Close call

So my husband tried to die today.  Just a few minutes after we had talked on the phone about me not going out because the weather was bad, I got a call from him saying he’d been in an accident.  He knew it was slippery and was doing his best to be careful merging onto the freeway, and he remembers losing control and sliding but not the impact or losing consciousness.  He’s OK, but it’s been a very intense day, and his truck that he’s had since before I met him is a goner. 

 

I spent a long while talking on the phone with a truly wonderful woman who had stopped after she saw the accident, and she stayed on with me letting me knowing absolutely everything that was going on while my husband was being helped by the paramedics, etc.  She said she’d been in a serious accident before herself.  The first paramedic to get to my husband was a dad he knows from Boy Scouts.  When my hubby was trying to be cheerful upon seeing him and couldn’t come up with the guy’s name, he (the paramedic) decided a trip to the hospital was in order. 

 

I had woken up at 5:00AM and had spent the morning starting at about 6:15 watching my friend’s kids so she could be with her husband while he had surgery for his badly broken wrist. I was already feeling the strain from dealing with one child getting a nerf dart power shot to the eye approximately two minutes after their arrival, another having a scrape and a wet sock from playing chase in my kitchen, Alvin leaving a paper at home and needing it to be brought to the middle school, a child needing to go back to her house to retrieve forgotten snow pants, and the spectrum kindergartener who stayed with me for three more hours after the others had left nearly locking me in my own basement.  It was about fifteen minutes after I had started to breathe that I got the call from my husband and had to start scrambling to come up with a plan not only for my children, but for my friend’s children, as well.

 

Fortunately she called shortly afterward to say she and her husband were on their way home, and he had received a nerve block and would be OK for a while.  I turned the tables and asked if she could pick up our two little ones that I was supposed to retrieve, then I got to call each school and explain to each child – or in one case, the teacher consultant – what was going on and what the plan was.  I left a key in a place we’ve used before for the older boys and gave them a cell phone to call me.  I looked up the hospital, which isn’t one we normally go to, on Google maps and came up with a way to get there without taking the freeway.  By then my friend was back, so I returned her key and headed off.  I was quite proud of myself for finding the place without a problem, and they had a greeter sort of person right at the emergency room entrance to help me find my way without any hassle.  Hubby had been checked out pretty well by the time I got everything else handled and made it to the hospital, so we didn’t have to stick around too long.  He’ll be sore, but he’s basically OK, which was nice to see after they did the whole neck brace and backboard and ambulance thing with him to be on the safe side.

 

Before we made it out of the hospital parking lot, I got a call from Simon informing me that a police officer had stopped by with a citation.  Nice they could get to that before my husband even left the hospital.  At least Simon handled it fine, although it freaked him out a bit.  He had just opened the door and started to wander away thinking it was just Alvin arriving home from school.

I’ll probably have more to say about this after I’ve had time to process it all a bit more.  For now we’re just tremendously grateful, and some other issues that have been bothering us have been placed into perspective.