I wish so bad I could just take March right out the calendar. When I think of March I think of sadness, pain, suffering, disappointment...and all the other negative adjectives you can think of. I like to refer to March 2012 as Hell.
So, Hell started on March 2nd, a Friday, about 8AM. I am sitting at my desk getting the day started when my phone rings. It is a friend that Allen works with. Our conversation..."Hey Dal what's up?"; "Oh.....nothing good". (Silence) "Um...Allen fell at work and he was taken to the hospital in an ambulance, he is conscious but he has some pretty bad cuts to his neck"; "Ok, do I need to come to Vegas"?; "Ya, you better".
When I hang up the phone I am somewhat panicked but I think to myself...oh they will just stitch him up, maybe cast a broken bone or two and then I will just drive him home tonight. Me being pregnant and VERY emotional, to say the least, I call my mom freaking out and she advises me not to drive to Vegas alone. I call Sonya and she drops everything to drive me to Vegas. What would I do without her???
Ten miles South of Mesquite the hospital calls to say that Allen had some bad cuts on his neck and they have him in surgery to find out what the damage is and get him sewn back together. They think his leg might be broken as well. Ok…..that is pretty vague and they don’t have any more answers for me.
We arrive at UMC in Las Vegas and we might as well have landed in the twilight zone. When we finally find our way to the Trauma Center we are ushered to a waiting area to wait for the surgeon to come talk to us. I wish I would have known at this point how much time I was about to spend in that waiting area over next 2 weeks….I would have mentally prepared myself for the craziness I was about to face.
2 hours sitting in the waiting room and a resident finally comes to update us on Allen’s status. She says that he has lacerated his larynx, nicked his carotid artery, has a small bleed on his brain, and a broken foot. They had to intubate him in order for the swelling in his throat to go down so he could breath. They have him in a medically induced coma to help with the brain bleed and also to keep him from pulling out the intubation tube.
The first time I saw my husband words cannot describe the feelings that went through my head. This is not my husband, why is this happening to him, I’m so scared, what if I never get to talk to him again……a million of the worst things. He did not look like my husband….his face was swollen, he had a black eye that swelled up the size of an orange, his nose was cut and swollen, he had a tube down his throat, and cuts everywhere. I was devastated. I couldn’t handle it. I burst into tears and lost control. Thank goodness Sonya was there to comfort me. The nurses weren’t ready for me to be in the room with him so I was sent back out to the waiting room. All of Allen’s co-workers came and sat with me in the waiting room for the remainder of the day. They were all devastated, shocked, and scared. What a great group of guys. Allen is truly blessed.
The next few days were spent sitting next to his bed in the trauma center just staring at him, praying, holding his hand, and trying to hold onto hope. I wanted him to get better so that I could talk to him, laugh with him, snuggle with him…you know…all the fun things that hubs and wifeys do. Even though he was laying there in the same room I still missed him.
The trauma center that Allen was taken to was UMC in the ghetto of the ghetto Las Vegas. We saw it all there. We witnessed a patient drinking a 6 pack of beer while being treated, we saw a total of 6 gunshot victims fill the rooms surrounding Allen’s (3 of which were shot in the parking lot of the Trauma center…where I parked my car EVERYDAY), countless homeless people, and the most disgustingly dirty facility I have ever been to. For those of you that live in Utah and have access to an Intermountain Facility…you are blessed! I wanted Allen out of this dump and sent to Utah where I know he would get the BEST care at a clean and friendly facility. Due to his brain injury and him being intubated, this was not possible..GRRRR!
3 or 4 days into his hotel stay (that is what I kept calling it) Allen was taken off intubation and they had him trying to breathe on his own. Well this was an epic fail. He was struggling so hard to breathe and his oxygen levels were not good so they took him in for surgery and placed a tracheotomy tube. He remained on this until the day before he was released.
There were many ups and downs but all in all Allen made progress really quickly. He was released to go home after 12 days with a hole in neck from the tracheotomy, a feeding tube, lots of stitches on the side of his neck, and a very sore body. To date his injury list includes the following: a Diffused Axinomal Brain Injury, a torn windpipe, a nicked artery in his neck, broken jaw in 17 places, cracked bone at the bridge of his nose, a torn vertebra in his neck, a stitched up pinky finger, broken ribs….that is all that I can think of at the moment. He is very lucky to be alive. I know that god kept Allen here with me because he knew I couldn’t be alone for what was to come.
