E R N I E ' S   H O U S E   O F   W H O O P A S S

In June of 1991, I was on a dirt bike in a secluded wilderness area alone when I was struck by a Ford Bronco, also traveling alone, breaking my leg and knocking me silly for some time. I woke by myself not really knowing where I was or who I was or if any help was coming but I did know that if I didn't get help soon, I was going to be in bad shape. I looked around and saw my bike. Not knowing it was in three pieces, I stood up trying to walk over to it and that was when the bone shot out of the skin about 6 inches below my knee.

Let me tell you that there is nothing like looking down and seeing inside your own bone sticking out of your own leg. Needless to say, I blacked out for an undetermined amount of time. When I awoke this time, I thought I felt rain falling on me but it was only hitting my legs. When I opened my eyes, I realized that the rain was actually my own blood squirting out and up of the open wound that the bone had made and falling back on me.

Having been a boy scout at one time, I decided that this was bad and it needed some sort of attention. I removed my shirt and wrapped it around the wound, trying to keep as much pressure as possible during my times of semi-conscious. At some point, I realized that things were crawling all over me but could not figure out what it was. If they wanted me, they could have me.

Finally, I came to as my father was slapping my face to wake me up. According to the man driving the Bronco, I had told him where the nearest house was located which happened to be my parent's and he had made the decision to go get help. God bless him. My father said that when he got there, that most of my legs and surrounding area was covered with blood and that ants, the big black mofos that you find out in the woods, had been attracted to the blood and was coming to get them a little taste. I hoped they chocked on it. Trip to the ER, a hospital stay and some recovery time, I was good as new.

Now let us fast forward about 5 years later to the tasteless part. I was playing Div III college football and one of the routines that we had to do for conditioning was jumping up on a three foot wooden box with 10 lb dumb bells in each hand. Easy you say? Try 3 sets of 20 and get back to me. Remember that I had broke my leg in the shin area and it was sensitive to any touch. Running a washcloth across it still gives me chills.

During one of my sets of box jumps, I missed and came down hard on my bad shin. Grinding my teeth and cursing under my breath, I regained my composure and tried again with the same results. I decided that my workout was over and went to the locker room. Surveying my leg, I could see no visible damage except a small scrape and the pain was tolerable so I wasn't too concerned. Everything was fine till I woke up the next morning and noticed some swelling and discoloration in that area. No big deal, a couple aspirin, throw on some jeans and head to class. Sometime during the day, I noticed that my leg was really warm and that my leg was swelling against my jeans. After going back to my dorm and dropping trouser, I realized that the swelling had increased considerable. I throw on some sweat pants for more comfort and finished my day, sitting out conditioning that evening and scheduling an infirmary visit the next day. The doctor at the infirmary told me that it was just a bad bruise and to keep taking some type of anti inflammatory and it would go away. After 3 or 4 days, I decided that it wasn't any better and the small scrape that I had mentioned had turned into a nice gaping open wound with puss and dark blood oozing from it. I decided that the infirmary doctor was a quack and scheduled an appointment with my family doctor 4 hours away.

The drive wasn't bad except for the fact that I had to stop and change bandages three times when the blood started running into my shoe. My family doctor tried to draw the blood with a large needle but said that it had been to long. He said the best thing for me to do was to go stay with my parents(about 30 mins away) and soak the leg in warm water and massage it to break up the old blood so that they body could absorb it. No problem. I could handle a few days of Mom's cooking and some nice couch time with the remote. I did what the doctor said for the first day, soaking and rubbing and having some really good meals. At one point, I discovered that if I squeezed around the open wound, that the old blood would come out faster and I could wash it away.

So for another day, I would squeeze the hole like a big nasty zit and that is when it happened. Something let go that was holding back all those blood clots and they started coming out of this nickel sized opening. Some struggled to come, looking like chicken livers as they plopped into the tub. Normally, I can handle anything of this nature but this was too much. I started getting light headed and stumbled around for a second, the chicken liver fun factory distributing its merchandise.

I finally made it to open the door and yelled for my father who was already in bed for the night. He comes down, takes one look, turns green and said I was on my own on this one. Thanks Pops. I sat on the edge of the tub with my legs inside and gained my composure. That is when I decided that what was happening was the best thing so I started rubbing and more and more blood clots/chicken livers came out. I had the water running in the tub to help clean up the mess but the clots would not go down. I had to take my other foot and squish them down the drain with my toes.

It started to be a game, one that I played for over an hour. Points were scored by size, horizontal distance traveled after exiting my leg, and how much force was used to get it down the drain. Another couple of days with double headers each day, the leg was all better and I was ready to return to defiling myself in the name of college. To this day, I still cannot look at raw chicken livers without having my stomach do a back flip and my mouth start the pre-puke process of filling full of saliva.

~ Donnie