Wednesday, August 01, 2012

Things can change in a matter of minutes....

Yesterday was just a normal day or so I thought. The kids had asked if we could have a picnic at the park and I agreed. I should mention that we call this park "concrete park". It has no grass whatsoever but it has a huge wide open space for my kids to ride their bikes with no fear of any cars hitting them. I called my friend Shannon and asked if she would like to join us with her kids at the park. She said sure! So off we headed. After the kids had eaten their lunch they went off to play. A friend that was walking through the park stopped to talk to me and Shannon. I had my back to the kids when all of a sudden I heard Zeb scream. It wasn't really his normal I just fell down and have a scratch scream. It was a different kind of scream. When I turned around he was lying on the ground holding his leg. I tried to get him up but he said that his knee was hurting and he couldn't move. I then realized that he had hurt himself badly. My first guess was that he had dislocated his knee cap. I immediately called John and told him that he needed to come right away to the park to pick us up. Zeb had fallen and something was really wrong. I asked Zeb what happened and he said that he and Laura Cate ( Shannon's daughter) were spinning around and he just fell. That is all I had to go by. I was so thankful that Shannon was there because she was able to take the girls home with her so I could go to the doctor with Zeb. We are blessed to have a Global Doctor in our city so we went straight there. Of course we didn't want to move Zeb so we carried him like a baby on his side which seemed to be the most comfortable to him. I will never forget John's face when I was looking through the window in the x-ray room as I held Zeb down. John was on the other side with the doctor looking at the x-ray. John just looked at me and said it isn't good, it's really bad. The doctor proceeded to tell us that Zeb had a spiral fracture of his femur. That he would most likely need surgery and we needed to get him evacuated to either Hong Kong or Thailand. So we got on the phone with our emergency medical health care and they started the process of figuring out how to evacuate us. In the mean time the doctors put a splint on Zeb's leg to try and hold it in place. It was very painful for me to watch Zeb go through this. I desperately wanted to help him feel better and I was helpless.

We found out that they could not evacuate Zeb until the next day. Since he would need to be lying down in a stretcher they either needed to get us a private plane or a commercial flight that was equipped to hold a stretcher. That meant I would need to spend the night in a local hospital with Zeb until the next day when they could pick him up. Although, his circulation seemed fine at the moment, it needed to be monitored. If his bone were to shift and cut off circulation to his toes it could get serious so we needed to be in a hospital. In someways last night was the longest night of my life. In the local hospital Zeb and I were sharing a room with 3 other men. When I asked for pain killers for Zeb they brought me infant's Motrin. Not even children's Motrin! I was very frustrated because I felt like I could manage his pain much easier at home but I needed to stay there because of the circulation issue. He would try and move in his sleep and wake up in serious pain because it hurt so bad. I was just there holding him and trying to calm him down. I have never been more glad to see those SOS doctors walk in this afternoon. They were able to get him on a commercial flight to Hong Kong. I decided to stay with the girls and John went with Zeb to Hong Kong. They are on their way now and will probably not get to the hospital until late into the night. I hope to get a call from John tomorrow morning after he talks with the doctor to find out what they will do for Zeb's leg. I am assuming at this point surgery. Below are some pictures of him in the ambulance and getting on the airplane.

In the local hospital.
On the stretcher getting ready to get in the abulance to go to the airport.
 

 

 

 

 

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