Brian’s Bad Broken Back Day! But, HE’S ALIVE!!!

On Friday of last week, Brian took a 9-foot nasty fall off a ladder. Thankfully, the excitement here has subsided a bit. We thought it would be interesting to tell the story from both points of view – mine and Brian’s. SO here is the account of Brian’s bad day from each of our individual perspectives:

Brian:

So, there I was.

It was a pretty normal Friday morning. I had a few things to take care of around the yard before jumping on the computer and working on publishing stuff.

While it was still morning, and cool, I decided I would climb up to the roof of our camper and install the new air-conditioner fan motor that had come in just the day before. It was the last “fix” the camper needed before being fully ready for some spring road trips. (Yeah, there are still some soft spots on the floor, but we can fix those later.)

I set up the Gorilla ladder I’ve climbed at least 1000 times since we’ve lived here. It’s a big, heavy, metal folding ladder that can extend up to about 10 feet as an “A” ladder, and about 20 feet if you unfold it all the way like and extension ladder.

You wouldn’t believe it to look at me now, but I’ve always been respectful of and careful with ladders. I make sure they are planted firmly on solid ground with good traction. I don’t stand on the very top step. I don’t over-reach.

With a Gorilla ladder in its “A” configuration, you can make one side longer and one side shorter to help get closer to walls. It makes the climb less steep. That is how I ascended to the top of the camper.

I had plans and responsibilities for the rest of the day, too. Heck, I had plans for THAT NIGHT. I was expecting this job to take about an hour, and then I would move on to the next thing.

I got to where the ladder met the camper roof. As always, I felt around and identified where the support joists were to make sure my footing would be stable. Then I stepped over – and that’s when it happened.

I wish I could say what “it” was. I never felt a wobble. Not a shift. Not a teeter. Before I even comprehended what was happening, the ladder flew out from under me. The roof of our camper is 8 feet high. I was hunched down to cross over. Give it another foot. That’s NINE feet in the air when the ladder decided to ditch me.

It’s amazing how fast everything happened. No, my life didn’t flash before my eyes. I wasn’t scared. I didn’t have time to reach out and grab for the roof or the slide-out that was right next to me. I had just enough time for a flash of a thought: “This is going to hurt.”

I had fallen face up. The first impact I remember was the carport concrete slamming squarely across my upper back. It was followed instantaneously with the back of my head slamming down and a searing pain in my lower back as it hit. Funny how the brain can discern the chronological order of an event that unfolds in a fraction of a second. Then it was done.

Well, the falling and sudden deceleration were done. But then it was pain time. My head hurt. My upper back hurt. I couldn’t breathe. My lower back was killing me. My left hip was screaming. And, involuntarily, I screamed. Well, I bellowed – the simple unmistakable sound of a man in a LOT of pain.

I yelled out twice, long and loud. I knew our house windows were open and was praying Angela would hear me. I wasn’t aware that she had come out to the back porch above me to take a break. I heard her yell, “I’m coming!” And I could hear the panic in her voice. I didn’t want to worry her, but I knew what seeing me lying there on the ground hollering out was going to do to her.

Angela:

So, I was sitting on the back porch, enjoying the cool weather and then I heard a big crash and then Brian groaning loudly and screaming help. I jumped up and looked over the side of the porch and he was lying on his back on the cement next to the camper. I yelled twice that I was coming.

I ran down the stairs and out the back and my legs were shaking like crazy! My heart was pounding. Brian yelled, “Call 911!” I’ve seen enough TV shows to know that I was not supposed to touch him. He was on his back with his left leg bent in front of him. When I was talking to 911, our neighbor came running down the driveway. I waved him toward Brian and kept talking on the phone. They wanted to know if Brian had hit his head. I said yes. They asked me if he was coherent. I told them he was speaking coherently and knew who he was. I got off the phone with them, and they called back a couple of minutes later to ask for his weight and height. Brian was able to answer those questions so I relayed those answers.

Brian:

Our dogs were dancing around me like I had just done a funny trick. They thought it was a hoot! We are now suspecting that it may have been Tank bumping into the ladder that caused it to shift. He’s stupid like that.

I don’t know if this is something that everyone does, but when I’m hurt, I start a mental “status check” to figure out how bad things are. Since I was lying there, not doing much more than hurting really bad, it seemed like the right time to go through this exercise.

I was yelling and I hurt, so I was conscious, thank God. I wiggled my fingers and toes, so no immediate spinal cord damage, thank God. I knew what had happened and quickly went over what day it was and some other little tidbits of info. I could also see and hear, so no obvious brain damage. My upper back hurt like hell – possible fractures to the upper vertebrae? The pain was quickly spreading outward around my sides – possible rib fractures? My lower back was on fire – definitely something wrong there! Cracked tailbone?? Then I tried straightening out my legs. Lightning bolts coursed through my left hip. So, I kept my left leg bent and out to the side. Hip fracture – I was pretty certain.

Within 30 seconds, Angela was standing over me with a terrified look in her eyes. My only words were “Call 9-1-1!” I knew this wasn’t a “get up and dust myself off” kind of mishap. The best course of action was going to be to stay as still as possible and wait for the medics. As she was on the phone with 9-1-1, I heard Angela yell, “It’s okay! They won’t bite you!” I knew some neighbor was heading our way, and the dogs had run up to them. Turned out it was our new neighbor who had moved in about two weeks prior. Kaleb, a former Marine, knelt down beside me and started having me tell him where I hurt and squeezing his hand to check my responses and coherence. His wife Mille (pronounced Mill-ee), a nurse, joined him.

The next 45 minutes was just me lyying on the ground, talking to Kaleb and Millie about everything under the sun, and being reminded to squeeze Kaleb’s hand every five minutes or so. Meanwhile, Angela was getting the dogs put away inside the house, calling Mason to drive over ASAP, and packing a bag for a stay at the hospital. Angela and I have an understanding: If one of us is in the hospital, we’re both in the hospital.

Now, if you’re thinking 45 minutes is a long time to wait for an ambulance, it is. But you have to take into account that we chose to live on top of a mountain, on a private road serving the entire neighborhood, with a mile’s worth of potholes the size of moon craters between us and any kind of pavement. When we could actually hear the siren, I told Kaleb it would still be another 15 minutes for the ambulance to get down our road. They have to drive THAT SLOW to keep their equipment from flying around the cabin. Welcome to the neighborhood.

Angela:

Our neighbor Kaleb screamed for his wife. She was outside. She’s a nurse. She came running as well. She started assessing Brian and primarily looking for a head injury. Kaleb is a retired Marine and he just sat on the cement next to Brian, held his hand and kept him talking. I learned later that Kaleb was sharing stories with him and just keeping him alert, and actually made him laugh. When we first moved here, we realized we were in the sticks. If one of us has a heart attack, we’re not gonna make it. It takes about 40 minutes for an ambulance to get here. They can get up the mountain just fine but our private road is not maintained by the county and there are a lot of potholes. The ambulance has a lot of equipment in it that cannot get damaged. We could hear the siren, but once they entered the neighborhood, they turned the siren off. It took them another ten or more minutes to get to our driveway.

They arrived. The female EMT immediately went down to check Brian’s condition. I had to move Brian’s truck so they could back the ambulance all the way down to the driveway. I told Brian I was going to pack a quick bag and follow the ambulance to the hospital. It usually takes me over an hour to pack. I packed in five minutes flat! A suitcase of toiletries and clothes for both of us and my computer bag. Not that I got on my computer when we were in the hospital, but that was, you know, what my brain was thinking at the time. I didn’t know if he would need surgery or how long he would be hospitalized. They got Brian onto a gurney. I’m not sure if he remembers this, but when they got him in the ambulance, the male EMT told the female EMT that they should’ve put him on a backboard. When the female EMT was assessing him while he was on the ground, she said it was not near as bad as she thought it would be.

She picked his head up off the ground and looked for bumps and couldn’t find any. That was their main concern. A head injury, and possible paralysis. So the ambulance stayed in the driveway for about five minutes after putting him in there so the female EMT could hook him up to an IV. I was wrapping up stuff inside.

I had called Mason and Ali when I went upstairs to pack. It was very short. “Mason, Brian fell off a ladder! The ambulance is on the way. Get here as fast as you can!” Mason is 20 minutes away and he got here right after the ambulance did. I told Ali the same thing and told her to notify everybody. They were all terrified because nobody knew how bad it was. But neither did I.

Brian:

The ambulance ride was about 30 minutes total, because there are no hospitals in our town. They had to drive down our mountain, on mountain roads and switchbacks, and on to Chattanooga.

Anyway, the rest of it is kind of a long, drawn-out blur. I refused Fentanyl in the ambulance, so the next few hours were full of searing pain and discomfort. It wasn’t so much a tough-guy thing. I literally wanted to know what was hurting, because new pain was showing up every half-hour and I wanted to understand what was hurt. They kept asking me HOW I landed, and I really couldn’t remember right then. I kept adjusting my answer because of where things were hurting. I didn’t understand right then that when you fall 9 feet and hit concrete, it’s not just the impact points that get hurt. Neck muscles get whipped around. Joints get hyper-extended. Soft tissue gets stretched and torn. Your bones and internal organs come to a sudden stop after picking up speed, and smack against your rib cage. The impact runs a shock wave through your whole body. It’s like getting hit by a truck.

I was parked in a hallway for 45 minutes because of how busy the E.R. was. Once I was in a room, it was needles, tubes, questions, questions, and more questions. I remember everyone from the medics to the ER nurses and doctors telling me how much worse it could (and should) have been. In the end, it turned out that I had fractured my S3 vertebra in multiple places and sprained my shoulder.

After all the x-rays and CAT scans, I said “YES” to morphine. After about 6 hours total, the were ready to release me, and I was ready to go. Unfortunately, when I went to stand up, I passed out. My blood pressure had dropped way too low, and that bought me an overnight stay. At one point, it had dropped to 80/55.

Angela went out and got me a milkshake, which I had been craving since the ambulance ride. (Don’t ask – I can’t explain it.) I watched an untold number of re-runs of Big Bang Theory while Angela helped me roll over to pee in a big plastic bottle on the side of the bed every so often. The nurses came in to wake me up and jab me with needles every few hours. All I wanted to do was sleep, because every move I made sent pain shooting through my hips and back.

Angela:

We arrived at the hospital. The ambulance pulled in the ambulance bay and I had to find a parking place. It’s a large hospital and that was not easy. By the time I got to the ambulance doors, they had already taken him inside, and those were locked. I went into the emergency room, where I met Nazi Nancy. She wasn’t letting anybody go back! She said his name wasn’t even in the system yet. I said “Can I just go back and stand next to him while he’s waiting to be seen? I know he’s badly injured, and he needs me.”

She said no, and told me as soon as he was in the system that she would type in that I was waiting in the emergency room, and that they would let me go back. I was freaking out! There was a very nice older woman sitting next to me. She could tell that I was going out of my mind, and she just started asking me questions. That got my mind off of my worry and onto to answering her questions. Why was I there? What happened to my husband? What does he do for a living? She just went on and on, and I was kind of agitated at first, until I realized that she was just trying to help me get through that moment in my life. God bless her! (She was there with pneumonia.)

Then the deaf people came in. Nazi Nancy wouldn’t let them go back as well. There was a woman back there, brought in by an ambulance, who is completely deaf. Her adult daughter stood up to go see Nancy and told her that her mother was deaf and needed an interpreter. She asked if there was an interpreter back there with her mother? Of course, Nazi Nancy had no idea. Then the deaf woman’s son-in-law stood up and told Nazi Nancy that if she didn’t let somebody go back there to interpret for his mother-in-law, they were going to sue the hospital. Sure enough, the deaf woman was about to be sent for an MRI and had no idea what was going on because nobody was interpreting for her.

Nazi Nancy led the daughter back there and, shortly thereafter, four more security people showed up to talk to that family because they were understandably very upset. Things calmed down after that.

I was still sitting there worrying like crazy about Brian. Nazi Nancy said he was in triage. I’d been sitting there for an hour by that time! Triage doesn’t take that long. Finally, Nazi Nancy stood up, holding a piece of paper, and said Brian was room 5, and that she would take me back there. Except she didn’t. She opened the door, and the security guard led me about 20 feet, and then just pointed forward. I had to find room 5.

I walked into room 5, and Brian was lying there on a gurney all by himself. He did tell me that they had told him I was out in the waiting room. He was in a very bad place. He was in so much pain, and he was frightened. He just needed his wife by his side. Mason had texted our pastor. He texted me. He had already arrived at the hospital! His text said he was in the waiting room and this really mean lady wouldn’t let him go back. Keep in mind that pastors have special badges on their shirts so they can go anywhere in a hospital. I told him I would go get him. When I was halfway to Nazi Nancy, our pastor was already in the hallway. I guess he won that argument.

The pastor came back to the room and, within five minutes, he had Brian laughing. He’s an awesome human being! He told Brian he never messes with people who are on painkillers. Brian said he hadn’t had any yet. So the pastor let him have it. It hurt Brian to laugh, but he kept laughing.

Then they brought an x-ray machine into his room. I had to stand in the hallway while they did x-rays. When I was doing that, there was a “code” across the hall. Room 8. Then there was Mrs. Pat. I heard a nurse yelling at her, “Mrs. Pat! What’s today? Who’s the president? You were here yesterday, and your friend went to check on you, and you were unconscious. I gave you pain meds yesterday. Did you take too many?”

Then they came and took Brian away for his CAT scan. Only after that, like an hour later, did the doctor come in with the results of all the tests. He had a sprained right shoulder and a fractured sacrum. That is the triangular bone below your spinal cord. They sent that to an orthopedic surgeon, and he said it did not need surgery. It needed to heal on its own, but it would take up to 12 weeks. Then they said they were preparing his discharge papers.

After the diagnoses, Brian finally let them give him morphine. Except Brian‘s never had morphine before. When they said they were discharging him, he sat up and scooted to the end of the bed with his legs hanging over. All of a sudden, he got severely nauseated. I grabbed a barf bag from the little holder thing next to the sink. I gave that to him. He kept saying that the room was spinning. Everything was moving. He kept saying he was going to faint. The nurse was in there at that time. I was holding Brian‘s left arm, the nurse was holding his right arm, and all of a sudden, he dropped the barf bag on the ground and passed out. He just went completely limp. We got him laid down on his back. That’s when he came to again.

He didn’t remember anything. The most disturbing thing about the faint was that both of his hands and arms started shaking like crazy. I asked the nurse if he had a seizure. The nurse didn’t know. Once we got him back on his back on the bed, and scooched back up (very difficult because of his pain), the nurse went running for the doctor. The doctor came in right away and said he would not be releasing Brian that night. They didn’t know what was happening, but he wasn’t going anywhere.

Brian was pretty bummed about that. We did figure out what caused that later. They moved him to the upstairs emergency room. It’s much nicer up there. Big rooms. There’s a window. It’s like a regular hospital room, but they call it another emergency room because insurance companies don’t like it when they “admit” somebody. I know that from experience. That’s a story for another day.

So, we got into the other room, and there was a recliner that I could lay back on and try to sleep on. That didn’t really work out too well. They gave Brian more morphine, and when he was feeling better, I ran to CVS to get some things he might need, like an inflatable pillow to sit on once we got home. I also got some snacks. Brian was dying for a milkshake. I went to Sonic and got him a milkshake. I was gone for like an hour. He was texting me asking me where I was. I arrived back at the hospital, and he drank his milkshake and went to sleep. They came in about 3 o’clock in the morning and checked his blood pressure, and it was 80/55. That’s when they stopped giving him morphine.

Brian:

In the morning, a physical therapist came in to check on my mobility to see if I could be released. She wrapped a big belt around me and had me walk with her down the hallway as she held onto the belt. I felt like a dog being taken for “walkies.” But I passed the test and won the right to climb into the shotgun seat of my truck, and endure Angela driving down our bumpy, pothole-filled road – but not before a stop to get another milkshake.

Angela:

The mystery was solved. Morphine was making his blood pressure drop tremendously. The next morning, physical therapy came in. They were able to get Brian out of bed, and he walked a few feet. They said he could go home. During that time, Max came to visit. Brian didn’t want to drive in my Jeep on the way home because it’s too bumpy. Max brought Brian’s truck and we traded vehicles. God bless him.

They gave Brian a muscle relaxer right before we left so he could withstand the ride home. We stopped at the pharmacy and then came home. Mason was there taking care of the chickens and the dogs. Mason helped me get Brian up the three front steps. That was excruciating for him. It is now 6 days later and Brian is doing much better. He’s still in a lot of pain. He’s got bruises in places we didn’t even know he injured. He messed up one of his elbows. The other one swelled up like a baseball. The EMTs and everybody at the hospital could NOT believe Brian didn’t have more extensive injuries. God was looking out for him! I think God has Brian’s guardian angel put her wings on the driveway right where his head was about to hit. He didn’t even have a bump on the back of his head! Praise the LORD!!!

The next day, I called the RV repair guy to come out and do the repair to the camper that Brian was trying about to do when he fell. I also had to hire yard guys. Brian‘s not happy about that because our yard guy retired a couple of months ago, and Brian had just bought a riding lawnmower. They told him in the emergency room that he cannot ride a riding lawnmower for a very long time because the vibrations might further hurt his back. The AC guy came, and we now have air-conditioning working again (that had gone out the day before the accident). I am now taking care of the chickens, the dog, the cat, laundry, dishes, you name it – on top of running BookLocker. But at least my husband is alive!

As of today (7 days after the fall), Brian is still in pain. He can get around with crutches and is very restless. Several areas of his body have become black and blue. If I know my husband, 12 weeks will be an eternity for him…

POSTSCRIPT: Our rooter, Benedict, LOVES Brian but he HATES me. I have no idea why. In the past 4 days, he has attacked me 3 times! I walked into the coop four days ago and he took flight, with his feet and spurs pointing right at my face. I’m sure the entire neighborhood heard me screaming. I ran out of the coop and slammed the door.

Yesterday, when he came at me from the ground. I quickly hooked my foot under his belly, and launched him HIGH into the air. We played that game twice before he strutted away.I have a HUGE bruise on the top of my foot. It looks like someone stuck a big gumball under my skin.

This morning, I had my head in the hen house, collecting eggs, and he came up behind me, jumped, and bit my butt!!! So, we clearly still have some tussling to do until he realizes who’s in charge! I have learned to wear sturdy shoes, and to NEVER turn my back on Benedict.

RELATED

HAVE A QUESTION ABOUT SELF-PUBLISHING A BOOK?

Angela is not only the publisher of WritersWeekly.com. She is President & CEO of BookLocker.com,
a self-publishing services company that has been in business since 1998. Ask her anything.