My 2 Kids For Him

• Apr. 3, 2008 -

I was just over at Letitia's blog reading her hysterical vacation story and thought I'd share mine:)  I believe it was the summer of 2002 when we took a four night camping trip to the beach. We had a decent size travel trailer and invited our good friends (I'll call them Sue and Tom) to come along and try out the world of camping. Our 2nd day there (actually our 1st full day) the 8 of us were riding our bikes back to the camper after swimming. Dh decides he wants to pass up the 4 kids and rushes forward with great speed only to be brought to a dead stop.....but in a very bad way. When we were leaving the pool, I placed his towel on his handle bars and told him to put it around his neck.....he didn't. The towel fell and wedged between the front tire and fender bringing him to a dead stop. He went airborne, doing a flip in the air, and landing on the back of his neck/head. We all quickly ran to check on him expecting to see a lot of blood, but there was only a small amount behind his ear and LOTS of scrapes all over his body. He wasn't getting up and kept sitting there like he was in deep thought or something. During this episode, Tom had stopped his bike and threw it to the side so fast, he messed up his bike. As he was checking on dh, his wife Sue almost faints thinking about how dh is going to be  like a vegetable and I'm going to have to raise the kids alone. So Tom leaves dh's side to take care of  Sue. Someone took dh back to our camper in their golf cart and suggested we take him to the hospital and get him checked out. They had to take dh's bicycle apart to get the beach towell out. It was like completely wedged in. My dh kept asking questions like when did we get there and lots of questions about his business....the same questions over and over. Dd (who was 8 at the time) kept asking if her dad was "going crazy":). So Tom and I left to take dh to the hospital while Sue stayed back at the camper with the 4 kids. I might add that it rained the remainder of the day, so she was confined to the camper with 4 energetic kids. We first thought we'd try a First Care center because it was closest (traffic was terrible that day) but they said they didn't have the equipment needed to care for him so back to the van and on to the hospital. All the time dh kept asking the same question about his employees getting paid, etc. When we arrived at the hospital the waiting room was full, and Tom went in and told them we had a head trauma so they took us on back. All the nurses and the Dr. thought dh had been in a motorcycle accident...that's how bad he looked. After the dr. checked him over he began this list of things he was going to do. He would be giving dh shots to numb the scaped areas that needed to be cleaned out (full of lots of dirt and tiny gravel), an xray on the right leg, a cat scan to check the brain, and much to our surprise...he was calling in a plastic surgeon for dh's ear. A chunck was missing from behind his ear. (The dr. had jokingly asked if we brought the rest of dh's ear with us) This couldn't be stitched up without looking deformed so it would need plastic surgery. Dr. walked away, dh went to the restroom, I'm trying to take all this in, all the while remembering the fact that we had no insurance, and I began to hyperventilate (which is something I'm known to do only when really in pain). Now, Tom, who has taken care of dh, taken care of his wife when she was about to pass out, called out to the nurses for help. But they gave none:) Only asked if we needed a paper sack:) I kept telling myself everything was going to be ok...I had to pull myself together. It took the plastec surgeon most of the day to get to the hospital. In the meantime, everything checked out ok with dh. He had a brace on his leg and lots of bandages covering his wounds. When the surgeon arrived we were asked to return to the waiting room. Later they came to get us.....on the way back to see dh, I'm thinking his ear would be all bandaged up.....wrong....they had his whole head bandaged up. I almost lost it when they pulled his cutain back. You could see nothing but a small portion of his face. Not a time to be laughing, but it struck me as really funny. The kids decided to call him marshmallow head. The rest of our vacation he wasn't able to go the ocean or pool with us. When we would go out, people would look him over from head to toe. Picture him walking around with the leg brace and head wrapped up......it was funny just watching people look at him:) He wasn't able to bend his leg, so Tom had to pull our camper home. You would think they would never camp again, but soon after returning home, they went out and bought them a travel trailer. Everyone always tells us not to let dh on a bike:) (Most know that he also has flipped a 4-wheeler while going in reverse!).

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