Play with fire and you get burned

On July 23, 2017, I experienced the worst accident I have ever had in my life.

It was a long-awaited weekend, where we went to Cuatrocienegas to have a great time with the family. Everything was excellent and wonderful, we finished going to the main places, the only place that was left before returning home was the marble mine, being there and having seen all I just had this urge to climb the highest stone (8-10 meters approx.)

You know, to take a picture 🤦🏻.

Daniel, my brother, was the photographer and the one who helped me by telling where to put my feet while on my way down. The climb was relatively easy but from the moment I was climbing, I was already thinking about how difficult it would be to get off. After so much risk, once up there admiring the panorama for a few minutes to try to make the effort worthwhile and with the photo captured, it was time to go down.

Everything started very well, with patience and my brother telling me where there were parts to grab. Until the moment the stone that I was grabbing fell off and I start falling, strangely, I did not feel fear or saw my life go by, I was just thinking in fixing the course of the fall.

While falling I had a brief moment where I made contact with my feet to push myself back, I remembered that just below the stone there were more stones with irregular shapes, so I launched myself to flat land, otherwise, who knows if I could’ve written this post. In the movement of the push I try to turn to see my brother, but the stone was also irregular in the backside and had protruding parts, so as I turned my head my face hit the rock and that was it. I do not remember anything after that because I lost consciousness with the blow.

Daniel reacted quickly and tried to catch me, he manages to grab my legs a bit although with the speed I had end up falling sideways. When I open my eyes I see my wife in front of me asking me several things, I had no idea why she was doing it, in fact, she was bothering me since I just wanted to sleep and she would not let me. It is so strange to lose consciousness and temporarily memory, after 15 years of fighting, fortunately, this was my first time.

The weather was more than 35 degrees Celsius and nobody let me get up, the ambulance took about 1 hour and a half. After a brief visit to the local hospital we went back to Monterrey since they had almost no equipment there, they just put a collar on me and we left.

Arriving at the city I had x-rays and a CT scan, it was a long wait and probably more for my family but it all ended at 4:30 am when I left the hospital. Fortunately without breaking bones, everything good on the scans and only some stitches in a cut on my leg. It’s been more than 200 days and I still don’t have total sensitivity on the left side of my face, half of the nose and cheekbone, obviously it is way better than the first weeks, the hit in the face seems to have been stronger than the fall.

I thank my family who reacted in an incredible way to help me, I am very lucky. Many have worse consequences with lighter accidents. There is no other than learning from these mistakes, no matter how addicted you are to adrenaline, it is not worth risking everything for a photo.