In early June, Troy Mandaloniz went to work doing property maintenance, his day job when not coaching MMA. That morning his cousin and pupil Seth Murashige had informed him that he’d decided to compete at a jiu-jitsu tournament during the UFC Fan Expo the next month. Mandaloniz, who competed on The Ultimate Fighter 6 and fought in the UFC twice several years ago, was to accompany him to Vegas for the event, and to see their fellow Hawaiian B.J. Penn inducted into the UFC Hall of Fame. Those things were on Mandaloniz’s mind as he drove into work.



And those things would remain floating through the grog and darkness of his mind for the next month, as he was brought in and out of consciousness — these little shards of what was to come, that kept falling through the hatches at distant points of his thoughts.



That’s because that day Mandaloniz had an accident. Working bird deterrent, he went to assess a nesting problem over the front patio of a vacation home on the Westside of the island, in an opulent area known as Kukio, next door to the Dell mansion. The only ladder accessible to him was one that belonged to the landscapers, a rickety tripod variety. He climbed up the ladder to see what kind of damage the birds had inflicted on the home. Then, in a terrible flash, he fell 18 feet to the ground. He used his right arm to help break the fall. As he got up, half in shock, he didn’t know yet that his life had just changed.



"After the fall I kind of went strolling around the property," Mandaloniz says. "The area where the vacation home is in, it’s real barren. There’s hardly anybody around, and I was lucky to have run into two guys who were working on screens, and they saw me and said, ‘Man, you’re messed up, you need to go to the hospital.’ One guy told me he would drive me in my car. I jumped in my car, took a selfie of myself to send to my wife, and told her, ‘Hey, I just fell off a ladder, that I’m pretty messed up and need to go to the hospital.’"



That’s his last recollection of the episode. Sending a selfie of himself to his wife on the way to the hospital. Then the trauma of the fall finally caught up to him.



"I guess I started going into convulsions in the car on the way to the hospital, so the dude stopped at the fire station where they put me in the ambulance, took me to the hospital, and they pretty much immediately flew me to Oahu on this thing called Life Flight.

"I started going into convulsions in the car on the way to the hospital, so the dude stopped at the fire station where they put me in the ambulance."



At first, the doctors weren’t sure Mandaloniz would make it. He would spend the next 66 days in the hospital, in and out of a medically induced coma in Oahu. There was bleeding on his brain. He suffered a fracture to his forehead, and his orbital bone. His cheekbone was broken, and so was his nose. He lost his sense of smell, maybe forever. Two ribs were snapped, his kneecap was busted. And his right arm — his power arm as a fighter — was mangled. He may never regain use of his right hand again.



Yet he lived. And three months after the accident, Mandaloniz is still in the process of coping with the new reality of his situation. His wife, who worked a full-time job when the summer began, is now his primary caretaker. His life as a jiu-jitsu/mixed martial arts instructor is now something he’s not sure he’ll be able to continue. At 35, the thought of ever returning to the cage — if even only just to daydream — has now become impossible. He’s had a dozen surgeries on his right arm. His forearm is an open wound, with exposed tendon.

His days are harrowing.



"I returned home Aug. 7, and then I was dealing with some pretty serious withdrawal because of all the stuff they had me on in the hospital," he says. "I still have a big open wound on my arm. After the fall I developed something called compartment syndrome. It’s kind of serious. A lot of people end up losing their limbs because of the syndrome. But I was lucky enough to have the surgeon I had. He was able to save my arm although I don’t have any function in my right hand any more, in my dominant hand."



During his time in the hospital, Mandaloniz says it was like a nightmare that played out in hard to clarify moments of faces, voices and drug-addled daybreak.



"It took a lot of drugs to keep me in the bed," he says. "They were saying it was enough to put down a horse. I was fighting myself. I was fighting to get out of the bed. I didn’t know where I was. I broke one of the hospital beds. I kicked one of the nurses. She was out of work for over a month. The accident happened on June 5. They were bringing me in and out of the coma, and I don’t have any real recollection until July 9."



When he did come through, Mandaloniz says he immediately began groping back through the lapse of time to arrive at the point he never resolved — that he needed to go to Vegas. That he was supposed to be in Vegas. That Vegas had come and gone.



"I remember waking up, and the first things I was thinking about was, wait, what day is it? Who’s fighting this weekend? Conor McGregor’s fighting this weekend? Oh sh*t, I need to be in Vegas," he says. "I just kind of remember coming out of it and freaking out that I hadn’t made it to Vegas for Seth’s Grapplers Quest at the Expo."

'I was fighting myself. I was fighting to get out of the bed. I didn’t know where I was.'



The time between July 9 and now has been cruel to Mandaloniz, who last appeared in the UFC in 2009 against Paul Kelly. He’d spend another month in the hospital, before they let him go home to Hilo. He has flown back and forth to Oahu for surgeries on his arm, his next one tentatively slated for Sept. 17. That’s the final skin graft. That can only be done if when the red tissue covers the tendon, which takes time. He’s doubtful his arm will be ready by then.



"They are using this stem cell technology with this placenta they put over the tendon to try to get more red tissue to grow," he says. "It’s been successful, but it’s slow as molasses."



In the meantime, his medical bills are surmounting. The air ambulance alone that took him to Honolulu cost more than $60,000. His family has set up a Go Fund Me page to help offset the costs. So far it has raised a little over $16,000. He has a legal team working on his behalf, but is uncertain where that will lead. In the meantime, he’s been diagnosed with clinical depression, though he tries to be upbeat for his wife and children. He holds out hope that he can still be involved in MMA, that he can still be useful, but the truth is he doesn’t know.



His life was altered so thoroughly three months ago that many things are still dawning on him. The idea of learning to use his left hand — or never again being able to regain function in the right — is something he can’t entirely wrap his mind around yet.



"I can’t play music anymore," he says solemnly, referring to his ukulele that he played for hours a day. Then he breaks up. He begins to cry.



"I can’t put my daughter’s hair up anymore," he says. "It’s been miserable, man. I had a big goal at B.J.’s gym, and they had big plans of opening another gym on the Westside of our island. And the plan was for me to go over and run the MMA department over there. I think that might be in jeopardy now."



He still has three broken bones in his arm that the surgeons haven’t been able to put any attention toward, because putting pins or plates in his elbow runs the risk of infection towards the wound. Should he get an infection, he runs the risk of losing his arm.



But right now amputation is not in his vocabulary.



"Once I get the skin graft done, they’ll follow up with that and possible put some plates in there," he says. "In the future, my surgeon has a nerve specialist he’d like to me to see with the possibility of maybe some nerve transplants to get some function in my hands."



It’s hard to hear Mandaloniz cope with his situation. His biggest fear upon losing the use of his hand, other than the little everyday things that we take for granted, is that he will have lost his jiu-jitsu grip forever.



"I don’t know what I’m going to do professionally as a one-handed man now," he says. "I’m really hoping I can get my hand in some focus mitts. Personally I believe I was one of the best MMA coaches in the state, man."



It kills him to say things like that. Using the past tense. The accident has changed his life and perspective. He grapples between what was and what is, what he’s achieved and what can no longer be. For Troy Mandaloniz, life is far different in September than it was in May.



"I am glad I achieved my black belt. It’s going to be hard to be a legitimate one now," he says, again holding back tears. "But I never would have achieved that if this accident had happened prior."



In the aftermath of his accident, Mandaloniz is left separating the blessings from the curses.