Dean’s Chapter
On Saturday, October 13, 1956, my cousin, David, came over to the house with a .22 rifle with which he had been hunting. He was acting foolishly with the gun, and showing off to his 12 year old cousin (me), by doing such things as holding the gun to his chin and pulling the trigger. Dad, who was already leery of guns, told David to go home, which was our grandparents home. We lived at 1735 Spokane Street and Grandma lived at 1736 Olympia Street in Modesto, California. From the middle of our block to the middle of their block was four blocks (½ block to the corner, three blocks up, then ½ block to Grandma’s home).
I sold greeting cards for the Junior Sales Club of America for three holiday seasons in the Fall. I had canvassed the neighborhood during the first two seasons, and had begun to get some repeat customers. I happened to come across the son of one of my customers one day who asked where I had been, because his mother had been looking for me to buy some Christmas cards. I had been goofing off about trying to sell the cards that third year, and had not seen her until then. By the time I contacted her, she had already bought cards elsewhere. As a result of losing the sale, I learned the value of calling upon a good customer in a timely manner, but, I was getting up to the deadline for getting my money back to the company, and was beginning to get a little panicky. David’s being at our house reminded me that I could always depend on my grandmother to buy cards from me, so I asked Dad if I could go over to ask Grandma if she wanted to buy cards from me.
I walked over to Grandma’s house, but when I got there neither she nor Grandpa were home. David was the only one in the house. Being a kid, I was still curious about the gun. David, who was five years older than I, was willing to accommodate his younger cousin. As I was looking at the .22, he said “Wait a minute. I want to show you something.” Then he disappeared though the back porch and into the . bathroom. (Bathrooms were more of an add-on when that house was built. No-one considered the “out-house” to be part of the main house back then.) When he called me into the bathroom, I carried the rifle with me. As I stepped through the bathroom door, I saw he had another gun. He was standing to my left, and I pointed mine to the right and said “Bang!” (I was never allowed to point even a cap-gun at anyone.) He then raised his gun, grinning, and I thought he said “Bang!” So I went along with the game, and dropped to the floor. As I started to get up, I saw what I thought was a small bird, which I supposed he had tossed down on the floor. As I picked it up, I realized that it was not a bird. “My hand!” I shouted. I’m shot! I’m dead!”
David helped me into the kitchen and called my parents. After a little bit, he persuaded them that it was important to come help me. I believe he finally told the “It’s kind of like this -- I shot Dean”. They rushed over to find that it was not just a wound from the .22, but was actually a hole in my left wrist from my grandfather’s 16 gauge shotgun, and there were pools of blood all over the kitchen floor.
Dad scooped me up, carried me to the car, and sat in the back seat with me on his lap. Mom drove to the hospital which was about five miles away. On the way, Dad (for some strange reason) would not have Mom stop at a service station so I could use the restroom, but insisted that I just go in my pants (even though it would mean getting his wet, too). He also refused to listen to my complaints about getting the car bloody. He certainly was stubborn.
Traffic was typically heavy for five o’clock on a Saturday afternoon. As we rushed to the hospital, when someone would be going too slowly, Mom would honk at them. Usually they would pull over to let us by. But occasionally, someone would not want to let us by, and Dad would hold up my hand, which would get immediate results.
As we arrived at the hospital, I remember a very serene atmosphere in the place. One man was escorting his wife and new baby out the door. The man jumped back to open the door for us, and his wife leaned over the railing. She looked kind of sick. As we got inside, Dad called out “Get a doctor!” and everything changed from serene to a flurry of activity. A nurse showed us into a room where they stretched me out and started working on me. One nurse came at me with a pair of scissors, commenting “We’re going to have to cut this off. “Cut what off?” I cried. “Just your t-shirt.” she replied. “But, that’s my new shirt I protested. “It’s not new, now.” she retorted, as she began to cut.
It was strange, but I never did experience pain. At least not up to that time. A man came into the room and told my parents that he needed to talk to them in the hall, and they left me to the care of the nurses.
The next thing I remembered was waking up in a hospital bed just before a bald, older man came into my room. “Hi!” I said as cheerily as I could. “What do you mean “Hi!”, he said, with a shocked look on his face. “You’re supposed to be almost dead.” He then proceeded to check me out with the efficiency of a skilled doctor. I later learned that he was Dr. Priggee, the doctor who had patched me up during my emergency. I found out later that he was seeing me one last time before ordering my entire left arm to be amputated just to save my life. Before he would even touch me to patch me up, he had Mom and Dad sign \amputation papers. He was the man who had them step into the hall as the nurses worked on me. Gaseous gangrene had set in. Dr. Priggee had been an army war doctor and had seen many injuries and told my parents, in front of me, that the most I could expect from saving my hand was a fleshy hook that would look more real than a prosthesis. He even warned that he had had some soldiers come back to him and beg him to amputate their arm due to the extreme pain they suffered from less severe wounds. God had other plans for me.
While I was recovering, Mom took me to an evangelist who was holding a tent revival in the area. He prayed that my hand would be completely normal. I was only twelve, but I sensed that it was not the prayer that should be said. “No, God! If you do that, how will anyone ever believe me when I tell them what you have done for me? Make my hand almost normal, but just enough different to convince people that I am telling them the truth.” I prayed.
Doctor Becker, the doctor who did corrective surgery on me, beginning two years later, did extensive searching for the nerves as he performed the exploratory surgery to find what he had to work with. When he came out of that first surgery, he was cussing, swearing, and using God’s name most inappropriately. “I don’t see how that (expletive) kid can feel. I spent most of the time searching for his nerves and could find them in his hand, but not in his arm, and I want to know how he has ninety-five per cent feeling.”
My tendons and nerves had not only been severed by the shotgun blast, but had literally been torn out, and as Dad held me on the way to the hospital, they had wrapped around Dad’s arm like spaghetti. It was discovered later that both had been torn out from well up in my forearm. The nerves were not connected from there to my palm.
Through the years, I have worked with people for months without them realizing that there was anything different about my left hand. It is true that I had numerous corrective surgeries, but the technology was not available at that time to repair nerves. Only God could do that.
During one of my visits to Dr. Priggee, as I was going through physical therapy, he said one thing to me that has stuck with me through the entire time since the accident, and has guided me during the down times. He said, “Remember. You are never a cripple, until you are a cripple in your own mind.”
