Jerry Boyko :: Blog Spot

One of my first memories includes the nursing staff preparing me for x-rays; I believe that’s what they were doing. I was strapped to a tilt table that would put me in a standing position; I remember one nurse pushing against my knees to prevent them from buckling. As the tilting began so did the pain. The more vertical the table became the more pain I had to endure, it was excruciating. I was paralyzed and couldn’t feel, but my entire body was engulfed in pain during this procedure. They were doing their best to hurry, but it could not be soon enough for me.

After that, they put me on what seemed like an operating table, it had the light and mirrors above it. A towel was draped over my face to prevent me from seeing what was happening; after a few minutes the towel fell off. Some of this was due to the fact that the towel wasn’t positioned well over my face and the rest was due to me blowing the towel so I could see what they were doing to me! When the towel fell, all I could see was a very large needle hanging out of my neck with a nice pool of blood underneath it.

That evening in the ICU the surgeon came to explain the details of the surgery and when it would take place. He said I had fractured 3 vertebrae, cervical 4-6, and that the fractured bones didn’t sever but bruised my spinal cord. According to the surgeon, this fact gave me a 250,000 to 1 chance of walking again within the first 2 years; after 2 years you’ve gotten all the return you’re going to get. The procedure was to graft bone from both hips and fuse them to the fractured bones. He also said the surgery would be performed next week. Keep in mind that he is telling me this on Sunday. I instantly felt relieved that I had a whole week before they cut me open.

Monday morning comes and I am awakened by much too cheerful nurses informing me that they are there to prep me for surgery. What?! It hasn’t been a week! I guess the Doctor considers Monday the beginning of a new week, but it would have been nice if he had used more accurate terminology like the word “tomorrow” instead of “next week.”

[After 20 years of believing the above paragraph, I learned what really happened from my Mom while getting information about this blog. The surgery wasn’t supposed to take place until Thursday, so my family was trying to get me to Pittsburgh to have the surgery done there. Then I started to have too much swelling and the surgery had to be done right away.]

My last memory of the surgery was waking up while they were operating on me. As I was waking, I could hear them talking and laughing and thought that they were having way too much fun while they were working on me; it was also relieving, if they were laughing things must be going well. When my eyes opened someone put the mask over my face and I was out again.

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I remember it like it was yesterday, a beautiful sunny Sunday. Mom dropped me off at the New River Pool, I’m guessing somewhere around noon, and by 1:00pm I was on my way to the hospital.

One of the life guards and I had started a contest to see who could dive the farthest across the width of the pool. We were diving off the side of the 5-foot section, but were not worried about the depth because we were just diving out and going under 2 or 3 feet. No big deal, right? Not until somebody hits the edge of the pool wrong and goes up instead of out.

We had done this maybe a dozen times one right after the other and decided we would dive one last time to determine the winner. Well, we know who the loser was. We both backed up to the edge of the grass to get as much speed as possible before diving. As I approached the pool, my stride was not going to line up with the waters edge. I double stepped to adjust and when I hit the edge I bounced straight up instead of shooting out. Looking back I ask myself, “Why didn’t I just roll and be done with it?” It just happened so fast it seemed there wasn’t time to react.

So, what goes up must come down. That’s exactly what I did, straight down. When I hit bottom it didn’t hurt, probably because it was my hard head. I did hear the bone crack but didn’t think anything about it until I tried to move. Immediately, I thought to myself, “You really f@#!ed up this time, Boyko!” So that passes and I’m thinking, “If somebody doesn’t get me out of this water, I’m going to drown.” I could hear someone say, “Come on Boyko, quit messing around!” I was out of air and out of luck and just then Glenn Casto lifted me up out of the water and I said, “Man, I can’t move.” That’s when the chaos started.

Things get a little sketchy for me from here. Glenn carried me over to the side of the pool and someone found a board to put under me before lifting me out of the water. I believe it was Bobby Accord and his dad among others. I just recently learned that my good friend Cheri was there with me the entire time. We’ve been friends for years and had never talked about it until I started this site.

Everyone was frantic and yelling. Someone said, “Get something to cover him up with before he goes into shock!” I thought, “If you guys don’t calm down, you’re going to put me in shock.” As I was lying on the edge my arm kept falling in the water and someone would put it back on my chest and say, “Hold your arm there.” I just remember thinking, “Hello, if you haven’t noticed, I can’t move.”

On the way to the hospital I could hear the ambulance drivers talking about having to cut in a funeral proceeding. I guess I was having a better day than the person being buried.

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