Dan Applegate: The Voice of My Brain Injury
My story begins in 1983, when I graduated from the Colorado School of Mines with a bachelors degree in Mining Engineering. Unfortunately, there weren’t many mining jobs available at that time in the USA. But I found a good job in South Africa, working on one of the ultra-deep gold mines there. The mines that I worked on were very deep (up to 4000 meters deep, or two and a half miles!) and very dangerous! After twelve years of doing this without injury I moved to a nickel mine in Botswana as the Underground Project Manager. We stayed in a nice house with a pool, all paid for by the mining company. I also had a company car to use whenever I wanted. Near the end of my second year there I was told to plan a visit for a Canadian visitor to show him some of the exciting work we were doing. This man was a representative of the company that bought our nickel from us, so it was a very important visit and my people worked for many days to really fix up all of their work areas that were to be visited. However, at the last minute he had to cancel his visit.
Or at least that’s what I was told. I really don’t remember the events leading up to my accident, or the following two months. But I will always remember the date of my traumatic brain injury (TBI) and leg amputation: July 22, 1997. I’ve been told that I decided to visit the work areas anyway, even though our distinguished visitor couldn’t make it. One of the areas to be visited was a 100 ft. long orepass (a very steep tunnel that is used to drop broken ore into to move the ore from a higher level to a lower one), and my people had just completed the initial holing of the orepass into the overlying haulage. Something went wrong during my visit, and they found me at the end of the day shift lying unconscious in the orepass on top of the broken rock. My hard hat had come off when I fell and I had hit my forehead on the rocks, which gave me the TBI. But my left leg was also in bad shape, and the mine rescue team that found me thought that I would need to have it amputated.
They brought me to the surface of the mine, and then they wanted to fly me and my wife to South Africa on the mine’s little plane (South Africa has some very advanced hospitals, which is why they decided to fly us there). But by the time they got me out of the mine and into the plane it was very dark, and our little airport didn’t have enough lights to enable us to take off in the dark. Then a lot of the men who worked for me were called and they drove to the airport and parked their vehicles along the runway. They shone their headlights on the runway, which gave the pilot enough light to take off!
When they got me to the hospital they realized that though my left leg looked worse, the real problem was my right leg. They couldn’t get the blood flowing in my right leg. They saved the left leg, but when they operated to try to restore the circulation to my right leg they found that there was no way they could save it. Eventually gangrene set in and they had to do a right leg through-knee amputation. But I slept through all of this drama, and stayed in a coma for two months. After about a month the doctor took my wife aside and told her not to get her hopes up too much. He said I would probably never wake up, or else I would just be a vegetable for the rest of my life. My wife told the doctor “You don’t know my husband- he’ll get through this!”
Two months after my fall I finally woke up and saw that they had amputated my leg. I could deal with that, but then I looked in the mirror and saw that my beard had been shaved off! I’d had my beard for about fifteen years, and I’d had my moustache since high school. Now they were both gone! Those nurses sure take liberties when you’re unconscious!
My wife spent most of the three months following my accident with me in South Africa, so my wonderful mother-in-law flew out from England to take care of our two young daughters who were in grade school in Botswana. My Dad also flew out from Texas to spend a few weeks with me, and I didn’t even have the courtesy to wake up to welcome him to South Africa!
After my accident the mine wanted to give me a job on surface, but the country of Botswana wouldn’t renew my work permit. They said I had been allowed into their country as a Mining Engineer, and obviously one-legged people with a TBI couldn’t be Mining Engineers, so I would have to leave. We then decided to return to America because I would be able to get better rehabilitation care there. We first moved back to Colorado since most of my family still lived there. After a year of looking all over for a job as a Mining Engineer I finally decided to go to the University of Missouri at Rolla (UMR – now the Missouri University of Science & Technology – MS&T) to try to get my Ph.D. Then I would be able to start teaching mining classes at the college level. We bought a nice house just outside Rolla, and I attended graduate school at UMR for four years. I completed all of the necessary coursework with a B average, but I struggled with the lab work and the thesis, and I eventually ran out of money.
I had to leave school to find work, but I still haven’t been able to find a job where they will give me a chance to show them what I can do. I had a good job that I could do on a computer in my home for two and a half years, but that company lost its contract to do that work, so I got laid off last year. Now I occasionally tutor people in our home, mostly in mathematics. I have always been very good at mathematics, and this hasn’t changed since my accident. My TBI affects my balance, which is a real problem when you’ve only got one leg. I still fall regularly, and I also can’t drive due to my TBI. My TBI also especially affects my short-term memory, though I’ve learned to really pay attention and to take copious notes. Fortunately I haven’t had any problems with seizures or pain since my accident, which is a common problem for people who have suffered a TBI.
My wife used to be a nurse before our girls were born, but she didn’t work at all for the ten years leading up to my accident. Since my accident she has had to find a job as a Preschool Teacher to keep us solvent, and I’m still looking for a job that will allow me to contribute to our finances, even at minimum wage. But we love our house and two lovely daughters, and we love living in Rolla. We enjoy taking care of our big old house and our three and a half acres of land. It helps that we have both always been avid gardeners, and we are most at peace when we are working in our garden.
The Rolla Department of Vocational Rehabilitation has helped us tremendously with everything, but especially with my job search. They organized my initial TBI evaluation which took place at the Rusk Rehabilitation Center in Columbia, Missouri. We also have a terrific TBI Support Group here in Rolla that meets once a month, and then we have regular TBI Game Nights a couple of times a month as well. We even entered a TBI Survivors Team in the Rolla Spelling Bee, and we came in third against some very strong competition!
We have made it this far by being extremely careful with our budget, and we will obviously have to continue to be extremely careful with our money. But our hope for the future is simple: We want to continue to stay in this house and take care of each other, our kids and our house for the rest of our lives!