After my appearance on That’s Incredible!, I received a lot of publicity, including a feature story in Parade magazine and appearing in a Ripley’s Believe It or Not periodical feature. I was also contacted by a bunch of news shows. One of these was co-hosted by John Gibson, who later went on to host a show on Fox News for many years. At the time, he was with a small news-magazine show on the Sacramento affiliate of a major TV network. He wanted to come to the dojo to interview and film me. I agreed.
By then, I was used to the presence of the large lights used during filming. But nothing had changed when it came to their angle and direction. If they shined directly into my eye, I would be blinded. When shooting inside my dojo, the smaller size of the place offered them fewer options, both horizontally and vertically, than crews had had in the past. So lights were setup just a few feet to my archer’s left. That wouldn’t have been a huge problem had I been able to focus only on my archer, as the arrow would travel directly from him to me.
I normally wore a pair of especially designed safety glasses. But for some reason I wasn’t wearing them that night. But everything seemed well-in-hand.
My archer shot the first of the blunt-tipped arrows and I caught it. But when he released the second, something happened that had never happened before. The arrow immediately veered hard to the left, swinging over about two feet, putting it very near one of the lights and right in front of a bunch of people. I saw it veer over and head straight for my face but nothing more.
I don’t understand how I did it to this day but, fortunately, I reflexively angled my head back and swung my hand in front of my face, grabbing a handful of feathers. Unfortunately, however, my arm was shorter than the arrow and it hit me just above the left eye, then slid all the way back between my eye and the top of my eye socket.
It all happened in a split second and no one but me knew what exactly had occurred. All I could see through my left eye was a dim yellow light.
We had full length mirrors along one wall. I walked over and checked my eye in the mirror. There was no longer any iris, the colored part in the middle of my eye. The center was now completely black all the way out to where the white part began.
Gibson and his crew asked what happened. I didn’t want them focusing on the hit. So I kept my eye closed and told them the arrow had hit me in the forehead and deflected off. I answered a few more questions, keeping things upbeat and positive, then saw them off.
I didn’t dwell on the injury. It was one of the things that had always been a possibility. More people lose eyes to blunt trauma than sharp. I had accepted that possibility so I had no right to complain about it afterwards. I was my fault, I told myself. I should have worn my safety glasses.
My son was with me and I had to drive us home. But on the way, I started getting sleepy. I thought it might have done more damage than I thought. (Turned out I was just sleepy.) I called one of my students, who was a doctor. He checked me and said the cornea, the lens, in my eye had filled with blood. He put patches over both eyes. When I woke up the next morning, I lifted the bandage a bit from my left eye and snuck a peek. I could see. I thought I must have lifted the wrong one. I lifted the other and could see too. I removed the bandages and the blood was almost gone from my left cornea. Within a few weeks, it was all gone.
Actually, the impact had improved my vision. I had been a little nearsighted in that eye. And the impact made it less so. But many years later, a cataract developed in it that badly reduced my vision. Although I never mentioned it, I avoided refereeing karate sparring matches for this reason. I eventually had the cataract removed and a permanent lens inserted. The eye surgeon who performed the operation said the cataract had developed into an almost perfect star pattern.
Since the day I was hit, I have had a small tear at the edge of my iris that makes my left pupil always appear larger than my right. My personal physician told me recently to make sure I taped a note that explained that fact onto the back of my driver’s license so, if I’m ever in a traffic accident, they won’t think the difference in pupil sizes indicates brain damage. But, I told him, I must have had some or I would never have started catching arrows in the first place.
Thanks again for your support. It means a lot to me.
No comments:
Post a Comment