My Favorite Scar

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James

climber

My twin brother's laundry room

Topic Author's Original Post - Dec 22, 2008 - 04:02pm PT

I have a lot of scars. There are suture marks on my left ankle. My shins are dotted with old wounds from falling above the crux on overhanging routes. A small line runs along my groin from a vena cavity filter. There are two scars layered on my left elbow from a compound fracture. Like the twelve-inch line on my back, most of my scars have to do with rock climbing. My favorite scar happened when I fell off my bike.

This is me on Tatonka. Mandi Finger took the photo.

I pedaled down the Squamish Chief’s parking lot, feeling good. I had just sent my boulder problem project and I could rest a day before heading back to California. I balanced on my bike, taking my hands off the handlebars, and adjusting my backpack. That is when I hit a speed bump. I flew over the handlebars. My face met the pavement in a very intense kiss. The North Face sunglasses I wore smashed into my cheek and split my face open. When I stood, there was a hole in the shoulder of my shirt, and the gash on my face was bleeding. People approached me.

“I am okay,” I said. I thought of Monty Python, “It’s only a flesh wound.”
Someone handed me a roll of climbing tape and a bit of tissue. I bandaged my face together.

“You are going to need stitches for sure.” Another passerby said. I groaned. I knew that Canada had universal health care but I was an American and dealing with the bureaucracy of the hospital in a foreign country worried me. I wondered if I could get some help from climbers.

Noah had just finished his residency in emergency medicine and wanted to go bouldering before he got board certified. Siemay was working temporarily in an internal medicine office. She had climbed well in Squamish the summer after her residency a few years earlier, so the two packed their dog and crash pads. They drove their fifth wheel trailer to Squamish and parked it for a few weeks. Holding my hand to my cheek, I found the couple in the granite boulders below the Chief.

“Uh…” I watched Noah walk down from the top of a difficult boulder problem. “Umm…”

F*#k, I have never known what to say when I need help.

“What happened to your cheek James?” Siemay asked.

“I fell off my bike.” I pulled the gooey bandage off and showed the big wound. “Check it out.”

Noah walked up, and examined it. “Hmm. Looks like you might need a couple of stitches. We are going to finish bouldering then you can come by the trailer. We will stitch you up.”

“Really?” I asked.

“Yeah, stop by around seven. As long as the wound does not sit for more than twelve hours, I can stitch it up.” I smiled and Noah went back to bouldering.

I bounced down from the boulders elated to be getting stitches from a climbing doctor. I grabbed my bike, straightened the handlebars, and rode back to my camp, a small tent I had set up in the woods behind the recreational center.

This is an old self portrait. It is small because Tim Doyle and Ben Harden are in the background. They don't like their pictures taken. I did not make it small on purpose. I blame them for the small size.

At seven o’clock, I stood at the door to Noah and Siemay’s fifth wheel trailer. I gave a tentative and wimpy knock.

“Come in,” Siemay said. I opened the door, letting the warm smell of rice drift into the summer air. “I am just cooking dinner. Noah is in the bedroom.”

“Noah. Noah!” She called. “James needs stitches.”

Noah stumbled out of the bedroom. His pants were covered in chalk.
“Let me wash my hands.” Noah stepped around Siemay to the sink. He scrubbed his hands with soap for thirty seconds, rinsed them, and dried them on paper towels. Moving to the dining room table he pulled put on a pair of latex gloves, and examined a set of syringes on the table. After squirting fluid out of one of the syringes, he told me to lay down on the floor.

“This is for the pain. I am going to make your cheek numb so that you will not feel the stitches.” Noah bent over me and slid the needle into my face, slowly releasing the fluid. “Now, we wait for a minute.”

I felt a tingling sensation in my cheek. Arthur Clarke wrote, “Any sufficiently advance technology is indistinguishable from magic.” That’s what happened in the little RV. Magic.

“How’s the rice coming?” Noah asked.

“Fine,” Siemay stirred the pot and continued chopping vegetables. “What sort of thread do we have to stitch him up with?”

“I can’t open the closet door,” Noah held his hands in the air and waved his gloves. “Can you get it?”

Siemay walked over, sorted through the closet, and grabbed some thread. “This is all we got.”

Noah groaned and looked at me. “This thread is bigger than what I would normally use. You are going to have a scar.”

I shrugged. I was happy just to get stitches. Who care’s about scars?

“That’s okay,“ I said.

Noah put a needle through my face, pulled the thread, and stitched me back together. There were six stitches when he was done. My eye was black and blue. I looked like I had just gotten in a bar fight; the pavement had been pretty mean to me.

“Okay,” there you go.

“Thank you so much,” I smiled. I was nervous. They had already given me a lot and I did not have any money or really anything to give in return. “I do not know how to repay you.”

“Dinner’s ready,” Siemay finished the meal. “Here’s a plate James. You can sit down over there.”

“Pull the stitches out in two weeks,” Noah filled his plate with rice and corn and peppers and chicken. “It will be easy. Just give them a little tug while you look in the bathroom mirror.”

Self Portrait in the Squamish rec center. Noah coated the stitches with some sort of medical goo to make the scar smaller.

And then I ate. Noah, the emergency room doctor, had dealt with my wound and then Siemay, the internal medicine doctor, fed me dinner. I have met hundreds of doctors because of my reckless climbing: neurologists, orthopedic surgeons, physicians, trauma doctors…but these two were the best.

Years later, I was sitting in the house behind the Yosemite medical clinic playing poker with Noah, Siemay, and a few other boulderers. Noah was staring at me. I thought he was trying to figure out how many aces I had in my sleeve. He opened his mouth and said, “That scar is a little big.”

I kept my poker face and never told him that the half moon below my eye is my favorite scar.

Siemay Lee, Me, Noah Kaufman, Anrew Burr, and some dude's hand. Photo by Thomasina Pidgeon

Porkchop_express

Trad climber

thats what she said...

Dec 22, 2008 - 04:12pm PT

that was a really wonderful read. thank you.

bvb

Social climber

flagstaff arizona

Dec 22, 2008 - 04:31pm PT

fun story. one of the best things about climbing a long time is the huge collection of amazing encounters we have over the days, weeks, years and decades as we randomly bump into the same people over and over.

and i'm pretty fond of all my scars as well. i would not wish any of them away.

Michelle

Trad climber

El Frickin' Paso

Dec 22, 2008 - 06:50pm PT

I love your writing. My favorite scars are the ones one my knees I got when I was 5. Funny how they're still there..

Basilisk

Ice climber

New Hampshire

Dec 22, 2008 - 10:21pm PT

The best part about scars is the stories they match up with. Late;y I've been disappointed to realize I don't remember the stories for most of mine. Always good to have it in writing.

Lately I've been making a list of exceptional moments throughout my life. Mostly they're just times when I've felt happy and/or whole. This would be one of those moments, and I think it's pretty fantastic you have a permanent way to remember it.

happiegrrrl

Trad climber

New York, NY

Dec 22, 2008 - 10:50pm PT

Nice story!

My favorite scar is barely visible any more. It's on my forehead. When I was little, I was playing in the back yard. I grew up in rural Nowheresville, and back in those days people burned their trash.

So, there I was. Playing on the back yard and suddenly I hear a loud "POP!"

I'm hit! The force knocks me backwards onto my little 5-year old keister. GOD,. did it hurt.

What had happened was, there was a catsup(or ketchup) bottle being burned in the trash pile. The cap was still on it. The heat blasted the cap off and it flew through the air like a cannonball.

During the trajectory, it buttered through a bread wrapper. Yellow plastic with small red dots.

My forehead was marked, dead center, with a plastic ketchup bottle-sized yellow with red dots patch. My parents took me to the doctor(because of the plastic) and he said to leave it, because removing it would probably worsen the eventual scar.

I had to go to kindergarten with a yellow/red dot bread wrapper melted to my forehead. It was completely recognizable. Gardner's sliced white sandwich bread.