Diminutive Fox 9 anchor Alix Kendall required eight staples to close a head wound she suffered Saturday while boarding a plane in Baldwin, Wis., to sky-dive for charity.
"It was an omen, I think, telling me not to sky-dive," Kendall said. After she hit her head, she fell off the stairs to the plane, fully geared up, and hit the ground. Her leg brace and crutches are obvious, but the gash on her heard is not, unless Kendall parts her hair, which she did for me Wednesday.
While on the ground, Kendall said, "I was kind of out of it and I thought, 'Why are they pouring warm liquid on my head?'" She put her hands into her hair and when she removed them, "They were just covered in blood. It was nasty."
She remembers being told to watch her head, but she thought the instruction was meant for when she got inside the plane. Claiming a height of 5-foot-1, Kendall doesn't encounter many doorways that require her to duck.
"There was somebody who said he was a doctor, popped in and put gauze around my head to get pressure to stop my head from bleeding. I just laid there and then I tried to stand up and couldn't stand up very well," said Kendall. "I signed pages and pages of essentially we-will-not-sue-you paperwork beforehand; I understand that. But they weren't exactly rushing to my aid, either."
Luckily, Kendall's significant other Ed and her daughter Kaitlyn, 9, were present. "Kaitlyn did not like seeing all that blood," said Kendall, who was able to gather her wits and comfort her daughter by telling her it looked worse than it was.
"I looked for some of the people at [the sky-diving facility] and didn't see anybody around. I walked in and asked the people at the counter, 'Where's the nearest hospital?' They told us: It was close, about a mile and half down the road."
Sky diving was on Kendall's bucket list, but never at the top. After this incident, it's probably off the list of things she wants to accomplish in this lifetime.
