My phone rings, waking me from a deep sleep. The caller ID says that Kris is calling. Why would Kris be calling me when he's lying next to me in bed??
But he's not in bed. He went biking this morning. I just didn't hear him leave.
I pick up the phone and it's Todd - Kris' biking buddy. He's telling me there's been an accident. Kris fell off his bike and he's really hurt. They've called for an ambulance and are waiting for it to show up. He'll call me back once he knows where they will be taking him.
I hang up, and think, "I'll just go back to sleep until Todd calls back..."
And then my brain kicks in. KRIS IS HURT. He's being taken by ambulance to the hospital. I have to get up. I have to leave. Oh good Lord, what has happened to my husband!?!
I jump out of bed and race to the hospital as soon as Todd tells me where they were taking him. When I arrive at the ER, I ask for Kris Fisher and was told there was no one there by that name. Then the attendant says, "Wait, someone's coding back there."
And that's when my heart stopped for the first time.
With a calm and controlled voice I asked him to please explain coding. He says that someone just arrived and they were entering their information into the system. Ok, I don't know about you, but when I think about someone coding, I think 'code blue'... and I thought he was dying.
Could they have not come up with a better term for their stupid check-in process? UGH!!
So, once they wheeled him into the ER, I was allowed to see him... and found him fully restrained and strapped to a back board (or whatever they call those things). He was complaining of back pain, had a few nasty road rash burns, but looked otherwise ok.
I took a breath.
He was ok. It was probably not as bad as it even looked. I mean, Kris has a pretty low pain tolerance, so it can't be that bad, right? My main concern was for his back. He's had problems in the past and several steroid injections to fix those problems. I didn't want him to go through that again.
The nurse took him to x-ray his back and neck, and when the x-rays came back, we found out he had 3 broken ribs and a shattered collar bone. Ok. Not what I was hoping to hear. I started to get worried. Next, they wanted to get a chest x-ray to take a look at his lungs... you know, just in case.
And they came back with even worse news.
A rib had punctured his left lung, and it was partially collapsed. My sense of worry turned into something that looked a lot more like fear. I asked the doctor what happened next. He said that, in most cases, they like to wait and see if the lung will reinflate on its own. Apparently, it's pretty cool like that. However, just a few minutes later, the nurse rushed back in and told us the doctor wanted to put in a chest tube right away. I guess Kris wasn't in the wait-and-see category after all. This was a bit more serious.
And that's when my heart stopped for a second time.
Tears began to fall down my face and my body went numb. Not feeling is the only thing I could do. I couldn't function any other way.
They set him up in the OR and the doctor explained that without immediate intervention, the lung could smother his heart and Kris could die. He then explained the chest tube procedure, how he was going to insert a catheter into his chest cavity, all without anything stronger than a local anesthetic. He said it would probably be the worst pain Kris had ever felt. Yeah, this guy didn't believe in sugar-coating things at all.
I'll spare you the details of the procedure. It was pretty quick, but it definitely was not painless. I was in the OR with him the whole time. I was able to hold his hand and silently cry while I kept my gaze locked on his face. He did well. He barely even moved and didn't shed a tear, even though it must have been excrutiating.
After recuperating in the OR for awhile, we spent a couple of days in the hospital. His collar bone was such a mess that we decided to have it fixed, hoping that it would heal better that way. Here's a picture of him waiting for surgery. He had a metal plate put in with 7 big metal screws and a lot of staples.
The surgery was a success and we were able to go home the next day. Finally, four days in the hospital was enough for me, and I wasn't the one confined to bed and poked and prodded all day.
The first couple of weeks were a little rough. Kris was in a lot of pain and it was challenging to keep his wounds clean and to get him showered without getting the bandages wet. We had to wrap his wounds with cling wrap. Nice, huh?
He was up and walking the first day we got home, and was doing quite well after about a week (well, and with a lot of pain killers). Here he is a week after the accident before he got the staples out. You see he still has a sense of humor...
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