Cream of the Crop: A Personal Story of Life-Saving Rural Health Care and EMS

By Margo Kulseth, Information Specialist

Margo, Age 6

The importance of rural health care was proven to me in dramatic fashion at a tender age. It was September 1977 on my family farm in southern Minnesota, the epitome of rural America. I was six years old and had just started the first grade. My friend Jill and I were talking on the phone about which of Charlie’s Angels we liked best when suddenly I heard the running lawn mower outside my house make a strange sound and stop abruptly accompanied by a terrifying scream.

Now that almost 40 years have passed, the details of this traumatic day have blurred in my mind, but the emotion still comes back quickly as I recall the chain of events as best I can. I was a painfully shy, timid kid, so I think I talked to Jill about what I heard for a bit and wasted precious time before I hung up the phone, went to the door and opened it a little to peek outside. What I saw is something no child should ever experience.

My mother was lying on the ground with her leg bloody and mangled. Despite the pain and fear she must have been feeling, my mom told me later she was trying to be strong and stay calm so as not to scare me. I stood there in the doorway, too shocked and afraid to go to her, something I feel ashamed of now.

Kulseth Farm

I was fortunate that day and every day of my childhood to have my grandparents, my dad’s parents, living right next door on the same farm but in a different house. It was where my dad had grown up. After my parents were married, they had built our house on the same property as my dad and grandpa farmed the land together. So on this day, my mom hollered at me from her spot on the ground to get my grandma. For whatever reason, maybe because I was too scared to advance past the front door, I ran back inside the house to call my grandma on the phone rather than running over to her house, which is what my mom intended. This is yet another source of embarrassment for me as my mom must have thought I was not going to get help.

As luck would have it, I picked up the phone and heard a conversation in progress. Back in those days, we had party lines that were shared among neighbors. I recognized the voices as those of our pastor at the small country church about a mile away and another neighbor. Filled with uncertainty and indecision, I think I hung up and picked up the phone a few times before finally mustering the courage to interrupt them, something I had been taught not to do. I said this was an emergency and I needed to use the phone, at least one helpful skill I must have learned at some point. Our pastor, recognizing my voice, asked what was wrong, and I told him Mom was hurt. He hung up and headed over to our house.

Meanwhile, I called my grandma and told her Mom was lying outside and needed help. At this point, I didn’t understand what had happened, and in my six-year-old mind, my theory was that our neighbor’s big, loud, black dog named Chopper, of whom I was terrified, must have attacked my mom. So I think this is what I told my pastor and my grandma. They probably were skeptical and didn’t know whether to believe me, and I can’t blame them.

I must have gone back to the doorway to report back to Mom that I had called Grandma, but she had not come out of her house yet. My dad was picking corn that day, and Mom told me to go get him. At some point, my younger sister, age three, ended up with me. She had been playing or watching cartoons, I suppose, and heard the commotion, or maybe Mom told me to get her. Mom said to hold my sister’s hand and take her along to get Dad. She reminded me as I had heard many times before, growing up on the farm, not to go close to the dangerous spinning auger on Dad’s machinery.

I was wearing white socks, and I asked if she really wanted me to run across the farm in them with no shoes because I knew they would get dirty, which seems silly now but a valid question for a people-pleaser child, I suppose. Of course she reassured me it was okay this time. Again, my lack of urgency is embarrassing, but I have to remind myself of my youth, inexperience and timid demeanor at the time.

So my sister and I, hand-in-hand and shoeless, ran toward my dad, who was by the tractor with a wagon full of corn being dumped into the elevator and deposited into the corn shed. We got his attention while staying a safe distance away from the farm equipment as we had been taught, and he must have known something was wrong by the look of us. He turned off the machinery, and I’m not sure what I said, but somehow I conveyed that Mom was in trouble, and he needed to come quickly. By the time we got to Mom, my grandma had come out to investigate and must have called 911. Then she took my sister and I back into our house and wouldn’t allow us to go near the windows. Soon the ambulance arrived, stabilized and transported my mom to the critical access hospital closest to our home.

I learned later, of course, it was not Chopper who attacked my mom. She had been using a riding mower on the hill on which our house is built, and in an attempt to trim the grass close to the hedges, she had an accident that caused her leg to slip into the blade of the running mower. When she tried to stand up, she heard the bone break, so she dragged herself up the hill to where she could call for help. She ended up being transferred to a larger hospital in Mankato, Minnesota, where she had multiple surgeries over the next several months. My sister and I stayed with friends and neighbors sometimes while she was recovering, but we had fun playing with her wheelchair and crutches.

As an adult, I understand the severity of this medical emergency much better than I did at the time. What if my mom had been unconscious? What if she hadn’t been able to get my attention or that of anyone else? What if she bled to death? Farm accidents happen quite often, and sometimes they are fatal because no one else is around to witness the emergency or to get the victim to proper health care in a timely manner, or the transportation time to the nearest facility is too long. It may take longer to get to the victim also.

Mom's 70th Birthday
August, 2014

I am so grateful for the critical access hospital and ambulance service that was available for my mom that fateful day. Without them, I could have lost her. That is a thought so overwhelming, I can barely grasp it. How vastly different would life have been for my sister and me to grow up without our mother? Luckily, aside from a slight lingering limp, Mom is in reasonably good health today, and we had a party in August to celebrate her 70th birthday. My mom is one reason I am a proud advocate for rural health care.

Margo and Mom 2014