in a full body harness) to one of those ropes.  Then attach to the other a small padded bench with a safety clip for a water bucket and then repel off the top of the building to clean the windows.  That kind of window cleaning!

On the 18^th of June 2009 I took a job cleaning windows in a nearby city. It was a 5-story office building.  I was looking forward to a day of swinging from the ropes out in the fresh air, and hoping to finish early enough to make it home in time for a scheduled date with my wife. After hooking up my backup line and stepping over the edge of the building to get into my chair…somewhere between clipping my water bucket to my chair and trying to sit down in my chair…my anchor system failed me.  At this point I am on the roof of a 5-story building which means I am 6 stories up.  As I fell through the air my first thought was “when is my backup line going to catch me?” Once it did, my second thought was “ok now what am I going to hit?”  My third thought, oddly enough was “Laura (my wife) is going to kill me.”

As I had not yet sat down in my chair and it had gone out from under me I fell backwards, and I assume at this point I was upside down.  I dropped about 3 stories and since my backup line was hooked up near an air conditioning unit on the other side of the building, I also did a pendulum swing about 2-3 stories sideways at which point me (and my equipment) went through 6 panes of glass in the middle of the building.  My head must have gone through the middle window (2 panes per window), my equipment through the bottom, my teeth through one of the frames separating the windows, and my knee through the top and biggest window.

Part of the broken window Mike crashed through.

I was hanging upside down at this point, still in my safety harness, dangling from my rope. I could see through the reflection of the broken glass that my head was covered in blood.  Then I realized blood was spurting from my head.  I looked inside the window and there was a man standing there with his hands on his head in shock.  I yelled to him to call 911.  I realized that I was in serious danger and that I either had to climb in through the broken window to get off of the ropes before I bled to death, or I had get back into my chair and finish the repel to the ground.  It didn’t take me long to decide I didn’t want to get any closer to the glass again, so I used a trick I learned a few weeks before working with some of the other “ropes guys” and I leaned over backwards so I could kick my feet above my head and use my legs to pull my chair down to my level and lift my body up so I could get back into the chair.  Once back in the chair I looked back over to the man still standing in the window frozen with shock and yelled again for him to call someone.  I finished my repel  to the ground, stepped out of my chair, unhooked my safety line and walked far enough away from the building to be able to sit down on something other than broken glass.

By the time I started to sit down there was already a handful of people at my side to help.  Someone placed a paper towel of sorts over the largest laceration on the right side of my face to slow the bleeding. The ambulance must have been around the corner because it did not take long for them to get there. (This is not the first time I’ve been wheeled off in an ambulance, but that is a story for another day).

Once I arrived at the emergency room, the Doctors made their initial assessment of me and deemed me worthy of trauma 4…whatever that is.  The room cleared, for the most part, and one of the people left behind began to take off the wonderful neck brace the EMTs had put me in. In the meantime the paper towel that was initially applied to my head to slow the bleeding had been trapped under the neck brace.  So once the neck brace came off and the towel, they discovered my neck sliced to heck right where my jugular (carotid artery) is.

This immediately brought all of the doctors back into the room in haste.  Another whirlwind of questions ensued and I lay there confused.  One of the many in the room put his hand on my right shoulder and said: “They have just upgraded you from level 4 trauma to level 1.  What this means is there are going to be a lot more doctors, a lot more questions, and basically you’re going to get the entire hospital’s attention for a little while.”  Evidently it’s a big deal to have 3 lacerations in a Zorro “Z” shape on your neck directly above your carotid artery!

In addition to the cuts by my carotid artery, I had essentially slit both wrists and had a total of 19 lacerations that required either stitches or staples.  I broke 3 teeth, fractured my knee cap, and tore some tendons in my right knee.  In spite of all of this, miraculously none of it ended up being deep enough to actually hit any of the arteries or cause anything other than some superficial wounds–nothing that could not be fixed with some plastic surgery, a few good doctors and some recovery time.  I truly feel blessed, watched over, and protected.  There are so many what if’s that I can’t count them all. I believe it to be more than coincidence that I was so protected.

I began this story speaking about coming out of adversities with a stronger back …or a better outlook on life, or whatever it may be for you.  So often in life we spend our time worrying about ourselves so much that we don’t take time to show any concern for those around us.  The Ryan’s Lion I was given, means so much to me because I know I’m not alone.  I can learn from others’ experiences, feel some empathy for them, and most importantly, spend some time showing some concern for someone other than myself.  I hope my experience I have shared here can be just that to someone else out there.  I hope in writing it I can do someone other than myself some good.  I know, however, that in writing it I have solidified some of life’s lessons in my own mind.  I have gained so much from those lessons, and in doing so gained a greater sense of optimism and hope for the future…I hope you can too!  Thanks Ryan!

The worst of Mike’s lacerations was on his face-narrowly missing an eye and his carotid artery