BLOOD, SWEAT and TEARS
(Picture is where my friend JD and I were climbing. He's standing at the point where I fell from. I landed down by the white area (river)...200 feet later!)
Lee J. Reardon............................7/21/04
306 N. Chilson Apt: 2
Bay City, Michigan 48706
Sue White
Entertainment Editor
The Saginaw News
203 S. Washington
Saginaw, Michigan 48602
Sue,
These are some excerpts from my journal that I have been writing for over 30 years. I wanted to tell you about how I got to this position. This is primarily a recap of my total college education career effort. It was right after I got back on my feet after my accident. The first paragraph explains my accident and some results. Then I explain some of what I experienced as I search for my degree:
I went back to Hoyt Nursing Home as the Assistant Administrator sometime in 1979. I didn’t comprehend much at the time but I was told some details of what I just went through.
It was July 30, 1978 and I had fallen 200 feet climbing at the Boulder Falls area outside Denver, CO. My blood has basically been replaced; I lost 26 pints of blood. My left side was paralyzed and thank god I snapped out of this state while I was in the 30-day coma at the hospital in Boulder. I didn’t have solid food for months and I had shrunk 55 lbs. in 21 days, and I’m at 130 lbs. I ended up in the coma from the basal skull fracture. My skull was swollen twice its normal size. The nurses told my parents, nightly I would grind my teeth so hard that they could here it 15 rooms down at the nurse’s station. I’m still in the coma at this time. I suffered a total memory loss after coming out of the coma.