After 24 years, my career as an NHL linesman was over in an instant. The damage to my face was worse than just my nose being severed.
There were 10 fractures in my face. My right cheekbone was shattered. Between the accident and all the surgeries I've had, I lost all of my teeth. I lost my sense of smell. I developed sleep apnea. I dealt with terrible earaches caused by bone fragments in my right ear.
I still suffer from post-concussion syndrome. There were times in the first year after the accident when I couldn't get out of bed for weeks.
I have almost no sense of taste. My wife Lisa would make me my favorite -- her thin crust pizza. So I could taste it better, I kept sprinkling cracked pepper on it. I still couldn't taste a thing, so I'd put on more and more with each bite. By the time I was done, I pretty much went through the whole bottle. Worse, I was sweating like I'd just run a marathon. My wife and I decided I shouldn't do that again.
I couldn't work. I loved my job as an NHL linesman so much, and now it was gone. And never mind that -- there wasn't any job I could do. Whenever my heart rate would rise a little, the headaches would be debilitating. I couldn't even work out.
I was depressed. I couldn't function like anything close to a normal adult of 50 years of age. We have three boys, great kids now in seventh, eighth and ninth grades. They would ask me, "Dad, what's wrong? Why can't you come out with us?" Not being able to do anything, not being able to explain to your kids what you're feeling, is probably the toughest time I had to go through.
Our house is in Rutherford, New Jersey. It's very close to the hotel where the NHL officials stay when they're in town to work Devils games. This is how bad it got: my buddies would try to contact me before coming to New Jersey. I wouldn't pick up the phone, wouldn't return their messages. A lot of them, when they arrived in Jersey, actually came to my house and banged on the door. I wouldn't answer.
This is a fact: all this happened to me because I wasn't wearing a face shield.