The accident

A couple Thursdays ago, I was cleaning the house and trying to keep myself busy while I waited for the babe to get home from his 6-week long business trip to Florida. He had opted to ride his motorcycle rather than drive a car or fly, which meant that it was taking him slightly longer than he had hoped with all the extra stops. He has to fill up the bike every couple hours or so and he always calls me just to let me know where he is and to say hi quick before he gets back on the road; it was about that time and I was expecting his call when I was switching a load of laundry and my phone rang. It was his phone calling me, but the voice on the other side when I picked up wasn't his. A man named Jeremy shakily told me that my husband had wrecked his bike on Interstate 81, at mile marker 229 just north of Staunton. Jeremy told me that he was okay, and was being looked at right now in an ambulance. I asked if I could talk to him, and Jeremy hesitated for a long time and then said "no, he can't talk right now, but he's okay." He told me that they were taking him to Harrisonburg's hospital (and then called a couple minutes later to tell me that they were actually taking him to Augusta Medical Center in Fishersville). I changed my shirt (the Run DMC shirt that didn't quite cover my belly that I had been wearing didn't seem like the right choice), literally picked Rosie up off our bed where she was trying to hide behind the pillows and dropped her inside the crate, started to fill my water bottle and then decided I didn't want to wait that long, and sped off to AMC. I didn't think about grabbing my Kindle, a toothbrush, deodorant, a change of clothes, or snacks...all of these things would have been really helpful but at that point it was 1:30 in the afternoon and the idea that we'd be spending the night at the hospital seemed silly. All I could really think about was seeing him.

I called my mom as soon as I got in the car, and it took me a while to actually be able to tell her what had happened because I was crying so hard. She was obviously upset too but managed to calm me down a little bit so I could drive safely, grabbed my dad off the lawn mower (thankfully it was their afternoon off) and they started their own trek to AMC. My parents were much closer to the hospital than me (they only had about a 30-40 minute drive as opposed to my torturous hour and a half drive) and so they beat me there by quite a bit. Dad called several times while I drove to update me on anything he could. We were all thinking that the babe's injuries were pretty severe, based on Jeremy's lack of specifics ("he's okay" was all he ever said) and his unwillingness to let me talk to him (I figured he was unconscious and/or in too bad a shape to talk to me), and so when Dad let me know that they had seen him through a wall of glass and that he was awake (someone was talking to him and he seemed to be responding) and that his toes were moving (no paralysis) that made us all feel a lot better. No one was letting Mom and Dad in to actually see him though, and it didn't take long for Dad to have just about enough of that and threaten a security guard, immediately producing the State Trooper who had been at the scene who gave Dad and Mom the full story of what had happened.

He had been in a construction zone on 81, the kind where one lane is the normal pavement and one lane is all chewed down to the gravel because they're going to repave it. He was in the right lane (the chewed up lane) and moved into the left lane (the normal pavement) to pass a car. He'd done it a thousand times in those exact circumstances, but this time the difference in elevation was a lot more dramatic than normal (almost 3 inches) and when his front wheel hit the ledge the front tire started to loose control. He kicked the bike out from under him and away from him as he slid, causing both he and the bike to slide across the pavement (thankfully the normal stuff and not the chewed up side) and then flip several times. His big travel suitcase that straps to the bike had come off in a flip and several zippers opened up, emptying some of the contents onto the highway. He immediately got up and started running around trying to catch and pick up things as they scattered (adrenaline is a powerful thing) and about eight different cars all stopped to help him and make sure he was okay. It was when he tried to pick up the huge bag that he realized his hands were both completely destroyed and bleeding badly...I think up until then he hadn't even considered that he'd been hurt.

Strangers helped him gather all his things. The woman who had been driving behind him when he went down - in an Excursion - said that she had lost sight of him at one point and she thought for sure she had run over him. An off-duty ambulance stopped and couldn't officially help him but did call in for another one and checked him out a little in the meantime. He handed his phone to one of the guys who had stopped - his name is Jeremy, as it turns out - and asked him to call me. Eventually the bike was towed away and he was taken to AMC.

Dad and Mom were able to see him face to face in a little while and actually talk to him, which helped me feel that much better. He was awake (and had been the entire time), coherent, and definitely didn't seem to have any head/brain injuries. Dad had warned me during one of our phone calls that they may move him to University of Virginia's hospital in Charlottesville, and sure enough right as I was getting off of Interstate 64 and about three minutes away from AMC he called again to let me know that they were moving him. I got so close to being able to see him, but when I was minutes away they moved him another hour away. Mom rode in the ambulance with him and Dad waited with my brother and sister for me so we could all go together and I could take a break from driving while emotional. Once we all got to UVA (no thanks to Siri, who dumped us into some 10x15 back parking lot somewhere in the middle of downtown Charlottesville), it was still almost another couple of hours before I was able to see him. The ER at UVA still needed to do all his X-rays, CT scans, so it took a while to get through all that. Eventually though, around 5:30 or so, they let me through. I got there just in time to see them scrub all his wounds and then dress and bandage them. That, needless to say, wasn't very fun for either of us (but mostly for him).

Here are some pictures from the day after the wreck, right before we came home from the hospital.

He pretty much hurt every body part in some way (except his head, thank the Lord), but some were a lot worse than others. The final verdict on all his injuries: one broken pinky toe, one broken finger, a couple of fractures in his T8 and T9 vertebrae, and some pretty incredible road rash on both arms, both legs, both hands, his belly and his back. He's also pretty convinced he broke a rib but it didn't show up on the X-rays so we'll just always have to wonder about that one I guess.

The first several days home were pretty rough...just a lot of learning curves and dealing with this (thankfully temporary) way of life. He slept on the couch sitting up for almost two weeks (first night in bed was last night!) and hasn't gotten much sleep since the accident because of the drugs he's on. We change his dressings and bandages every day (a home health nurse comes every other day and I do the rest), and that whole process has become so much easier and quicker since those first couple days.

The biggest thing about this whole situation, though, has been the way it's shaped and strengthened our relationship. Taking care of your spouse and helping him or her do basic, everyday things forces you to either learn how to communicate better with grace and understanding or spend all your time fighting and resenting each other. Brushing someone else's teeth is hard (too much pressure? not enough pressure? angled the right way?). Driving down the road and suddenly having to be aware of every manhole cover and bump in the road (especially when you apparently never noticed those things before) so you don't cause your spouse pain is hard and stressful. Changing your spouse's bandages and literally pulling his or her skin off, causing them extreme pain, is really hard. But having to do all these things - and many more less fun things - together over the last couple of weeks has been incredible for our ability to communicate with each other. It's been incredible for our ability to love each other. 

Tomorrow will be two weeks since the accident, and his physical improvements are pretty awesome. His road rash is healing really well (with the exception of one leg, which just doesn't seem to want to heal yet) and is much less painful. With the pain of the burns decreasing dramatically, his body is now unfortunately more aware of other pains in his body (his back and his rib, mostly), but in time that will go away too. Here are some updated photos, taken yesterday when we were changing his bandages.

 

It's been a long couple weeks, and it won't be 100% behind us for a while I'm sure, but when we think about the nature of the accident and what his injuries could have been, we can't help but feel anything other than extremely blessed. Blessed by the Lord for how much He protected us during that accident, and blessed by so many friends and family members who have reached out to us and helped us in the most beautiful ways over the last couple of weeks. We couldn't be more thankful for all of you.