Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Broke Buck Mountain

On Father's Day we made a Sunday drive over to Buck and Judi Shumway's house to give him some fatherly tie tacks the kids made out of shrinky dinks. When we arrived at the house their daughter Raychelle informed us that Buck was in a hospital in Flagstaff. Then she explained his situation... he had been hiking the day before with his buddy and at the end of the really long hike, there was a 180 ft. mountain that they had to repel down. They were kind of rigging together their repelling gear because they hadn't planned on repelling. Buck put his socks on his hands to protect his hands from rope burn and started down the rope. He didn't have a belayer because there were just the two of them. Immediately after starting down the mountain, he found out the awful truth... the rope was too thin and he was sliding way too fast. He couldn't stop himself, so he flew down the 180 ft drop, landing on his feet and then falling over. He broke his heal on one leg and broke and jammed the bones into each other on his other leg. Poor Buck! But he was truly blessed because it could have been sooo much worse!
After a couple of surgeries in Flagstaff, he is now home and will be in bed for three months and can't put any weight on his legs for that entire duration. He will have to use a wheelchair if he must go anywhere.
For Family Night a couple of weeks ago we brought Buck and family a Mesa Frozen Yogurt pie and visited with him. My heart goes out to him because I can still remember way too clearly the vague days that passed as if in a dream while I was on pain meds. I remember being stuck in the bed and just wanting to live a "normal" life again. I remember praying to Heavenly Father to let this stage of my life pass by quickly.......
Cassidy and Sarah gave Buck their well wishes and then took advantage of the Shumway's Wii system.
Will enjoyed sitting on the "throne" right next to Buck and asking him what was wrong with his legs. Do you like the fancy throne? he he

Will was really concerned about Buck and wanted to know "what happened?" over and over again.
Here are the men gathered together talking. We hope you feel better soon Bucky!
p.s. Buck, you sure are lucky to have married such a great nurse like Judi! (it helps that she really is a nurse!)

2 comments:

Grama Karen and Papa Lund said...

Christa, You got some great pictures of Buck in his natural habitat for the next couple of month's.
Are you guys in a new apt yet?
Love,
Mom

runningfan said...

It was fun to spend some time with you the other day. Sorry about our hasty exit! Let's do it again sometime.