ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, April 8, 1997 TAG: 9704080037
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG
SOURCE: LISA K. GARCIA THE ROANOKE TIMES
Veterinary school official Bob Martin returned to work last week at Virginia Tech, five months after a fall during a hunting trip left him paralyzed.
Bob Martin's first thought as his body began its head-first drop from a tree stand Nov. 11 was frustration at a ruined early morning deer hunt, he said.
The director of the teaching hospital at the Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine returned to work one week ago after a nearly five-month absence. Last week, he talked about the 20-foot fall that left him paralyzed from his chest to toes.
"It was almost like slow motion," Martin said. In reality, it took just over a half second.
After his mental flash about deer hunting, Martin had three more distinct thoughts.
"The second thought I had was the realization that I was going to break my back and then I wondered how badly it was going to hurt," he said. Those two thoughts were followed by a moment of wonder at how long it was taking to reach the ground.
Once he hit the ground, "I knew immediately I had broken my back," he said.
The impact crushed a vertebrae and caused irreparable injuries to Martin's spinal cord. There was never any doubt that he would never walk again because of the injury, he said.
"My first reaction was to check my arms and hands ... immediately I praised God for their preservation [of movement]," he said. "I knew I would work again
Martin said he put on his gloves and looked at his watch. It was exactly 6:25 a.m.
The hunting excursion began about 6 a.m. on a Monday with a quick hike up a steep incline near his house. Martin said he had hoped to get in about an hour of hunting before heading to work by 8.
Martin said he, Ernie Baker, and Baker's son headed in different directions in the winter morning's gray light. Although Baker knew where his friend was, the men hunted a good distance apart for safety reasons.
The air was brisk with temperatures in the 20s, but Martin had worked up a sweat hiking the 100 yards or so to his permanent tree stand. He took off his jacket and stuffed it into the straps of his pack. Then he attached the pack to a rope used to haul supplies into the tree stand and climbed to his perch.
While hauling up his pack and coat using the rope, Martin said, his jacket dropped on a limb about two-thirds of the way up.
Putting one hand on a "thick" limb to support his 170-pound frame, Martin began what was supposed to be a short climb to get his jacket.
His descent began with the crack of the hickory tree's limb and ended on the frozen ground.
Lying at the base of the tree with a light snow falling in his face, Martin said he realized he was going to be there awhile before he was discovered. No one expected him at work for an hour and a half. As it turned out, Baker and his son left the farm shortly after 10 a.m. without realizing Martin was hurt.
"He didn't come by my stand because it wasn't safe," Martin said.
It was not until about 12:45 p.m. - more than six hours after Martin's fall - that Baker returned to the property to search for his friend after a call from Martin's wife, Kay.
"When he saw me, he didn't know if I was alive or dead," Martin said. "He gave me his coat and we prayed together."
Since the fall, Martin has endured: a week in the University of Virginia Medical Center's intensive care unit; surgery to put metal rods in his back so he could sit up; about five and a half weeks of rehabilitation in Richmond; and a return to the hospital last month for complications caused by blood clots.
"I've really only felt good the last two or three weeks," he said of his physical recovery.
Emotionally, Martin said his acceptance of his paralysis has come easier for him than those around him. Look for bitterness or anger in Martin's demeanor and you will not find it. He said he accepts what happened without self-pity.
"Our faith is one that believes in a sovereign God that doesn't make mistakes," Martin said.
Depressed he is not, but determined he is.
Martin said he plans to become as independent as possible. He will learn to drive a car again and is beginning to return to the administrative duties of his job. A long-term goal is to one day roll into surgery and continue his healing work on animals. (A special wheelchair, which costs about $16,000, may make Martin's surgical goal a reality one day.)
Martin said he also looks forward to serving God from his wheelchair. He hopes to be a role model, he said. This experience has impressed upon him how one lives his life impacts others.
"You never know how it is going to come back to bless you or haunt you," he said.
In Martin's case, the overwhelming support he, his wife and four children have received reflects a life of ministering to others.
He said he has received literally hundreds of cards and letters; students from every year since 1984 wrote. Members of the family's church, Harvest Baptist, finished building a horse barn on his property while he was in the hospital and one man built a ramp for the front of his house. Kay, his wife of 23 years, has never complained about the physical duties of caring for him, Martin said.
"There's simply no way I could be depressed given the way people have responded," he said.
LENGTH: Long : 110 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ALAN KIM THE ROANOKE TIMES. 1. Bob Martin reads aby CNBnotecard attached to a gift from a well-wisher before meeting with
his colleague, Don Waldron, a professor and small animal surgeon. 2.
Martin describes his irreversible spinal cord injury from 20-foot
fall out of tree stand during a hunting outing last fall. color.