Tuesday, February 20

Sergeant Wessel Gets Emergency Surgery

By Scot McElwaney
BMXonline.com

Nate transfers from wallride to quarterpipe at Skatepark of Tampa. Photo: Losey

While working on ramps for the Jacksonville, Florida CFB contest, Nate Wessel had an accident that you never want to have happen. Nate was hitting one hammer's head with another hammer to get the claw under a piece of plywood. Nate told us that he's done this a thousand times, but this time a piece of metal flew off the hammer and went through the colored part of his eye (the iris). Nate rushed to the hospital where he had emergency surgery to pull the sliver of metal from his eye.

The sliver had passed through the cornea and the iris, and through the lens that rests behind the iris and into the retina. During the surgery the doctors cut his eye open and fixed his retina. Unfortunately, Nate learned that he has to go back and have a second surgery to remove a cataract that developed from the injury. A cataract is basically scar tissue that builds up on the lens causing vision to blur. The doctors will have to replace Nate's lens with a plastic lens, which will make it impossible for Nate to focus on up close objects, and everything will have a blue or gray tint. Nate will need to get glasses with bifocal lenses, but he plans to look into contacts instead.

Nate should be able to ride in about nine weeks, but in the meantime he can't bend over or pick up anything heavy because of the strain it places on his eyes.

We hope that everything goes well for him in the upcoming weeks.

Nate should be back on his bike in a couple of months if all goes well. Photo: Losey