Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

I kept telling myself I had to push through the pain in order to get up from the cold, icy ground and onto my feet, but that one effort brought out a primal scream that I didn’t know I had in me. It was to be the first of many.

The day began like all the others. Having lived much of my life in a variety of northern climes, I wasn’t about to let a little snow and ice stop me. There were horses to feed. They were reliant on me, and I knew they would be waiting, nickering as they do every morning when they see me coming with their buckets filled with a mish-mash of soaked food designed to keep them warm, strong and healthy.

When shortcuts are taken, mistakes are often made. I know that. But, I had several items on my “To Do” list. So, I took the shortest path to the paddock, through a shaded area where the snow and ice had not melted.

Then it happened. My feet went flying, and like a sack of overripe apples falling off the counter and onto the hard floor, I hit the ground on my right side so hard that every ounce of air in my lungs was now drifting away, and I lay there not moving. My first thought was that I needed to get air back into my lungs, but try as I might it wasn’t happening. I remember thinking, “What if I can’t breathe? Do I just die here and become frozen to the ground, later to be chipped out of the ice by my wife using a pickaxe and maybe tractor forks? After what seemed like forever, I was able to take a short breath, and others slowly followed.

Getting your breath knocked out is survivable. I know because it has happened to me countless times over the years, going as far back as horseback riding and football as a teenager. I’ve let my saddle outrun me a few times in my life, leaving me face down in the dirt. This seemed different.

So I lay there for a few minutes without moving before making the first of many attempts to get back onto my feet. Each time, the pain in my chest and back was like none I had felt. But I knew that I had to get up. No one was around, and I wasn’t about to call for help just to get up.

I scooted three or four feet to the side of the barn, each movement painful, where I knew a ladder hanging there could be my pull-up point. I also knew that the pain would be excruciating, so I took a moment to steel myself for what was coming–pushing myself through the pain no matter how great it was to pull myself up.

So piercing was the pain that I was instantly overcome by nausea, something I don’t remember ever happening during a long life of painful horse mishaps causing broken fingers and chipped bones, and an assortment of farm equipment accidents.

Once standing, the pain became more numbing and less stabbing, so I thought the worst part was over. I texted my wife Anita and asked her to bring some Motrin when she came to the barn.

When she arrived, she could see something serious had happened and Motrin wasn’t going to fix it, so off we went to the ER at AdventHealth Polk, formerly St. Luke’s Hospital, in Columbus, where nurse Carey Van Kirk immediately took charge. Every movement I made brought screams. The doctor’s diagnosis after studying the X-Rays: four broken ribs and a punctured lung. There appeared to be fluid in the chest cavity. They loaded this bag of broken bones into an EMT vehicle and off we roared to Spartanburg Regional Medical Center’s ER Trauma Center.

After 48 hours of X-Rays, IVs, pokes, prods, and pills, I was sent home and told to heal.

So for the next few weeks I will be following doctors’ orders. Not an easy thing for me.

Larry McDermott is a local retired farmer/journalist. Reach him at hardscrabblehollow@gmail.com