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Unbreakable Pam...

Wednesday, 30 April 2014 06:10

ED. This is a wonderful story!

By Mike Waldner

A Friday Story for you all,

It is a testament to the benefits and importance of keeping in shape and good health.

In a nutshell this story is from a neat guy I met at the Broadband Communities Conference in Chicago last November.  So over dinner one night (being he is from Bolder) I mentioned that there are a lot of professional triathletes that live there.  He said his wife does triathlons also – and did the Lake Tahoe Ironman event.  Fast forward to next BBC conference in Austin Texas 2 weeks ago….  He could not wait to catch up with me and tell me the story of his wife.....

I have not read all the blog posts yet for the details but, here is the short version:

While she was getting Christmas decorations, slipped off a ladder, fell on a small Christmas tree steel rod – and the steel rod poked through her chest from arm pit to arm pit – narrowly missing her heart but obviously doing damage.  In trying to remove the rod the doctors said tissue was wrapped around it such that when they pulled on the rod the tissue would tear and rip apart (think of toilet paper wrapped around a steel rod and when it is wet and falls apart) The doctors had at one point told him of this and that she was going to die.  So here is all this going on … Then the chief surgeon came back to the waiting room, and said … well the good news is that she is alive.  His next words were….. “Is she an athlete?”  …. Doug said well yeah she just did an Ironman back in September…  The surgeon said that’s probably what saved her life, as remember the tissue problem? We kept putting in more and more blood as we pulled out the rod and her heart would just not quit pumping…. It just would not quit, which helped us as long as we kept putting in blood and it kept pumping we could continue to pull out the rod.  Doug then said his wife’s new saying was…  All that time I thought I was training for Lake Tahoe Ironman – I was really training to survive this life event.

Here is the story recap from a Runner’s Blog – and if you wanted to read all the blog posts there is the link below but this one is a nice short read and some pictures that will give you more perspective.

http://anothermotherrunner.com/2014/02/09/amr-love-week-pam-adams/

Enjoy! - Mike