Anyone attending Wild West Days in Viroqua last month might have seen a strange sight: A 90-year-old man pushing his 66-year-old son in a wheelchair.
“People must have been thinking, this doesn’t add up,” said Gary “Drifty” Withrow, who earlier this summer sustained an accident that resulted in resulted in his leg being amputated. His father, Bill Withrow, helped him make his way around Wild West Days.
Withrow has experienced more than a few such ironies since July 16, when he discovered how life could change in moments.
The day started routinely enough, with Withrow delivering railroad ties to the Central and Northern Railroad in Appleton. He had picked up the load the day before in Bangor and spent the night in Appleton to make an early delivery and then continue on to Fond du Lac to drop off the remainder of the load.
It was about 8 a.m. when Withrow and the men at the railroad company discovered the forklift was not capable of lifting a bundle of ties off the truck. Each 16-foot tie weighed 500 pounds, and they were strapped into bundles of 20.
While there was some discussion on getting a larger forklift, Withrow admitted he made the decision to cut the straps holding the bundles. The first two bundles caused no problem, but something went terribly wrong after he cut the final bundle, which was closest to the truck’s cab.
“I was just walking away,” he said, when he caught the avalanche of ties. Because he was turned away, the ties caught his leg, pinning him to the ground. In the subsequent explosion of pain, he screamed, “Get these things off of me.”
“It seemed like eons (before that happened),” he recalled, although now he knows it was only seconds.
He also knows luck was with him and that had he been closer to the truck, he likely would have been killed by the impact.
In a further bit of luck, one of the workers at the yard was also an EMT and was able to summon an ambulance, which arrived in just a few short minutes.
As he was whisked off to the Theda Clark Medical Center trauma center, ambulance personnel injected painkillers.
“With that I was happy again and could joke,” he recalled.
As for his foot?
“It looked like running over a squirrel.”
Although trauma center staff stabilized him, Withrow was moved to a hospital in Neenah, where surgeons attempted to preserve the mangled foot.
Five days later, he was transferred to the Gundersen Lutheran Medical Center in La Crosse, and the news was not good.
“Your toes are dying,” he was told.
An amputation would be needed, but Withrow had two options. One was to amputate the entire foot, leaving only the heel, and the other was to take the foot and leg off to below the knee.
It was a predicament. The toes were gone. Withrow knew that. Even if they had been saved, they would have no tendons and be reduced to floppy appendages.
The doctors were frank. The first option would require multiple surgeries, carry a smaller chance of success and require grueling rehabilitation.
On July 26, surgeons amputated Withrow’s leg and foot below the knee. It took one hour and 15 minutes.
“Sometimes I catch him looking down at his leg wondering, where did it go?” his wife Linda added.
Withrow admitted he still reminded himself, “This is for real.”
From his rural home on Moon Ridge, between Ontario and Hillsboro, Withrow is still rethinking his future. A truck driver for 43 years, he loves the open road and the feeling of independence.
“I can’t picture myself sitting at the restaurant, talking about my bad kidneys,” he said.
Known around town for his hard work and frantic pace, he admitted that money was not his issue, but rather he had the desire to keep moving and be around young people.
Will he drive semi again?
“I certainly hope so,” he responded.
Linda added that the doctors have not ruled it out but have mentioned getting a truck with an automatic transmission, something her husband resists.
Still, he’s a hard fellow to keep down. Within a few weeks of the accident, he was out of the wheelchair and on to crutches, he went back to driving his pickup, and you could have seen him at the tractor pull in Kendall during the Labor Day celebration.
“I could not have done it without my family,” he said.
Linda credited their two daughters, Candy and Carmen, with supplying the good humor to keep the family’s spirits up.
“Although Candy did admit she was starting to run out of material,” Linda added.
As for Withrow, he said he was grateful for Medicare and his supplement, which will pick up the lion’s share of what will be staggering medical bills.
“We are so lucky to have that in this country,” he noted.
Also, he now pays close attention to those with prostheses.
“I talk to everyone I can find,” he said.
His turn will come in a few weeks, when the leg heals. There will be multiple fittings and changes as the stump and remaining bone shrinks and changes size. It may take up to a year before he arrives with the final result.
A coincidence for Withrow is that he may just have followed a long family tradition. As it turns out his great-grandfather, Tobias Rice, lost a leg when a cast iron planer fell on him. Not one to be deterred by his amputation, he went on to serve for years as the janitor at La Farge Schools.
It’s unlikely you will ever see Gary Withrow pushing a broom, but with 4 million miles on the road, who would want to bet he wouldn’t be back behind the wheel next year?