LIFE'S LESSONS: KNOWING YOUR LIMITATIONS

By Juan Montoya

It is sometimes humbling to realize that as we age, we are growingly limited in performing physical activities.

Our friends and family members are always telling us that we are no longer spring chickens and that we should refrain from undertaking physical acts we were able to perform in our younger years. For the most part, we shrug them of and continue as if we were still 18.

That is, until life steps in and in no uncertain terms lets us know that is no longer true.

I received such a wake up call a few years go when I volunteered to trim off the dry tops of three trees at the old homestead where my 94-year-old mother and a brother still live. There had been a hard freeze a few years back and the entire city bore the dry remnants of the freeze with dry branches where the cold had killed the tops of the trees.  

In my younger years I would think nothing of throwing on some shorts and sneakers and running off from our home on Weslaco Road, west on FM 802 and up to U.S. 281 (Military Highway) and back, roughly five miles. When I got out of the Marines it was a breeze, whether it was a nice cool day or at noon on a 90-plus degree summer day. I was, as they used to say in the Midwest, full of piss and vinegar.

(By contrast, now that I nurse a bum knee, I have to take a break after barely walking two blocks.) 

So climbing a 40-foot aluminum extension ladder hauling an electric chain saw to cut off the dry tops of the trees didn't seem such a daunting task to me at the time.

But time had passed, as we shall see.

The first tree, a tamarind, was not exactly easy, but the dry top came hurtling down when the chain saw sliced through its soft trunk. I made a note to remember that the branch, as it hurtled down, might hit the ladder, so I held on to the trunk and the ladder when it cracked.

I climbed down, trimmed the branches to standard size and piled them in a heap on a spot used by the neighborhood for city brush pickup.

The next was a little more difficult because it was a harder palo blanco and there was the neighbor's wooden fence below it. It was also a little taller. As I tried to get a good angle on the leaning dry branches, I told myself "You know, you're getting a little old to be doing this kind of stuff, atop a tall ladder with an electric chain saw..." But I had promised my mom I'd do it and I managed to down the branches to the ground and narrowly missed them hitting the fence.

The third turned out to be the charm. The main branch did not extend straight from the top, but rather, at an angle which forced me to contort atop the ladder to get a straight cut. I had almost achieved this but only managed to cut the large branch partially so that it dangled next to the ladder held only by a thin sliver of wood and bark. 

Since I was at the very top of the ladder, I decided to hold on to the top rung with my left hand and use only my right to finish off the remaining sliver of wood and bark holding up the hanging branch.

But no sooner had the chain touched the branch, but that it slid through it like the proverbial hot knife through butter...bringing the heavy branch crashing down beside the ladder...and the churning chain saw blade straight on to the top of my left hand holding to the top of the ladder. I couldn't let go, but winced in pain and thought about throwing the saw to the ground and climbing down the ladder to get some medical attention to my hand which was now gushing with blood. It felt hideous and looked even worse.

Since it was my dad's chain saw and I would have certainly have had to answer to him for his smashed up saw, I didn't and climbed down to lay it gingerly on the ground below. I had left my cell phone on the ground before I went up the tree and forgot all about it. I started to the gate to drive myself to the hospital on Alton Gloor. But it was a Saturday and neighborhood kids were out on the street and I thought some of them might come into our yard and grab the saw and play with it and possibly hurt themselves. So I walked back, hand bleeding profusely, disconnected the saw, and placed it in a tool shed, closing the door.

I then drove myself to Valley Regional and walked into the emergency room. A lady and her provider were the only ones in line and I dimly heard them complain to the intake clerk that the older lady had occasional headaches and fainting spells. I held up my bloody hand to the clerk and she immediately opened the door and guided me to a cubicle and called medical personnel to assist me. A gusher from between my thumb and forefinger periodically emitted a stream of blood.

"We need to stuture that wound, but the way it's bleeding looks like you hit an artery and we don't have the time to give you anesthesia," a young doctor said. "You ready?"

"Go for  it," I said, and watched as he threaded his curved needle and pushed it through my living flesh to stitch the cuts, because when the chainsaw hit, it had jumped and gnashed at the flesh at different angles. 

As he and an assistant worked, they looked at me and asked me on a scale of 1 to 10 how much it hurt.

"About 0.5," I answered. They looked surprised and to tell you the truth, so was I. Even as they stitched living flesh, it didn't hurt. My hand just trembled. When they got to the thumb area they said that the skin was thicker there and they needed a thicker needle and heavier thread. Did I want to wait until they could give me anesthesia?

"No, just get on with it," I said and watched as they dug the thicker needle into my flesh. "You're lucky the saw didn't cut off a finger or hit your wrist and cut the veins," they said. In less than a half hour, they were done and I walked out with a gauzed-up hand in a white latex glove.

I drove home and picked up the phone below the offending tree. The large branch was on the ground and there was a trail of blood from the ladder to the gate, back to the tree, and then to the shed and out the gate.

I pretended it was nothing and told my mom it had been just a scratch and left and drove myself to my house. I called my sister and told her I didn't have my phone since they had tried to call me when my mom had gone to check on me and saw the trail of blood. I took the picture above and sent it to her. She had been a medical clinic administrator and I couldn't fool her. I told her not to show the picture to my mom, which, of course, she did immediately. 

There followed a couple of months of learning to tie shoelaces with one hand, pulling on pants, and taking a shower protecting the injured hand, etc... 

Of course, to add insult to injury, she told me I was too old to be doing that kind of s--t. "Pay someone, don't be a tightwad," she said.

I had to agree. But it had taken that life experience to make me realize que ya no estamos pa' esos trotes anymore.