1966

Travis Melka

The year is 1966, and a 7-year-old boy is walking a few blocks from school back to his house. On
the way, he is hit by a car, and was drug down the road several hundred feet, until the car came to a
stop. Two men fixing the powerlines had witnessed the crash, and used their equipment to lift the car
off the boy. The car had destroyed his right leg, and put the boy into a coma, along with third degree
burns covering the other leg, which was literally connected to the muffler (skin melted and re-solidified,
causing the two to be attached), and his hand. Once the police arrived, it was noticed the driver was
drunk; she was consequently arrested and given several years’ probation. Once at the hospital, the
doctors did the best they could in reconstructing the boy’s leg; but the blood flow was minimal, and due
to the reconstruction, one leg was about half an inch shorter than the other. After 3 days, the boy woke
up from his coma, and sat for the next three months in the body cast the doctors had placed him in
post-surgery. After finally being freed from his plaster prison, he remained in the hospital for another
three months, and then began outpatient physical therapy for the next couple of years. He eventually
recovered most of his functions, and started to live his life again as best he could.

When he was around 16, he had been rollerblading for the past few years—this, and the lack of blood
flow to his reconstructed foot—led to an infection in his toe that was beginning to spread, and doctors
removed it.

Around the age of 20, when visiting the doctor, he had to have pins inserted throughout his
reconstructed foot, to fix the reconstruction as they had given him unnatural looking toes (they were
curled).

He began working construction, and noticed he had consistent ankle pains and went down to the
University of Michigan, where the doctors told him they wanted to amputate the reconstructed leg, as it
would cause him extreme pain as he got older. He refused and went back to working construction.

He worked various construction jobs until around 2011, where the pain the doctors had warned him
about became too much to continue. Since his legs were different lengths, his hips and back were
constantly experiencing unnatural stress with every step, even just by standing. He had always been in
pain since the accident—enough to be prescribed painkillers ever since—but even with the highest
doses of the strongest drugs doctors had available, the pain eventually became too much. He could
work construction no more.

This man is actually my dad, who is still around and doing well. This story has many lessons in it, but the
one that I think is the most important is that your decisons can affect anyone and everyone in ways you
might not expect, and to consider every decision you make carefully, especially if there is potential for
danger.