Injury made for a scary but fortunate night ~ April 25, 1996

David Heiller

Our family had a scare last Friday evening. Our daughter, Malika, was jumping on our trampoline. It’s the round kind that is sold at stores like Sam’s.

I was working in the garage when I heard Mollie calling for me. I went to the trampoline, where she was lying. She could barely move. She said she had tried to do a knee flip and had hurt her neck.

I helped her off the trampoline and walked her to her bed. She walked stiffly. Her neck hurt so bad that she wanted to go to bed at 8 on a Friday night. That worried me.

I went back outside. My wife, Cindy, was on her way home from Minneapolis, so I was on my own. My mind was working on a couple things.

One thing was the fact that I tend not to take injuries seriously. Like last December when Mollie chipped a bone in her ankle while skating. Or when she had an appendicitis a month ago. So I was thinking, “Maybe she isn’t really hurt. But maybe she is.”

The second thing was WHERE she was hurt. A neck injury while doing a flip on the trampoline? That worried me. I know people who are quadraplegics from neck injuries. I had heard that sometimes a neck would be fractured and the person wouldn’t even know it and the wrong movement would cause a total break and paralysis.

So after 10 minutes of this thinking, I went back upstairs and asked Mollie how she felt. She said she could hardly move her neck, it hurt so bad. She was sitting up reading. I made her lie down, and told her to lie still.

Then I called Mercy Hospital and told a nurse what had happened.

“Does she have any tingling sensation in her fingers and toes?” the nurse asked. Yes, Mollie said she did.

“Is she dizzy at all?” Yes, Mollie said she was. “If she was my daughter, I’d call an ambulance,” the nurse told me.

“Can’t I bring her in?” I asked.

“No, she shouldn’t move her neck or head at all,” she said.

Malika doing homework on her trampoline.

I did not want to call an ambulance. What if it was nothing? But as I looked at my healthy daughter lying in front of me, very sore and very afraid, I thought, “What if her spine is fractured?”

I called 9-1-1. The phone rang dozens of times, but no one answered. So I called Mercy back. “We’ve been waiting for the dispatch from Pine City,” the nurse said.

“I can’t get through to Pine City. Can you call the ambulance?”

“Yes. But keep trying 9-1-1.”

‘So I did, for another five minutes. The phone must have rung 100 times or more, but no one answered.

Mercy called back, and said the ambulance was on its way. Then the 9-1-1 dispatcher called from Pine City. She said Mercy Hospital had called them. The dispatcher sounded alarmed that my 9-1-1 call hadn’t gone through. She said she would call the telephone company to see what was wrong.

Time moved slowly then. Waiting. Wondering what life would be like for Mollie, and for us, if she was paralyzed. It was a grim thought.

First responders

Then the first responders started coming. First Mary Cronin, who lives just a mile away. Then Veronica and Rick Borchardt, then a whole bunch of others from the Sturgeon Lake and Willow River first responders.

I knew all of them, but I had never seen them in action like this. It’s hard to describe how good it felt having them there. My worry started to subside.

Then the ambulance crew came. They and the first responders put Mollie on a back board. They taped her and strapped her so that she could barely move. Then they took her, in a sitting position, down our stairs, which was very tricky. Then it was another careful transfer onto the ambulance gurney, and then into the ambulance.

Shortly after we hit County Road 46, we met Cindy coming home. I wondered how she would react when she saw all the first responders at our house.

I rode up front with EMT Jeff Fisher. He was very calm. That made me feel better. We talked about kids, how hard it is to know when they are hurt bad. How they can get hurt doing anything. How you don’t want to be too protective. He said I had a done the right thing.

When we got to the hospital, they took Mollie into the emergency room, and Dr. Barbara Bonkoski came in. She’s an old family friend.

“When I heard it was a 10-year-old girl west of Sturgeon Lake, I said, ‘Mollie Heiller,’ ” Barb said with a smile.

Then Cindy came with our son, Noah. We watched as Barb checked Mollie’s eyes, her grip, her reflexes in her hands and feet. “It doesn’t look like a fracture,” Barb said. That’s when I breathed my first of many sighs of relief.

They did x-rays with Mollie still taped in place to make sure everything was O.K., then took more when she was free of the tape. No fractures. Barb said it was a muscle strain, like you’d get in a whiplash. Barb also said I had done the right thing. It was too big a risk to ignore, she said.

Malika, with her friend Brittany,
jubilant on her tramp many years later.
Her last flip was that evening in 1996, however.

Steve Popowitz came in. He’s a first responder and a good friend. He wanted to make sure everything, was O.K. It’s nice to know you have friends like that.’

We walked out of the hospital shortly after that. All was O.K., except for some very shook-up and relieved parents and child. Mollie thanked me for doing what I had done.

I was glad too. One side of me thought , “Maybe I over-reacted. Maybe I should have waited for morning, to see if the pain would go away.”

But the “What If” got in the way of that too much. I just couldn’t do anything but what I did do.

I learned some lessons last Friday night. How much I love my daughter. How grateful I am for her good health.

And how lucky we are to have people like the First Responders ready to help in emergencies, even when they are false alarms.

Thank you.