Adventure Trip

Wrote this a few weeks ago...only had time today to finish her up...

I have been pretty lazy about blogging lately, but this one cannot be casually overlooked. This weekend while mountain biking at Memorial Park on University my dear sweet loving kind (trying to remind myself how much I love him) husband landed himself in the hospital while trying an advanced element that was "slightly" out of his league.

Saturday evening we decided to head up to the park for Troy to polish up his mountain biking skills for his trip to Colorado. This weekend he was scheduled to go to Breckenridge with Matt for his bachelor party. They were going to go mountain biking at Keystone, class 4 & 5 white water rafting, rock climbing, possibly skiing, and golfing.

I decided to push Turner in the stroller on the other side of the park before going to the playground. Troy jokingly kissed me goodbye forever and went on his way to the bike trail on the opposite side of the park.

Twenty minutes later Troy called me to say that he had crashed. I naturally assumed he was pulling my leg as usual. Then I quickly realized he was not kidding around. Turner and I ran from the far end of the park to the bike trails and waited for Troy to emerge from the wooded area. We only waited for a minute but of course I had mother-wife-woman-paranoia flashes as we waited. We saw him riding his bike down the gravel trail and he didn't look too bad. Fwewf! He looked okay.

We met up and he told me that he thought he was in pretty bad shape. He thought he had broken his finger and his neck was hurting after a pretty bad landing. His neck and throat were hurting and he was tasting blood. He told me that he thought he was in pretty bad shape. He slowly biked back to the truck and I ran beside him while pushing Turner. When we got back to the truck Troy said, "Here's what we're going to do: You're going to drive me to the hospital and drop me off. Call someone and have them meet you at the house to get Turner and then you can come back up to the hospital."

Red flag! Troy never wants to go to the hospital. I have been present when he's broken other fingers and bones and he's never rushed to the hospital. It usually takes a day or two of convincing to get him to the hospital. I stayed pretty calm but was moving quickly. I quickly got Turner in his car seat, threw his bike in the bed of the truck, threw the stroller in and took off for the hospital.

I stated making phone calls. My mom and dad were at an Astros game and initially I wasn't able to get a hold of Troy's mom. But I knew I wasn't leaving Troy at the hospital alone so I would keep Turner there with me as long as necessary.

We arrived at Memorial Hermann hopeful that he had a broken finger and a sprained neck. Troy's mom arrived moments later and of course was very concerned. But she agreed to take Turner home if we would keep her posted.

At this point our spirits were high. We were hopeful that it was nothing major and we would get to go home and take it easy (and get to watch the Redbox we had checked out on the way to the park (The King's Speech that we kept for 3 days but never watched...heard it was a snoozer anyways) in a couple of hours after getting a clean bill of health.

They immediately ran an x-ray on his finger and brought him back for a CAT-scan only a few minutes later. When he came back to his room Troy didn't want morphine but asked for a Motrin. It was taking a while so I went to ask the nurse how much longer it would be.

Funny enough the nurse recognized me, he asked me if I had been in there myself not too long ago. Ha ha. I said yes that I had been in for a possible concussion after getting jacked in the head pretty good in an indoor soccer game. One of the older female nurses threateningly said in a stern voice that it's great that we're an active family but that we need to get some new hobbies!

So as I'm reminiscing over my old soccer war wounds the nurse interrupts and says, "You had better get back to the room, they're about to tell your husband that he has fractured his neck." I was in shock and asked him if he was kidding. Surely he was kidding! We get hurt but we don't break our necks! This kind of thing doesn't happen to us! I ran back to the room after shouting something along the lines of, "Idiot! He broke his freakin' neck?!"

The doctor delivered the news just as I was walking in the door and I could see the anger in Troy's eyes. He was mad that it happened, mad at himself, worried about the hospital bills, and MOST of all he was depressed that he wouldn't get to go on his adventure trip and that he was letting his best friend down.

I told him that the minute he got the report that he had a broken neck those things stopped mattering. Those things stopped being even a remote possibility or priority. And suddenly the fact that he was walking, talking and alive came to the forefront of my mind. Wow. He had broken his neck.

It was his C4 vertebrae, they believed it to be a clean fracture and they had hoped that the surrounding ligaments were in tact and still supporting his neck. If the fracture was clean and the muscles and ligaments were still in place it would mean 6 weeks in a neck brace and no surgery.

Things happened pretty quickly from there. Suddenly he became a trauma patient and we were being transferred to Memorial Hermann Southwest, then we were bumped up to Memorial Hermann in the med center. I was happy to be going to the Houston medical center, the mecca of medical care in the nation! We knew we would be in good hands.

Troy did not want to transfer in the ambulance and bucked for a while on that, but he was not given a choice, of course. As I would have had to sit in the front of the ambulance and wouldn't have been with him anyways, I opted to go home and collect some clothes and toiletries for us. After all, we were a BIT stinky after our workouts and we weren't sure how long we would be in the hospital!

My parents came home from the Astros game and were able to relieve Troy's mom so that she could drive down to the med center with us. We decided to take separate cars so that we would have a vehicle in case we were released in the middle of the night. I was holding it together really well and we were all staying positive that Troy had a clean fracture and would not require surgery. But I had too much time in the car by myself to think about the WHAT-IFs. And I couldn't reach him because there is no reception in the ER, but I didn't know that, and I had to wonder what was going on and why he wasn't replying to my texts. These are the particular thoughts that came to mind:

• He could have died.
• Worse yet, he could have been paralyzed. I know he could never live that way.
• Turner would never have know his father, or at least would have never know the active and athletic man that I've known.
• What if he had passed out and laid there for an hour or more?
  

But I realized that worrying wouldn't get me anywhere. And I knew that we had to keep the most positive attitude and be grateful for what we're left with, hope of no surgery and hope that he would have health and a normal life in the long run.

I arrived at the ER to see that Troy was okay...actually he was in great shape compared to all of the other people who were in the ER at midnight on Labor Day weekend. When I first walked in to the ER I realized that everyone was out in the open for everyone to see because there was so much overflow and all of the rooms were full. Troy excitedly told me that he had asked the EMTs who had driven him there to scoot him one foot forward so he could watch them prep a gun shot wound victim for surgery. Aye yai yai!

By 4:30 in the morning they moved us into a "private room". I sat reading in the ER, trying to avert my eyes from all of the madness going on around me, including the children who were in car accidents and the prisoner who was throwing a tantrum while surrounded by 7 officers. I sat dreaming of the fold out bed and skyline view. The rude awakening came when they escorted us to the 9x9 room with no window and no fold out bed. I was escorted to a metal chair just after a very large nurse grunted something at me that sounded like, "We have cots to sleep on but it's too late to be messin' with all that". Medical mecca, huh?

While fighting back tears and exhaustion, my sweet husband managed to scoot over without breaking his neck further and let me sleep beside him. I don't think I've ever slept so hard in my life.

We did luck out in that the bathroom we shared with the room next door was always vacant because the body cast worn by the patient next door kept him from...how do I say?...use the restroom in a traditional manner.

We stayed in the hospital the next day as they ran and reviewed several different tests. Mike & April surprised us with a visit, we went on a tour and they kept us entertained until we were able to be released. They were even there when his doctor gave him the "If you don't take this seriously you will never walk again, never have use of your arms again, may not be able to breathe completely on your own...and most importantly, you will never have use of your penis again...NO...SEX...EVER...AGAIN". That speech will quiet a room, or in this case, a hospital wing, real quick!

We're home now and Troy's doing his best to rest. He's a mover and a shaker, so it's very difficult for him to sit still for any length of time. I'm trying to play the role of the nagging wife, though it doesn't come very naturally to me. So I've been saving up all of the things he's done that he's not supposed to and telling his mama so that she can scare him into doing what he's supposed to do. ;)