Wipe out

I am only writing this post for myself.  It is one of those things that happen and make you evaluate your whole life and count the blessings that you have.  I want to remember this accident and how scared I was, but also how calm and comforted I felt at the same time.

Steve has to leave for work around 6 each morning.  I always get up, make his breakfast, pack his lunch and hang out with him until he leaves for work.  Then I am lucky enough to get to climb back into bed with Maddie after he leaves.  Life is tough. 

Today Steve and I had a long talk at the dining room table, I kissed him goodbye and he walked out the door.  I shut the lights off, climbed back into bed and about 5 or 10 minutes went by and I heard him come back in the house.  I jumped up to see what he forgot or what he might need, only to find him at the kitchen sink with his head under the running tap water.  I asked what he was doing, but he wouldn't respond.  I didn't have my contacts in, so without their help, I am useless and blind.  I could see mud on his pants so I knew he must have fallen.  I ran to the bedroom, put my eyes in and went back to see him.  It wasn't mud I had seen, it was blood.  It was on his shoe, pant leg, shirt and when I looked up at his face, blood was pouring out of his head, down the whole side of his face.  It was straight from a horror movie.  I had never seen blood gush like that before.  I grabbed a rag and put it on his gash, led him to the chair and told him to sit while I got Maddie out of bed so I could take him to the ER. I was FREAKING out, but knew I had to keep my cool or things would just be worse. 

As I am getting Maddie some shoes and trying to find my own, Steve starts sobbing like a 2 year old.  When I ask him if he is okay he just keeps saying, "this can't happen to us, not right now, this can't happen."  I tried to calm him down and kept telling him everything was going to be fine and that he just needed stitches.  At that moment I didn't realize he wasn't talking about the gash, he had lost his memory from hitting his head so hard.  He proceeded to tell me it wasn't okay because he couldn't remember ANYTHING.  It was the scariest thing to see my husband, the protector, the strong one, the man of the house, sobbing like a child because he didn't even know where he was or what had happened to him.  It was the most horrible feeling and I was panicking inside, wanting to cry myself but knew I couldn't.  I said a quick prayer in my head for comfort and calmness to get through this day without losing it. I finally got Steve to calm down, led him to the car where all three of us about slipped on the ice again, and thankfully we have a GPS that led me to the nearest hospital.  The whole drive he kept crying, then asking the same question over and over and over, not remembering he had already asked and I had already answered 10 times. For some reason he was only wanting to know if we had sat at the kitchen table and talked that morning.  I kept reassuring him that we had.   Maddie was nervous and said, "he is acting like grandma Bellon."  Bless her heart, she is the sweetest grandma, but has some dementia and repeats her questions over and over. 

There was not a huge wait at the hospital because it wasn't even 6:30 in the morning.  While we were sitting in his room, waiting, he was still repeating himself a lot.  Maddie turned and asked, "is dad going to always be like this now?" ha ha.  When we were at the nurse station getting his paperwork filled out, they put a big gauze pad over his gash, then wound some around his head to hold it on like a headband, but the pad was sticking above his head like a feather.  Maddie turned to me after her other question and said, "well is he always going to look like that then?  because he looks like an Indian and I don't need an Indian for a dad."  She was pretty scared, but cracking me up with her questions all at the same time.  It is so funny to see what a child fears about an accident compared to what an adult fears.  She was worried about having an Indian with dimentia for a father and I was worried that he wouldn't get his memory back and had more problems than a concussion that could keep him from ever working or being normal again.

This is him totally out of it at the hospital waiting for the doctor.  It is blurry because it is my phone camera and I didn't take it on the side with all of the blood or the guaze "feather" because that is too gross lol.

He started to remember a few things and finally after the hour waiting for the doctor, he knew most of what was going on around him but was still repeating questions over and over.  He only had to get 4 stitches, had a bad concussion and was told he couldn't work for at least the next four days.  He must have hit a vein on his head to have lost as much blood as he did.

When we got home, you could see where he had fallen.  The landlord of this house (we live in the basement) never uses ice melt so our sidewalk was covered in about 2 inches of ice, like always, and this particular morning it has been pouring freezing rain so it was extra icy and slippery.  There was a pool of blood in the middle of the sidewalk where he fell, and blood had shot across the sidewalk, into the street.  Then, there was a trail from where he landed all the way through the yard, down the stairs to our apartment and right to the kitchen sink. 

All I know is that we are blessed.  Somebody was watching out for Steve today.  When he hit his head, he lost consciousness and laid out on the sidewalk knocked out for 5-10 minutes.  He still cannot remember anything from the time he fell backwards to the time we got to the hospital.  He has no recollection of coming back into the house or putting his head under the tap, and if he hadn't come inside, it would have been hours before the kids passing by for school would have seen him because our street is very quiet and he would have been blocked by our cars from anyone on the road driving by to see him.  He could have bled out by then or froze.  I am so thankful for answered prayers and for the Lords hand in our lives, always watching out for us and helping us through the trials and struggles we have to endure in this life.  We are so blessed that Steve is okay and that he is slowly recovering and getting his whole memory back.  I know this is just a minor accident but it still makes you count your blessings and puts life in perspective.  How blessed we are!!  Although between the miscarriage and his accident this week, I am really not loving 2012 yet!