This past week I went to Grand Junction with Christina to visit my Grandma. It was so nice over there - high 70's and sun! Here we have temps in the high 20's and snow. Bleck! I want to go back!

While we were there, my Uncle Rex came over. Just recently he lost both legs to a staph infection and now gets around on prosthetic legs. He runs a lawn care company with his sons and when he's working on things like fertilizing, he uses a 4-wheeler rather than walking. So Rex was telling us a story that day of what happened that afternoon:

He was fertilizing and ran out so he drove the 4-wheeler over to the truck that was parked on the street to refill. When he went to go, the 4-wheeler wouldn't start so he got off and tinkered with it, finally getting it going. Somehow, though, his hand slipped off the brake and the 4-wheeler took off, running over his foot and popping his left leg completely off and the right one half out. The one leg was rolling down the street while the 4-wheeler was zipping around under it's own power. Rex figured it would hit a tree before it hit a car but somehow it missed every tree and hit a car, causing the fertilizer bag to pop out and explode all over the street.

A woman who had seen this came running over: "Oh my God!! Do you need an ambulance??" She was probably horrified when she saw his leg come off! She helped him get up and retireve his errant leg so he could get them on again. By this time a police officer had shown up and dealt with the damage (which was minimal) to the car. He told Rex that he could give him a ticket for reckless driving but since he wasn't on the vehicle and there was hardly any damge to the car that he would let it go.

I figure we can look forward to many more of these types of stories from my uncle in the future.

Labels: errant limbs, family, grand jct

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