# Spiderman in Louisiana



## sprdave (Jan 22, 2006)

My dad called me from New Orleans and told me about this article he read in the paper the other day. 

Copied from:
http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/metro/index.ssf?/base/news-12/1137430627313980.xml

With fall, tree cutter's life came crashing down
He can't work since accident on tall pine 
Monday, January 16, 2006
By Jenny Hurwitz
St. Tammany bureau 
He survived a near-fatal, 65-foot fall from a pine tree back in August, a series of painful operations and an emergency evacuation from Charity Hospital just days after Hurricane Katrina swept ashore. 

But for Daniel "Spiderman" Glover, a tree cutter from the Folsom area, it's the guilt from not being able to work that keeps him awake at night. 


"This would be my year," he said, referring to the booming post-Katrina demand for skilled tree cutters in St. Tammany Parish. But since his accident, Glover can't even pick up the felled oak limbs that litter his mother's yard, let alone scale a towering pine. 

"My whole world has been blown apart," he said from a couch in his mother's home in Folsom, his crooked arms propped in his lap atop a pillow. "I cry a lot. I pray a lot." 

Back in Folsom, Glover, 35, is struggling to piece his life together after the accident and hurricane. It's no easy feat, given his fragile state and the never-ending cycle of pain and medication. 

His right arm sports a deep, pink scar that snakes from his palm to just above his elbow, tracing the now-crooked path of his forearm. 

His left hand shudders in its brace, the pinkie finger trembling uncontrollably unless Glover steadies it in his lap. 

He can walk, something he couldn't do while a patient at Charity, but his steps are halting and cautious. 

His wife, Beonka Glover, who is working full-time at a day-care center to support their three young sons, said her husband has always worked and is having trouble accepting his new life. 

"He's changed," she said. "He's always down-and-out because he can't work at all." 

Glover was originally hospitalized Aug. 19, after plummeting to the ground while finishing up a routine job on a 100-foot longleaf pine tree in Ponchatoula. 

The fall shattered the bones in all 10 of his fingers and broke both arms, hands, wrists and feet, his ribs, leg, shoulder, pelvis and collarbone. He had expected to remain in Charity Hospital for several months, undergoing a barrage of surgeries to clean out the dirt between his broken bones and place skin grafts on his mangled arms. 

As Hurricane Katrina bore down on the Gulf Coast, Glover, who had been tracking the storm's progress on television, became increasingly unsettled. 

"I'm an arborist," he explained. "I know what was fixing to happen." 

After the storm hit, Glover text-messaged his family using a cell phone borrowed from a fellow patient to let them know he was still alive. When food supplies dwindled, he kept his energy up by eating cheese crackers and Little Debbie snack cakes that his mother had smuggled in for him. 

But when Charity lost power and the generators failed, the suction device attached to his arm, which was supposed to prevent further infection, ceased functioning. 

At the end of the week, he was strapped to a table, carried down four flights and loaded onto an 18-wheeler heading for the airport. From there, the military evacuated him to Pasadena, Texas, on a cargo airplane, he said. 

Once in Pasadena, Glover was admitted to the Bayshore Medical Center. When he heard that Pasadena could be Hurricane Rita's projected path, he panicked and offered the medical staff an ultimatum: "Either discharge me, or I'm walking out." 

In the end, he got his way. The hospital agreed to let him go, providing him with medication and bandages, and his wife drove him back to Louisiana on Sept. 19. 

Since then, he's been living in the Folsom area and receiving checkups several times a month at Ochsner Foundation Hospital. He expects to revisit the hospital for another operation on his arm within a couple weeks. 

Glover, known as "Spiderman" because of his uncanny ability to scale tall trees in a matter of minutes, now looks with fear at the pines and oaks he once loved. His nightmares persist, several months after his fall. Sometimes he wakes up screaming. 

"You know that old wives tale about how when you fall in your dream you die? Well, it's not true," Glover said. "I've hit the ground in my dreams a million times." 

He struggles to stay optimistic, despite bouts of depression and an ongoing battle to wean himself off the prescription drugs he takes to blunt the pain in his arms. 

Separated from his wife, he has been living with his mother in Folsom, and attending a local church, where he manages to find solace among the tight-knit group of worshippers. 

"Some doctors made remarks like, 'Pain will be your friend for the rest of your life,' " he said, admitting the idea troubles him. "But I just have to learn how to live with that." 

. . . . . . . 


Jenny Hurwitz can be reached at (985) 645-2848 or [email protected]. 



Folsom tree-cutter Daniel Glover, known locally as Spiderman, shattered the bones in all of his fingers and broke both arms, hands, wrists and feet, his ribs, leg, shoulder, pelvis and collarbone. Before evacuating to Texas, he watched reports of Hurricane Katrina from his bed in Charity Hospital. 'I'm an arborist,' he said. 'I know what was fixing to happen.' [2054217]


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## Redbull (Jan 22, 2006)

That was a very touching story. I couldn't imagine.


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## BostonBull (Jan 22, 2006)

Good luck to him and his family!


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