A 14-year-old Durango girl who broke her pelvis going off a jump at Purgatory Resort received words of encouragement Thursday from someone who has endured a similar pain.
Jeffrey Hamner, 24, who shattered his pelvis several years ago, said Ava Maxon faces a tough road ahead, but he encouraged her stay positive and embrace the adventure.
“Your first steps are going to be so great, I can’t wait!” he said, overflowing with positivity upon meeting Ava Thursday at Boarding Haus in Durango, where he works. “When you hit rock bottom ... you gain this gratitude for every bit of motion.”
Ava shattered her pelvis Dec. 9 on her last run of the day. She hit the jump with more speed than anticipated, which sent her flying awkwardly into the air as her ski companions snapped photos from below.
“I got 20-25 feet into the air,” she said.
Upon landing, her femur thrust into her pelvis, shattering it.
“Same situation with me,” Hamner said.
Ava is expected to be in a wheelchair for a few months followed by rehab and physical therapy.
She was taken to Mercy Regional Medical Center before being flown to Children’s Hospital in Denver, where she underwent two surgeries. She was released Dec. 16 but has been making return visits every week with her mother, Jennifer Aragon, for followup care.
Aragon is struggling with medical bills, transportation costs and even a place to live. They are temporarily living with a relative because their apartment was not accessible for a wheelchair.
She asked the Boarding Haus, 2607 Main Ave., if she could leave a collection jar in the store, and management was supportive. When Hamner read her story on the jar, it sounded strikingly similar to the accident he suffered at age 18.
Hamner reached out to the family, and they agreed to meet Thursday at the store.
Together, they played guitar and exchanged stories about their injuries.
Hamner sang Ava a song he wrote while recovering from his blown pelvis. The lyrics included: “Went to the mountain, and what did I do / I went chasing the sky, oh so blue. / I was up in the air without a single care / but I should have been aware / cause I was in for a scare. ... But that’s what you get when you’re showing off like Elvis / you put your femur right through your pelvis.”
Ava has been playing guitar for a couple of years, but now that she is in wheelchair, she expects to have more time to strum the strings. She may start taking lessons with Hamner.
Hamner said the time it took to recover gave him the stillness he needed to learn to play music, starting with a harmonica, then a keyboard and then aguitar.
He used the pain as a reminder it was his body healing itself. He compared the feeling to being a piece of paper that gets crumpled into a ball. With the healing process, the piece of paper slowly becomes uncrumpled, he said, and “for whatever reason, when you pull it back out and you see the full picture again, it’s even more beautiful than it was before.”
And now, he’s back on the slopes and engaging in other sports.
Said Ava: “It makes me feel a lot better after getting to meet him.”
shane@durangoherald.com
To help
A GoFundMe account has been set up to help Jennifer Aragon with medical and travel expenses related to her daughter’s pelvis injury.
Aragon warned potential donors to be careful about which GoFundMe site they give to because someone has created a fraudulent account in Ava Maxon’s name. The real site is: “Ava’s medical fund,” which can be found at: http://bit.ly/2hzXFtY.
