A week or two ago I posted that MLS and I had been on a journey that we would tell you about later. Well, I have waited for her to write about his because she is so much better at writing than I but see she hasn’t posted in a while. So…….I will give you a brief (if I can) idea of what happened.
You will remember from some of our previous posts that we have this incredible 85 year old Father. He doesn’t look nor act like he is 85. That is his biggest problem. Not the looking but the acting. He still gets out and does stuff that he has no business even attempting but you can’t tell him that or he will just become hell bent on showing you how wrong you are. I think that might be where MLS and I got a lot little bit of our head-strong attitude.
Well a couple of weeks ago I got a call from my youngest daughter, who works at our local hospital, to tell me that my Dad had been hurt in an accident and was in the emergency room. I threw on some clothes and headed to the hospital. When I got there he was sitting in a wheel chair in the emergency room and was white as a sheet. He had been taking down a 100′ tall old radio tower on some land he had just bought back from someone. He and his hired hand, Jane, had tied all the guide wires to the tractor to help lower the tower slowly. When Dad started cranking the tower down and the counter-weight began to rise to keep the tower from falling too quickly, suddenly the counter-weight broke loose from the tower (due to rusting), fell, and hit my Dad across his back and right arm. He had a compound fracture of his humerus (the big bone between your elbow and shoulder). Compound means that the bone came through the skin to the outside of his arm. Kind of like this:
My step=mother was allowed to take him to OKC to a Bone & Joint specialty hospital that evening. I thought he should have been taken by air ambulance but she thought she could take him and keep him more comfortable. Long story short – she had a terrible trip, had to stop and get out and help him adjust his seat a couple of times in pouring rain and then her Onstar took her the long way around the city to get to the hospital. She didn’t want any of us going up there but Coach and I ran home, threw some clothes in a bag and headed up there behind them. We were only about 30 minutes behind them by the time we got to the hospital because we went straight to the hospital without using any GPS.
Anyway…..due to the storm they decided to wait until the morning to do a CAT scan and the surgery was to be later in the day. When we got to the hospital the next morning they had moved the surgery up to that morning. MLS was on her way from Texas (cause we don’t like being told to stay away) and she got there shortly after they took him into surgery. We were expecting a simple repair, a day of rest and then home. WRONG. They called us about 2 hours into the surgery and asked if he had injured that arm previously because they couldn’t straighten out his elbow. We told them about an old injury as a child that had left him with a stiff elbow. Then they called back about an hour later and asked if he had been in a war. We told them that he had served in WWII in the Philipines. They said “Oh, that explains it.” It seems that he had a terrible reaction to the anesthesia and when he woke up he thought he was back in the war and that they were being attacked and he was crawling out of the bed and trying to get everyone hidden and away from danger. The nurse told us later that it was terrible and that he was trying to save all the nurses from the Japanese. They kept him in recovery for nearly 3 hours and brought him back to his room sedated so much that he slept nearly another 3 hours. When he woke up he was still terribly confused and stayed that way for a long time. We went to eat supper and got a call to hurry back to the hospital. Dad was convinced that we had been taken hostage by terrorist and he was terrified. As soon as MLS and I got back to the hospital we got him calmed down, got some medication into him and MLS and I took the night shift. Dad finally went to sleep – sort of – and we spent hours trying to keep him covered up to protect his privacy. When he would rouse we finally sort of went along with some of his bizarre nightmare. At times it was so scary because his nightmares were so real to him and he was so terrified that it just killed us to watch him have to go through that.
As his daughters, it is so hard to watch the man who has been bigger than life, stronger than Superman reduced to this terrified man. It was as if everything we believed about our father was suddenly taken away from us. We switched places for a while. We were the strong ones, the caregivers and he the dependent. I don’t like that position. I like being the little girl with the big strong Daddy.
Today Dad is doing great. As a matter of fact he came to my house this evening and visited for about an hour. His arm looks really good and he is to begin PT next week. He is back into his right mind now and I wish I could say that all the bad stuff is forgotten. unfortunately he remembers every single minute of the nightmares. It has made him feel unsure of himself, scared and very emotional. We are encouraging them to go to the cardiologist (for a heart issue) and I have mentioned a neurologist. That went over like a brick. They feel like it is all the medications fault and couldn’t possibly be anything else ie: dementia or post traumatic stress disorder.
We really need some help on this but don’t know exactly where to go to get the help we need. Just keep us in your thoughts and prayers.
Well, that’s it……that was our most recent experience. I’m afraid to even think about the others we will face……so I just won’t!
Stepping right on out of here…………………….
Yikes! This has been quite an experience for us here in Western Oklahoma. We are considered part of the “South” and don’t usually have much more than one day with enough snow to build a snowman. The last time I remember having more than one day where school was dismissed due to the weather was back in the mid- 80’s. Our schools here were closed Thursday, Friday and Monday. That’s 5 days that the kids got to stay home and drive their parents nuts. At least that’s what my kids tell me.
Here are a few photos I took this weekend.
Freezing fog mixed with snow. That’s what they called this. We have never heard of freezing fog. Everything that had started doing a little thawing the day before just froze where it was.
When the ice thawed in my rain gauge it showed 2 ” of moisture. That’s just what hit my rain gauge. We needed the moisture pretty bad but when I went to town today I saw a lot of people sweeping water out of their buildings and some metal roofs have collapsed. South of us there are whole counties without electricity beginning the second week. I am so glad that our electricity was only off for a couple of hours.
I really need to talk to Al Gore right now and find out just when this global warming is going to begin.
The sun came out today but we sure didn’t see a lot of thawing. Could it be that the temperatures stayed below freezing. Well…….could be. Here are a few photos I took around my house and my Dad’s house.
Our back yard. Aren’t the trees pretty with all that ice on them. Thankfully no branches broke from the weight of the ice.
Little sparkling bridge over my Dad’s waterfall.
The mailman couldn’t get the door open on my mailbox so he got out of his vehicle and walked it up to the door. I imagine he had to do that many times today. Thanks, Steve!
My son has a problem with his patio. Seems the weight of the ice and snow is causing it to buckle. Coach brought two cargo jacks and jacked up the sagging places until he can get someone out there to repair the damage. It scares me to think of them walking from the back door out to the garage to get into their cars.
This is Coach, doing his good deeds for the day. He bladed several driveways for our neighbors.
I’ll leave you with my little Garden Angel. She has a bit of ice and snow on her but she still has a beautiful smile on her face.
Take care and keep warm!
Hello All, from here in the South! The weather is a balmy 24 degrees outside with an inch of ice covered with a couple of inches of snow. How are things in your world today?
This was last night when we only had ice. Today we have a nice covering of snow on everything so Coach and I are trying to stay nice a warm inside by the fire. I hope that all of you who are stuck in this terrible are bundled up and keeping warm and toasty.
Have a great Friday!
Please stay tuned. MLS and I have been on a journey we really didn’t intend to go on. We will let you know all about it when we are both rested up enough to write it all down. I, for one, am ready for January to be over with!
