Wednesday, July 25, 2012

"The Phone Call" or "The Scariest Day of My Life!"


July 25, 2012 will go down as the scariest day of my life…SO far.  I am sure there will be many more, after all, I only JUST became a mother, but I suppose it was probably the scariest I have had to date, pushing into Second Place that time in Puerto Rico when before my eyes a killer hurricane-inspired wave almost knocked my husband and my father into the ocean to be beaten against the aggressively sharp rocks we were ignorantly standing out on the edge of.  In retrospect, had I not received “The Phone Call” from my husband himself, I would have spiraled into a frenzy that day that would have seriously changed the course of events, I’m sure. 

It was basically like any other Wednesday, home with a toddler, just trying to survive.  She was napping, it was around 2:30 and I received a call from my husband.  There was a heightened tone to his voice, but he was fairly calm, and even though it was serious, it was reassuring I could hear he was okay.  He said he was in an accident and a 30 foot rebar wall he was attaching into place had fallen with him on it and it had landed on him.  He said he was okay, but he was hurt pretty bad and that they were calling an ambulance for him.  I told him to let me know what was going on and call me as soon as was possible.  I then hung up the phone to sit and worry with vomit ready to spew out of my face. 

I felt nauseous.  I couldn’t believe it, or was in a state of shock or something?   I had heard his voice, I talked to him myself, he was okay, but there was still an incredibly possibility that he had internal bleeding from the fall, or had something broken that he was not aware of because of the adrenaline, or his head injuries were worse than he thought.  This is what rattled through my head while I sat and waited. 

I was in the middle of paying bills but I stopped.  I let Celie sleep and with my mind going I started text family and friends.  My friends Hilary and Dave came to sit with me and hang out while I waited.  Meanwhile, I had received a reassuring call from a man my husband works with.  After that, however, I got a call from the hospital and it was a stranger and they gave me the whole “are you Mrs. Hoover…” blab la shpeal.   My head dropped.  “Why is a stranger calling me?!!”  Finally the man on the other end of the line got out the information he meant to convey to me.  He was one of EMTs on the Life Flight and had a conversation with Joey; my husband had given him my name and number and asked him to call me and let me know he had arrived at the hospital.  Phew!  Good news, because if he is having conversations with people he must be pretty aware and not out of it, thus the head injury must be superficial (lack of better word). 

This was the last call I got, so then I was just waiting for them to run all their tests at the hospital.  I was waiting for the call to tell me that my husband didn’t have a serious head injury or internal bleeding.  Finally he called me from his cell phone and I got to talk to him.  He was obviously medicated at this point, given the sound of his voice.  He amazingly had no broken bones other than two of his transverse process, which they determined later was only one place.  After a CATscan and tons of X-rays they determined he was the luckiest man ever. 

Joey fell approximately thirty feet with a rebar wall weighing approximately 900 pounds.  He rode it down to the ground and at the end it almost whipped his body to the ground, he said.  It ended up on him; two workers had to lift it off.  His new hard hat that he had just purchased was thrown from his head.  SO THANKFUL that we had just paid 85 bucks for it!  The wall actually fell onto another rebar mat, also.  The size 6 bars that it was made out of were tied on approximate 6 inch centers.  Had they been farther apart, he could have had serious lacerations.  The mat also gave a little, as it sat just above the concrete below, so he didn’t land directly onto the concrete the surrounds them.  He also was tied off with a standard harness and not a retractable one, which would have pulled back and snapped him into the wall, possibly injuring him worse.  He said for a split second he thought about unhooking his harness and jumping from the wall, but then he saw the rebar dowels below and fearing probable impalement he decided to hang on and ride the wall down.  CRAZY!

My husband is now resting on our recliner chair, where he has also been sleeping for the past week because he can’t get into bed.  He is still in a bit of pain moving certain ways, but he is doing well and recovering quickly, although it is unclear how long it will be before he is cleared for work.  We are enjoying the time together while he is home.  It’s horrible he had to throw a wall on himself for a vacation, but hey, I’m grateful.  I’m grateful for my amazing man of steel!  He took a nasty hard fall/beating.  He says he feels like he got his ribs kicked in, but I have never been so grateful in my life that he didn’t end up impaled, paralyzed, broken, or dead.  There, I said it; he almost died.  I try to block out how terrifying his line of work is because if I focused on that every day I would be locked up.  But I still have worried about just such a thing in the back of my mind since we got together, only with a worse outcome. 

Worrying doesn’t help anything.  For a completely terrifying close call, everything seemed to go just right.  I got that call that I have ever been worrying about getting, but instead of a stranger on the end of the line it was my husband telling me about his accident.  I am grateful for that.  That is the only thing that saved me from being a complete emotional wreck during this entire ordeal; I heard his voice.  My husband was more concerned about us than he was about himself and knew that I would go insane if I heard about the accident so he called me before anyone else had the chance to.  I am grateful for that phone call and everything that I have.  I love my husband so much, I really don’t know what I would do if anything ever happened to him, but we got close this time, and INCREDIBLY lucky.  Grateful for life and all of my many blessings!  I will inhale deeply every fart that comes out of his wonderful ass!  I love you, Joey Bear.  You’re my peaches, I’m your pear.  <3

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