The Mad Fencer.
I'm a fencer. That's a little known fact about me. I know you're thinking "What? He's a swashbuckling swordsman who uses those thin little foils in an intricate dance? And he doesn't hurt himself?" Well it's not that kind of fencing.
It's building fence. Fence that keeps things in. My area of expertise lies in the building of barbed wire fence. Again, I know what you're thinking, "There is no way Rusty can mess with barbed wire without cutting himself." Actually I can.
Yesterday, I received a facebook post from my mom's horse friend's husband who said that the fence had been washed down, from the flood, in the pasture where the horses reside. He asked me if I've ever built fence, which I have done in the past. I went out to see how the fence looked while also turning the horses out so they weren't stir crazy. The fence indeed was washed down, including with a lot of trash and debris on the fence in the creek. I sighed because i knew that I would be getting wet as I would be in the creek later.
Lamar called me and we hit upon a plan of building "fuses" in the creek to give way in the event of lots of running water. As Lamar and Wendell set new posts, I plunged into the creek to cut the wires so the trash could flow on downstream. However the trash didn't move. I was standing in about mid-thigh deep water.
On an oversight on my part, I forgot gloves. This part hurt me because there were thorny branches in the trash pile as I was trying to free the pile. Yes, I cut myself on the back of the hand. Nothing major, just a deep scrape that bled a little. That wasn't what hurt the most. I had been using a stick to rake some of the trash away. After I was finished, I jammed the stick in the bank of the creek. Lamar had made me a loop in the barbed wire and I was about to step back into the creek to join the two ends.
The bank was slippery from being under water. I slipped crashing down onto the very stick I jammed into the bank. I hit it square on and broke about 6 inches off the end as it tried to impale me. I have a great bruise on my ribcage where I collided with the end of the stick. It hurt and I just sighed at my luck.
Honestly, how am I still alive?
The art of pulling pork, losing kidenys and getting blamed
Well, Mem Day weekend has come and gone. All in all, it was a pretty good weekend, despite such crappy weather that's not going to allow us to play softball tonight. Dammit. Granted we were stuck in the same weather patter of severe/tornadic stuff for 5 days, but only once did we go under a tornado warning. Nothing happened though and I missed an opportunity to go storm chasing. Ok, I say missed, but I'm not allowed to go.
On the actual Mem Day, I spent most of it with brisket and my first attempt at pulling pork on the grill. The pulled pork turned out wonderful, it's just that my stupid brisket had issues for once and I was not a happy person about that. Believe you me, I'm still not happy. The pork was amazing and everyone loved it. The brisket had good flavor,it just wasn't as done as it should have been. I think it had something to do with the escaping steam from the pan. Oh well, I'll get it back to where it should be next time, dang it.
We went over to friends' house to have a Mem Day get together. After supper, I was laying on the floor when a friend's 4 year old son came over and jumped on my back. Now, he calls me Bob and I call him Bob, despite his real name being Isaac. So this 4 year old with an incredibly bony butt is jumping up and down on my back, right about kidney level. Needless to say, eventually, it started hurting. Isaac finally stopped and I was barely able to breathe a sigh of relief. A little while later Isaac came back with a plastic plate because he was going to "take my green power."
I have no idea I had green power.
He's giggling and I grab him and pull him down on the floor with me. Now I've got him so he can only get away if he crawls forward and he's laughing and trying to get away. He's struggling to get away and laughing still. However, at the right time, he kind of squealed just as his mom came in the house from the porch. She climbed all over him with a very snappy "What was that? Stop that! Don't be a wussy."
I am not hurting the kid in any way. I'm not crushing him, I'm not doing anything to him. I just wasn't playin by his green power rules, or something. After his mom jumps on him for squealing, he starts to cry. I'm patting his back gently, while my mother has been watching this, supressing chuckles because he's trying for drama.
His crying draws the attention of his grandma or my dad's Only Friend's Wife. Grandma comes scurrying over to see what happened to poor Isaac and why he is crying. Isaac gives a very tear-filled account of how "Bob was holding me and I couldn't get away."
WHAT? The kid blamed me??? Are you kidding me? I just got the blame put on me by a 4 year old. As we left the house after the shindig, mom asked me to recount what happened because she was watching the whole thing take place. After recalling the blame game, mom said "That's exactly what his mother would have done. EXACTLY!"
And it's true.
He deserved it for ruining my kidneys....or something. No, I'm really nice to Bob.
What i think.
Sometimes, I think I'm still 16. I'm really not and my body will remind me of that often.
After my team's game on Wednesday, I was approached by a different team who was short two players. Granted, I'm a dirty softball slot so I'll play for almost anyone. In fact, Julian (the manager) told me "I wasn't even asking your ass, I had put you down in the lineup already."
I laughed and said of course I'd play. I should have said no, but hey, I can't. So, after hitting the ball quite well in my at-bats, I came up in the top of the 7th. I hit a rocket grounder at the shortstop who had to make a moving stop. He's having trouble finding the ball, so I'm busting my tail down the line and the throw was off.
I know the throw was off, because the first baseman came off the bag to take the throw. However, the guy came at me which caused me to try to avoid him. As I made my evasion, I landed wrong on the corner of the base, jamming my heel hard into the ground and slightly rolling my ankle. I thought for a second, "Oh shit, there went my achillies tendon," except I was still walking. Well, hobbling would be more like it. My heel felt as if it were on fire, but then that subsided. I hobbled off the field and came home to ice.
I think it's getting better as I stupidly did yard work on it yesterday. Someday, I'm going to learn not to play softball....that or i'm one good knee injury away from playing golf all the time.
Because
Often there is too much wrong in the world, sometimes there needs to be a little right.
In the silence of the early summer night of June 2003, the seizure struck without warning, a violent precursor to the coming months for Newton resident, Corey Harder.
“It was a Friday night,” Corey said. “In the middle of the night, my wife Ronda woke up because I was making noises, making a mess, sloshing about in the bed.”
Ronda called 911 immediately and the EMS people arrived to give Corey medication. Harder remembers the medication woke him up within seconds.
“It felt like an elephant sat on my chest,” he said. “My head went back and I was out again. It was so painful.”
Corey, motorcycle designer, regained consciousness in the hospital. While he was unconscious, the staff of the hospital had administered tests, including an MRI, to determine the cause of the seizure. By morning, he had been diagnosed with a brain tumor.
The beginning of the fight Harder’s doctor, Tim Wiens, told him that he needed to be put on an anti-seizure medication, and that he needed to get in touch with a specialist. Once home, he set up the appointment with a neurosurgeon, Dr. Earl Mills.
“Brain surgeons are brain surgeons for a reason,” Corey said. “They’re excellent surgeons, but they’re horrible with social skills. They can’t carry a conversation.
“It’s like if you took your family heirloom car to a mechanic because it didn’t work. He would say ‘Oh, here’s the problem, we can fix that, this might wear out after a while’, but he makes you feel good. You think a brain surgeon would do the same? No.”
Dr. Mills told Corey he had a stage 3 oligodendroglima. This is a type of cancerous tumor that affects the glial cells in the brain. The glial cells provide and support nutrition along with promoting signal transmission in the nervous system. These cells are the “glue” of the central nervous system.
Mills told Corey this growth was bad and chances for recovery were slim. Mills then ran his own MRI, which confirmed his original diagnosis.
“I said ‘Thank you, OK, I’ll probably get a second opinion,’” Corey said. “Mills said, ‘Fine, go get a second opinion, have him operate on you, I don’t care.’”
During this time, Corey’s mother from Mountain Lake, Minn., had moved to Kansas so she could lend her support to her son. Meanwhile, Corey was also struggling with his seizure medication because he was allergic to the first two types of pills his physicians tried.
The doctors told him that if the third type of medication didn’t work, he would have to go to another specialist to have medication custom made for him. By now, Corey was tired of the word “specialist.”
“You get a good, up-close look at the medical profession,” he said. “Doctors and nurses come and go and some care, others are just putting in the time. It’s frustrating beyond belief.”
Corey found his second brain specialist. After viewing his MRI, the doctor starting talking about “quality of life.” Corey was told the tumor was inoperable and his body’s systems would slowly shut down.
“That was a tough car ride home after that visit,” Corey said. “I went back to Dr. Mills and said ‘You’re the man. Cut me open.’”
Surgery and recovery Corey played the waiting game as the doctor tried to coordinate the schedule for the surgery.
“While you sit around and wait, your priorities change,” he said. “Things you have interest in, you could care less about. You start thinking about your kid, your wife, family what it will be like if you’re not around. Things that interested me didn’t. I had a newborn kid.
“Priorities go down to your core,” he said. “It’s the people you love, and you want to protect. Material things go right out the window.”
Corey recalled it was about three weeks after the first seizure happened when his whole family came down from Minnesota. They were helping clean up the yard, trying to preoccupy the family with mundane tasks, when the phone rang.
“I finally got the phone call from the doctor’s office and they said there was a date set,” Corey said. “I went out and just broke down and started crying.”
They arrived early in the morning for the procedure. The doctors told Corey that he was just going to relax a little, and then they would get started on removing the lemon-sized lump. As Corey began to wake up after surgery, the doctors tested him.
“Can you remember who you are?” someone in the room asked.
“I’m Batman,” Corey said in reference to a popular Snickers commercial.
Within four days of his surgery, Corey walked out of the hospital. The week after his surgery, Corey was back in his yard, shoveling rock and moving stone.
Shortly after, Corey was given a PET scan, which is a scan to see if there is any cancerous material. They injected Corey with radiation laced with sugar because cancer processes sugar 1,000 times faster than anything else in the body. The process will make a flash on the X-ray. Corey had no flashes.
The miracle worker After 6 months of treatment, and yet another MRI, the doctors said something was growing again.
“I went on the computer and looked up the survival rate of recurrence,” Corey said. “It was way low.”
Another specialist told Corey that the mass could be a re-growth of the tumor or it could be scar tissue, but there was no way of knowing. After another month, the specialist said the mass was still growing and it was becoming serious. Corey had arranged for another surgery and the date was set.
“I had a missionary friend from Minnesota, Elizabeth,” Corey said. “She told me I could not go to surgery without her coming down and seeing me. She has an incredible ability to know people. She’s a missionary and she does God’s work. She works on miracles.”
Elizabeth journeyed down to Corey’s Newton home. The two of them began to discuss exactly who Corey was, and Elizabeth told Corey that the illness was defining him.
“I had to do some hard thinking of what was I was dealing with,” Corey said. “She said that if you believe in God, sometimes you have to take a step of faith and challenge God.”
Corey and Elizabeth prayed together quite a bit, she laid her hands on him and anointed him with oil. They prayed again.
“She got done and I was tired,” Corey said. “I went and took a nap and slept for an hour-and-a-half. When I woke up I was a completely different person. I was seeing everything different.”
Corey called his doctor’s office and cancelled the operation. Five minutes later, the doctor’s office called back asking him if he was sure he really wanted to cancel.
“I thought to myself, ‘if God wants to take me, He will either kill me with a brain tumor, or I’ll get hit by a car or I’ll have a heart attack or something,’” Corey said. “He’ll take me when He wants to take me. I’m not going to let Him take me on the surgery table. I put it in His hands and left it there. Every MRI after that showed a shrinkage of the mass.”
The support network Corey has been cancer free since that fateful June. He runs into people that he hasn’t seen for a while and the first questions out of their mouths are about him, his head and even his brain.
“It funny, because I went through it and I was done,” he said. “It didn’t define me, it’s not who I am. But that’s all they can remember, so you answer politely.”
Corey was fortunate with his support network of friends and family.
“It’s unbelievable the friends you have, that you know nothing about,” he said. “My mom writes for my hometown newspaper, and while she was down, she was sending articles back and people were emailing her, asking how I was doing.
“Ronda was very supportive. She was always optimistic. You concentrate a lot on your feelings for each other going through something like that. But you learn to say everything you want to say to someone while they’re in front of you, while you still have the chance. ”
Mountain Lake’s own Lions’ club had a pancake fundraiser for the Harders where they raised $10,000. Their church in Newton set up a bank account for donations to help alleviate the medical costs. The local car club had a surprise cookout where they gave Corey the big bucket of donations. Even Corey’s close friends shaved their heads as a symbol of support.
“We ran a thank you in our hometown newspaper in Minnesota,” he said. “We stood up in church and we thanked everyone as we were crying.”
Even talking about the outpouring of support, words catch in his throat.
“I feel for people when I know they’re hurt if it’s a brain tumor or something like that” he said. “I want to find out who they are and how I can help. It’s the thing I went through in my life, that God wants me to use, to explain to others His effect on life. I never feel like I do it enough, or that I’ve done it enough. Life is precious."
The art of
Sinking a boat.
Well, nearly sinking a boat. Our boat nonetheless. We went fishing for the first time this year on Sunday. I should have known it was going to be a day of problems right away when the lights on the trailer didn't work. However, that didn't deter us we went ahead and jaunted up the road.
Now, once at the lake, we have a routine of getting the boat ready. We do things such as, paying the launch fee, pulling off the restraining straps, removing the prop brace and attaching the depth finder.
Oh and installing the drain plug.
That responsibility fell upon my father. I'm not sure what it was, whether he was sleepy, or if he was thinking about all the fish we were supposed to catch. I thought something looked wrong as they backed the boat down the boat ramp. I wasn't fully sure as normally I'm off waiting on the boat dock. Don fired up the engine, backed off the trailer and then pulled around to where we were waiting to board.
I got in and promptly notice a lot of water in the back of the boat.
"Where is all this water coming from?" I asked. Don turned and looked.
"Oh shit." he said. "The plug's not in."
I jumped off the boat, and we started yelling at my nearly deaf father to back down the ramp again. He finally understood and did as he was asked. Don cranked up the bilge pump, then loaded the boat.
Sure enough, the boat plug wasn't in the right spot. My father had plugged the livewell drain. I'm betting there were probably 100 gallons of water that came pouring out of our boat. There were a couple of guys waiting on us so they could put in, but they weren't in any hurry. Of course they were sharing a laugh with us about our nearly sinking of our boat.
We told dad, he couldn't be on our boat then. These guys offered to take him, to which i said:
"You can have him, but he'll sink your boat."
