Six days after former Bayfield Town Marshal Jim Harrington was seriously injured in a horseback riding accident, he was listed in critical condition at Lakewood’s St. Anthony Hospital on Tuesday.
“I still can’t believe it happened,” his wife, Robin Harrington, said. “We’ve ridden horses all of our lives, and he’s an excellent horseman. But that horse is a knucklehead, and he proved how much of a knucklehead he is with this.”
Harrington, 66, was in the Granite Peaks area of the San Juan National Forest on Thursday when his horse hit him in the head, knocking him unconscious, threw him off and rolled over him. Among Harrington’s injuries are serious head injuries, a broken right collarbone, a punctured lung, 10 broken ribs in his back, eight broken ribs on his right front and five on the left.
Harrington also has a condition called flail chest, where his rib cage is floating free. Every time he tries to take a breath, it pushes the rib cage inward instead of out, making breathing both difficult and painful.
“We have to keep coaching him to breathe. And because of the head injuries, we have to keep telling him where he is,” said Robin Harrington, a lieutenant with the La Plata County Sheriff’s Office. “He’s in the moment, he’s out of the moment, he still thinks he’s the Bayfield town marshal.”
Harrington has been on a ventilator. On Tuesday, they took it out, but Harrington was struggling to breathe. Doctors are trying to avoid a tracheotomy, which is the next step if he can’t breathe on his own.
It’s the latest in a series of serious injuries Harrington has suffered in the last few years.
After a fall on the ice while on patrol three years ago, he suffered a head injury that required a shunt to drain cerebrospinal fluid into his abdomen. Complications from that procedure required an emergency surgery in Denver after a ventricle in his brain collapsed, his wife said.
The shunt exacerbated his brain injuries in this accident, she said.
Harrington was the Bayfield town marshal from the mid-1990s to the end of 2009. After retiring at the end of 2009, he went to work as a federal investigator for the Division of Gaming for the Southern Ute Indian Tribe.
“A week before his retirement from there, in December, he fell in the parking lot and shattered his leg,” Robin Harrington said. “He only started walking better two or three months ago. He was so excited, the rod in his leg didn’t bother him to ride.”
Harrington has a long road ahead of him to heal.
“Prayers are the most important thing,” Robin Harrington said.
abutler@durangoherald.com
To help
Jim Harrington’s family is posting regular updates on his condition at www.caringbridge.org/visit/jamesharrington.
Cards may be sent to James Harrington, c/o St. Anthony Hospital, 11600 W. 2nd Place, Lakewood, CO 80228.
Emails may be sent to RobinHarrington@co.laplata.co.us.
