From Searing Pain
Kevin Carstens hacked away at the brush on his land in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains. It was warm for a Sunday afternoon in early January, even for Clarkesville, Georgia. But Kevin loved being outdoors amid the blackberry and wild rosebushes with a view of distant mountains.It had been a good day for his wife, Sharon, too. They spent the morning on their deck, talking and drinking tea. Sharon felt strong and focused enough to cook, starting a pot of homemade soup -- a task that would have been nothing a few years ago, but was a little triumph for her now. Her illness had left her weak, often confused.
While the soup simmered, Dusty, the family dog, sat nearby, and Kevin chatted about dropping a teetering tree in the old cemetery adjoining their land. It needed to be chopped down before it toppled and destroyed some of the grave markers.
After lunch, Kevin loaded a chain saw and ropes into his van and took along his cell phone and a knife. Then he drove through a grassy field into the forest not more than a thousand feet from home. A rugged five-foot-eleven, with muscular arms and legs built in a career as a cabinetmaker and installer, Kevin stepped carefully among the toppled tombstones. This was a slave cemetery. The markers were little more than rocks tilted at odd angles in a shady gloom, like jagged bits of teeth sticking up from the earth.
Kevin crossed through the scrub to the huge oak. He wound the rope around the trunk and expertly knotted it. Kevin had dropped trees many times before. Sharon used to help him with such tasks -- but that was before her illness. She had been so healthy and vigorous when they first met working at a Florida wildlife sanctuary 25 years earlier.
From the start, he'd liked her long, thick hair, feisty sense of humor and fearlessness. When she bragged she wasn't afraid of snakes, he asked her to hold a boa constrictor during a class he was teaching. She grinned and did it. After they married, they fished for shark together, canoed on wild rivers.
Sharon was the take-charge person in the family. She was seldom sick until 1997, when she began suffering terrible headaches. One day at work, colleagues said she didn't look right and urged her to go to the hospital. She rose from her desk and collapsed. She could hear voices, but couldn't speak. It looked as if she'd had a stroke.
Other stroke-like episodes followed. She had difficulty walking. She ran a fever all the time. The headaches never stopped. She and Kevin spent all their savings on doctors' appointments and medical tests.
In 2000, physicians determined Sharon had brain damage that left her with episodes resembling dementia. Once, she visited a familiar store and couldn't remember where the exit was. Another time, she was making spaghetti, but didn't know what to do after the water boiled.
After seeing specialists, Kevin and Sharon came to believe that exposure to mold had caused Sharon's condition. Her world was certainly shrinking. At times she needed a wheelchair. The woman who never liked asking for help was essentially housebound and dependent on her husband.
From the dead tree, Kevin uncurled the guide rope, anchored the other end to his van and pulled forward to tighten it. Then he took a second rope -- one used to tow cars, with large hooks at both ends -- and hooked one end to a loop on the guide rope. He wound the other end around a poplar and hooked the tow rope onto itself. With the guide rope now held by the tow rope, he unhooked his van and drove it out of the way. Finally he anchored the guide rope to a large pine tree across the road.
Kevin stepped back a few feet to survey what he'd done. It had taken more than an hour, but he always took extra precautions when he was working with a chain saw. At last he was ready.
He pulled the starter, the chain saw roared to life, and he began cutting through the old oak. In minutes it fell, right where he planned. Now all he needed to do was dismantle the ropes, and he'd be done. He strolled back to the poplar, flipped the hook off the tree, and let the rope drop. When he turned, intending to untie the rope from the pine across the road, he heard an odd gnawing, swishing sound behind him. It was the tow rope.
Kevin had made one miscalculation. The oak had dropped downhill, putting more tension on the rope than he expected. When he released the tow rope, the hook whipped around the poplar and flew toward him. The steel hook hit him on his wrist, collided with his left shoulder -- and lodged in his neck. The line pulled him chest-first against the poplar. The tension on the line was tremendous. Kevin felt his neck bulging as the hook lodged deeper, tugging on muscle. The pain was searing. He grabbed the rope with both hands and tried to loosen it, but it wouldn't budge.
Choking, he screamed for help. His voice came out stifled, rasping. It took tremendous energy to form words. He could barely breathe. And Sharon didn't expect him back for some time. He was trapped and horribly alone.
A Miracle
Dusty let out a bloodcurdling howl. Sharon, watching TV, got up to see what was the matter. Dusty always yelped when she heard an ambulance. But the dog had never made this kind of noise before. Sharon gazed out the glass doors into their backyard, listening intently. But she couldn't see or hear anything unusual.Kevin didn't want to die there in an abandoned graveyard. Sharon needed him. A cold sweat came with a rush of panic, but then he saw a light like a star close to his face. He watched in fascination. He had no idea what it was, but the glow calmed him. And he remembered the knife in his pocket.
He took a deep breath, held the rope with one hand to still vibration, and sliced vigorously. The rope was under such tension that when he cut through, it snapped like a rubber band and shot 50 feet in the other direction.
Kevin slid down the tree trunk and sat on the ground. He tested his voice to see if he could speak. Gingerly, he felt the gash. His fingers went right through his skin into his neck. He tried another spot. Then another. You've got to be kidding, he thought in horror. His neck was gaping open. How much blood had he lost? He fumbled for his phone.
When she heard the ring, Sharon reached for the phone. "Call an ambulance!" she heard Kevin saying in a choking voice.
"For you?" she asked, confused.
"Yes!"
Quickly, she called 911. He's hurt himself with the chain saw, she thought, as she shuffled to the front of the house toward the path leading to the cemetery. She screamed for her neighbors, but no one was home. What should she do? She wanted to run to the woods and find her husband -- but who then could show the paramedics where he was? Fortunately, her mind was clear, almost like before she got sick. She realized she had to stay put and wait for the ambulance.
It had been a quiet day for Habersham County emergency dispatcher Deborah Williams. Back just two months after maternity leave, Deborah was looking forward to seeing her baby at the end of her shift. Then her line rang.
She heard a gravelly male voice. Kevin, desperate, had also called 911. Deborah asked his name and location.
"Hurry up," he begged. "I've got a big hook stuck in my neck." The man sounded winded, unable to breathe.
A fishhook? Deborah wasn't sure what he meant. "Kevin, we're getting an ambulance out to you. I'm going to keep talking to you to make sure you're okay," she said.
A supervisor interrupted to ask more about the hook.
"It's a big hook, like you'd use to pull a truck out of a ditch."
His words stunned Deborah -- a hook like that was the size of a hammerhead! She heard the fear in his voice. "It's okay to be scared," Deborah told him. "You've got a reason to be scared." She urged him to be calm, but all around her, colleagues were running to summon fire and medic crews.
The first emergency vehicle shot past Sharon. She frantically waved her arms to get the driver's attention. A second ambulance pulled up, and medics jumped out. Sharon pointed toward the cemetery. As they ran into the woods, she followed, limping.
Kevin saw a firefighter running toward him. The man knelt in front of him and asked to see his wound. Kevin slowly peeled his hand away from the bloody hook it covered. And he saw the man's mouth drop open.
When Sharon arrived, he asked her, "How bad does it look?" She held his hand. "You did one helluva good job."
The medics called for an airlift to Atlanta Medical Center, where chief trauma surgeon Dr. Vernon Henderson prepared for a Level 1 trauma patient.
Henderson was amazed when he examined Kevin. The man's neck was cut wide open. A hook emerged next to the right sternocleidomastoid muscle. The carotid artery and jugular vein were located immediately behind that muscle. If they were lacerated, only the pressure of the hook might be preventing the patient from bleeding to death. There was also the danger that the hook might shift and block the airway. Henderson ordered a breathing tube inserted immediately.
Miraculously, when Henderson removed the hook, he found the jugular vein and carotid artery were intact. He began cleaning and closing the wound. It took 200 stitches internally and an additional 21 staples outside.
On bad days Kevin feels as if he's wearing a tight collar. But most days, when he sits in a recliner in his den, he is simply grateful that Sharon was there for him in his moment of crisis, and that he escaped a lonely death in that old abandoned cemetery.