July 23, 2014 at 2:10 p.m.
Meaningful journey
Meaningful journey
Steve Arnold is uncomfortable.
He doesn't like being interviewed.
Shifting in his seat at his desk at Portland Insurance Agency, he says he can't understand why anyone would want to be interested in his story.
Then he says this: "What I remember is looking down at my leg - there were a lot of people screaming - and I told Bev, 'I've lost my foot.'"
The birthday party
It was an early autumn weekend afternoon at the lake.
About 20 or 30 people had gathered for a surprise party.
The occasion: Richard Arnold's 80th birthday on Sept. 20, 2008.
Dick had been lured to the other end of Lake Pleasant where he'd been told the fish were biting.
Longtime friend and fishing companion Suzie Johanning had been assigned with the task of keeping him away.
Meanwhile, family members and friends had begun to gather.
Many had come by golf cart, a common mode of transportation between lake cottages.
"A lot of people parked their golf carts out back, which happens to be on an incline," Steve remembers.
As Dick and Suzie came up from the lake, Steve and his brother Jeff greeted them.
But Steve was distracted.
A couple of the smaller children had been playing around the golf carts, and now one of the carts was moving downhill, picking up speed.
"Steve hollered, 'No! No!' and took off," says Dick.
"Jeff was hollering at Steve."
Thinking one of his grandchildren was in the golf cart, Steve tried to intercept its course and get it under control. Seconds later, he was pinned against a corner of a garage, his right leg crushed below the knee and his foot nearly twisted off.
His tibia and fibula had been displaced a full four inches. His leg had literally been bent around the corner of the building. Instead of cutting, the collision smashed the leg, tearing off muscle tissue and leaving only one of three arteries still intact.
"I'm sure I went into shock," Steve says.
"What I remember is (daughter) Abby jumped right in and started barking orders," says Steve's wife Bev. "She and I got to Steve first and held onto his leg. ... Everybody just jumped in."
"I don't think it was a lot (of bleeding)," says Steve. "It wasn't gushing. It just tore all the tissue out."
Dick says he never wants to see anything that awful again.
Emergency officials were called, and cousin Susan Ford, a trauma nurse, was on hand in the interim.
"It seems like it wasn't any time at all before the First Responders got there," says Bev. A Lifeline helicopter followed soon after, taking Steve to Lutheran Hospital in Fort Wayne.
"From the time it happened," says Steve, "I had resigned myself that I was going to lose my foot. I didn't think it was possible to save it. I had my knee and knew that I could have a prosthesis and still play with my grandchildren, but I never thought I'd see that foot again."
He did, but it was unclear whether he'd keep it or lose it to amputation.
At Lutheran, the leg wound was cleaned and immobilized. A second artery that had been crushed but not severed later was "re-inflated."
And an endless round of discussions between orthopedic specialists and plastic surgeons began over whether to attempt to save the foot or simply remove it.
It was a debate that was to play out over a period of months, putting the Arnold family on an emotional rollercoaster.
The weddings
Abby Arnold and Kyle Champ were in the final days of wedding planning. Their wedding date: One week after Steve's accident.
Suddenly, with the father of the bride in the hospital, it looked as if those plans had been tossed out the window.
The doctor's response had been brief when Steve told him he wanted to go to the wedding. "He said, 'Yeah, right,'" Steve recalls.
"I wanted to postpone," says Abby. But staff at Lutheran Hospital heard about the situation and intervened. "They said, 'You need to go look at the chapel.' It was gorgeous."
Though Steve was still in the intensive care unit, new plans were set in motion that would allow him to be part of the wedding festivities on Wednesday of that week.
Hospital staff gave the patient a shave and allowed him to wear a favorite ring with stones for each of his children. Abby accompanied him from ICU to the chapel.
"They let him out just long enough for the wedding," says Abby. "I got to go downstairs with him."
"We went down the aisle together," says Steve.
"It was the most beautiful service ever," says Bev. "All the family members were there. It was wonderful."
"It was perfect," says Abby.
Adding to the perfection was the fact that youngest son Derek Arnold had made the trip home from his teaching job in Petersburg, Alaska, to attend the hospital wedding as well as the Saturday service.
Pastor Ronald Naylor of First Presbyterian Church in Muncie made the trip to Fort Wayne to perform the Wednesday ceremony. He would perform a second ceremony for the couple on Saturday at the church.
And even though Steve couldn't be physically on hand for that one, technology took him there.
Family members and hospital staff rigged up Web cams at both the ceremony and the reception.
"I got to watch the entire second wedding on a live feed," says Steve.
Six surgeries
The doctors' plan was to take tissue from another of Steve's muscles to try to get a skin graft to grow new tissue in order to save the foot.
But, they told the Arnolds, not every skin graft takes. And the odds of the graft being successful drop every time one is attempted.
October was occupied by the graft surgery and a long, slow recuperation period. By the second half of the month the news was bad. The graft wasn't taking hold, tilting the odds again in the direction of amputation.
"The 'flap' had failed," says Steve. "So literally we started the whole process over."
Always a swimmer, and a gymnast in high school, Arnold wasn't doing well with the inactivity of recuperation.
"They'd already said I was going to be on my back 10 weeks. Then three to four weeks into that to do the whole thing over again ..." he says, recalling his frustration.
"I was absolutely helpless. On my back. I don't do 'nothing' well."
"I said, 'If this doesn't work, just take it off.'"
Thanksgiving
Though daughters Abby Champ and Andrea Oswalt were close at hand and son Jason was just a short drive away in Muncie, the whole family couldn't be together that October.
Although he was able to return for the weddings, Derek, the youngest of the four siblings had returned to his work in Alaska.
He wasn't particularly happy about it.
"It was very tough to have to leave," Derek says.
Keeping track of the situation long distance, he came to a conclusion.
"When he went in for his second round of surgeries, that's when I said, 'That's it. I'm done. I need to be there,'" says Derek.
He went to officials at the school system and explained that he would stay just long enough for them to find his replacement, then in November he set out by car, driving back to Indiana from Alaska.
"One of the mistakes we made," says Bev, "was letting Derek go."
Halloween was a low point.
"Before Steve had been released after the second round of surgery, I broke down and said (to Derek), 'I need you,'" Bev recalls. "I was the only one who knew he was coming (for Thanksgiving)."
She was also the only one who knew he wasn't just coming for a brief visit, but was coming to stay.
Thanksgiving itself was a bit of an ordeal. Steve felt lousy after the second round of surgeries and wanted to skip the whole thing, making it hard to arrange the surprise. Eventually he agreed to go ahead with plans to have Thanksgiving dinner at Jason's home in Muncie; Derek would be there to greet him.
He would stay with his father for the next several months, doing what he could to allow his mother to return to her routine at Jay County High School, taking his dad into the office on occasion and sometimes just sitting with him. "We played a lot of cards," he says with a laugh.
The long
road back
Long days lay ahead, with Steve keeping his foot elevated almost constantly, only allowed to lower it for minutes at a time.
"I could only have my foot down 10 minutes a day," says Steve. "It would swell so badly it just turned purple. ... Before I could walk unassisted again it was six months, exactly six months, March 20."
A hospital bed that had been set up in the family living room quickly became a safe haven, a place that Steve sometimes didn't want to leave. It was easier to withdraw, but, says Steve, "Bev literally would not let me."
She took him to basketball games. She had him return to his public address announcing at swim meets. She refused to let him crawl into a shell of self-pity that he often found tempting.
"This whole thing to me ended up being about faith, family and friends," says Steve, thanking the hundreds of people who sent him cards and offered words of encouragement. "You really examine your faith. It's got to be something pretty major to bother me anymore. Life is simpler."
Steve still isn't back to 100 percent. "I don't have the ability to run yet, but I expect to do that," he says. "I water skied this summer. When they released me they told me I can do anything I can tolerate."
Looking back, Bev says this: "If you've ever doubted the power of prayer, I certainly don't anymore. It was just really powerful."
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He doesn't like being interviewed.
Shifting in his seat at his desk at Portland Insurance Agency, he says he can't understand why anyone would want to be interested in his story.
Then he says this: "What I remember is looking down at my leg - there were a lot of people screaming - and I told Bev, 'I've lost my foot.'"
The birthday party
It was an early autumn weekend afternoon at the lake.
About 20 or 30 people had gathered for a surprise party.
The occasion: Richard Arnold's 80th birthday on Sept. 20, 2008.
Dick had been lured to the other end of Lake Pleasant where he'd been told the fish were biting.
Longtime friend and fishing companion Suzie Johanning had been assigned with the task of keeping him away.
Meanwhile, family members and friends had begun to gather.
Many had come by golf cart, a common mode of transportation between lake cottages.
"A lot of people parked their golf carts out back, which happens to be on an incline," Steve remembers.
As Dick and Suzie came up from the lake, Steve and his brother Jeff greeted them.
But Steve was distracted.
A couple of the smaller children had been playing around the golf carts, and now one of the carts was moving downhill, picking up speed.
"Steve hollered, 'No! No!' and took off," says Dick.
"Jeff was hollering at Steve."
Thinking one of his grandchildren was in the golf cart, Steve tried to intercept its course and get it under control. Seconds later, he was pinned against a corner of a garage, his right leg crushed below the knee and his foot nearly twisted off.
His tibia and fibula had been displaced a full four inches. His leg had literally been bent around the corner of the building. Instead of cutting, the collision smashed the leg, tearing off muscle tissue and leaving only one of three arteries still intact.
"I'm sure I went into shock," Steve says.
"What I remember is (daughter) Abby jumped right in and started barking orders," says Steve's wife Bev. "She and I got to Steve first and held onto his leg. ... Everybody just jumped in."
"I don't think it was a lot (of bleeding)," says Steve. "It wasn't gushing. It just tore all the tissue out."
Dick says he never wants to see anything that awful again.
Emergency officials were called, and cousin Susan Ford, a trauma nurse, was on hand in the interim.
"It seems like it wasn't any time at all before the First Responders got there," says Bev. A Lifeline helicopter followed soon after, taking Steve to Lutheran Hospital in Fort Wayne.
"From the time it happened," says Steve, "I had resigned myself that I was going to lose my foot. I didn't think it was possible to save it. I had my knee and knew that I could have a prosthesis and still play with my grandchildren, but I never thought I'd see that foot again."
He did, but it was unclear whether he'd keep it or lose it to amputation.
At Lutheran, the leg wound was cleaned and immobilized. A second artery that had been crushed but not severed later was "re-inflated."
And an endless round of discussions between orthopedic specialists and plastic surgeons began over whether to attempt to save the foot or simply remove it.
It was a debate that was to play out over a period of months, putting the Arnold family on an emotional rollercoaster.
The weddings
Abby Arnold and Kyle Champ were in the final days of wedding planning. Their wedding date: One week after Steve's accident.
Suddenly, with the father of the bride in the hospital, it looked as if those plans had been tossed out the window.
The doctor's response had been brief when Steve told him he wanted to go to the wedding. "He said, 'Yeah, right,'" Steve recalls.
"I wanted to postpone," says Abby. But staff at Lutheran Hospital heard about the situation and intervened. "They said, 'You need to go look at the chapel.' It was gorgeous."
Though Steve was still in the intensive care unit, new plans were set in motion that would allow him to be part of the wedding festivities on Wednesday of that week.
Hospital staff gave the patient a shave and allowed him to wear a favorite ring with stones for each of his children. Abby accompanied him from ICU to the chapel.
"They let him out just long enough for the wedding," says Abby. "I got to go downstairs with him."
"We went down the aisle together," says Steve.
"It was the most beautiful service ever," says Bev. "All the family members were there. It was wonderful."
"It was perfect," says Abby.
Adding to the perfection was the fact that youngest son Derek Arnold had made the trip home from his teaching job in Petersburg, Alaska, to attend the hospital wedding as well as the Saturday service.
Pastor Ronald Naylor of First Presbyterian Church in Muncie made the trip to Fort Wayne to perform the Wednesday ceremony. He would perform a second ceremony for the couple on Saturday at the church.
And even though Steve couldn't be physically on hand for that one, technology took him there.
Family members and hospital staff rigged up Web cams at both the ceremony and the reception.
"I got to watch the entire second wedding on a live feed," says Steve.
Six surgeries
The doctors' plan was to take tissue from another of Steve's muscles to try to get a skin graft to grow new tissue in order to save the foot.
But, they told the Arnolds, not every skin graft takes. And the odds of the graft being successful drop every time one is attempted.
October was occupied by the graft surgery and a long, slow recuperation period. By the second half of the month the news was bad. The graft wasn't taking hold, tilting the odds again in the direction of amputation.
"The 'flap' had failed," says Steve. "So literally we started the whole process over."
Always a swimmer, and a gymnast in high school, Arnold wasn't doing well with the inactivity of recuperation.
"They'd already said I was going to be on my back 10 weeks. Then three to four weeks into that to do the whole thing over again ..." he says, recalling his frustration.
"I was absolutely helpless. On my back. I don't do 'nothing' well."
"I said, 'If this doesn't work, just take it off.'"
Thanksgiving
Though daughters Abby Champ and Andrea Oswalt were close at hand and son Jason was just a short drive away in Muncie, the whole family couldn't be together that October.
Although he was able to return for the weddings, Derek, the youngest of the four siblings had returned to his work in Alaska.
He wasn't particularly happy about it.
"It was very tough to have to leave," Derek says.
Keeping track of the situation long distance, he came to a conclusion.
"When he went in for his second round of surgeries, that's when I said, 'That's it. I'm done. I need to be there,'" says Derek.
He went to officials at the school system and explained that he would stay just long enough for them to find his replacement, then in November he set out by car, driving back to Indiana from Alaska.
"One of the mistakes we made," says Bev, "was letting Derek go."
Halloween was a low point.
"Before Steve had been released after the second round of surgery, I broke down and said (to Derek), 'I need you,'" Bev recalls. "I was the only one who knew he was coming (for Thanksgiving)."
She was also the only one who knew he wasn't just coming for a brief visit, but was coming to stay.
Thanksgiving itself was a bit of an ordeal. Steve felt lousy after the second round of surgeries and wanted to skip the whole thing, making it hard to arrange the surprise. Eventually he agreed to go ahead with plans to have Thanksgiving dinner at Jason's home in Muncie; Derek would be there to greet him.
He would stay with his father for the next several months, doing what he could to allow his mother to return to her routine at Jay County High School, taking his dad into the office on occasion and sometimes just sitting with him. "We played a lot of cards," he says with a laugh.
The long
road back
Long days lay ahead, with Steve keeping his foot elevated almost constantly, only allowed to lower it for minutes at a time.
"I could only have my foot down 10 minutes a day," says Steve. "It would swell so badly it just turned purple. ... Before I could walk unassisted again it was six months, exactly six months, March 20."
A hospital bed that had been set up in the family living room quickly became a safe haven, a place that Steve sometimes didn't want to leave. It was easier to withdraw, but, says Steve, "Bev literally would not let me."
She took him to basketball games. She had him return to his public address announcing at swim meets. She refused to let him crawl into a shell of self-pity that he often found tempting.
"This whole thing to me ended up being about faith, family and friends," says Steve, thanking the hundreds of people who sent him cards and offered words of encouragement. "You really examine your faith. It's got to be something pretty major to bother me anymore. Life is simpler."
Steve still isn't back to 100 percent. "I don't have the ability to run yet, but I expect to do that," he says. "I water skied this summer. When they released me they told me I can do anything I can tolerate."
Looking back, Bev says this: "If you've ever doubted the power of prayer, I certainly don't anymore. It was just really powerful."
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