It was one of those nights that linger forever in my mind. I worked many years in the emergency rooms at two local hospitals. Every shift was filled with surprises, shocks, exhilaration and sometimes great sadness. It was a smorgasbord of life.
Late one Saturday afternoon I met a wonderful young couple who had a life unlike anyone I had known previously. They were happy people who loved life and lived it to its fullest. It was a family of four and the father was our patient. He had been injured by a wild boar hog.
This guy was a big country boy who was as rugged looking as anyone I had ever seen. He was a person who feared nothing, not even death. His profession was Wild Boar Hunting. He and his brother had quit their regular jobs a couple of years prior and they hunted wild boar. There was a big demand for the meat and there was a need by landowners to remove the destructive and dangerous wild hogs from their property. As they told the story of their adventures I realized the major reason for their job change was the excitement and the pure adrenaline rush they got from the hunting. These brothers were unusual hunters as they only used knives. They did not carry guns at all. They had holstered knives with large blades. Their hunting dogs would corner the boar and hold onto the ears, then they would jump on the back of a boar and stab it to death. They were hunting in the Tensaw River Swamp at the time. It was a spot they had hunted for many years. There was a near endless supply of wild hogs in that area.
This particular day our patient jumped on the back of the wrong boar. This time he had met his match. The first stab nearly broke his knife as it hit a hard boney area on the back of the hog and it did not penetrate. This gave the boar the chance to jerk around and take a bite out of the hunter's arm.
This, now injured man was angry more than anything else. He continued to stab many times until he got the right spot and the boar was dead. They said that hog weighed over 500 pounds. His brother took pictures of his wound, pictures of this huge wild boar and pictures of the damaged knife.
It was unusual to hear the story of an injury and see it in a display of pictures taken immediately afterwards. As the story was being told, the patient’s wound was being cleaned and preparations were made for him to go to surgery. I glanced over at the two beautiful daughters of this hunter. They looked just like their mother who stood by her husband’s side and spoke words of comfort to him the whole time.
When the brothers were done with telling about this adventure, the oldest little girl began to speak. She said that when her daddy found baby piglets, he brought them to her and her sister. They dressed them in doll clothes, gave them names and fed them bottles until they could be weened. Her face lit up as she told of one she named Maggie that was nearly grown now. As she told the story of Maggie and many others before Maggie, I wondered what happened to the piglets when they were grown. Did daddy take them to market or did they disappear from the daughters without explanation?
This patient had a serious injury to his arm that would take him away from his craft for a few months. That is if he followed the doctor’s orders. I doubted seriously that he would.
These people were so happy and full of life. They loved how they lived and they looked healthy and joyful. All of our journeys are different. I knew wild hog hunting would not ever be a road I could travel but it was good to see that they found their happy place in life.
Except for the scars and scares, this patient was expected to recover quite well, that is if he followed those orders.
No comments:
Post a Comment