While setting up for one of his trademark backside smith grinds on the broken neck mini-ramp, Dave Watigny caught a piece of wood and slammed into the oncoming transition Friday evening. With the wind knocked out of him, he sat down away from the ramp to recover. An hour later, he found himself increasingly dazed and unable to even tell people what his name was. He didn’t hit his head in the fall, but his friends took him to the hospital emergency room. An x-ray identified that during the impact, his body landed on his elbow, which pressed below his ribcage. The pressure caused his spleen to rupture which in turn began re-routing his blood from its typical course into his abdominal cavity. He had internally lost 2.6 litres of blood. The doctors performed an emergency operation to remove his spleen and clean up the mess inside his stomach.

Now he’s recovering in Brackenridge with a morphine drip, a cup of ice cubes, and a foot-long incision down his belly. It’s expected that he’ll be able to leave the hospital in a few days, but he won’t be able to lift things (i.e. work) for as long as two months while he recuperates. Lacking insurance, he has been racking up a horrific debt to his care provider.

I asked him if this was the worst injury he’s suffered through skateboarding. He hesitated and then didn’t really give me a conclusive answer. He referenced a hernia he received while jumping down a set of 12 stairs some years ago. I think he said this was the most expensive. Then there was some talk about how painful catheter insertion is.

In the years before he volunteered at Patterson helping pour concrete, Dave has been building skate spots, backyard ramps, skateparks, and scenes in Austin and around the country. It’s rather ironic that someone who has given so much to skateboarding would have to pay such a high price while enjoying skateboarding. Hopefully, skateboarders will step up to support Dave with fundraisers as he has stepped up to help others so many times in the past.