Watch the stairs….
For those of you who don’t know, I have been married for almost 15 years. My wife is a lovely woman, dedicated to family and home. She home schools our children and keeps the house running smooth.
However, she is not physically graceful, part of this is the Lupus and part of it is just genetic robbery. Another import factor in this little story is that we have two dogs. Max who weighs 115 pounds (he is also food obsessed) and Hunter who is 85 pounds (of pure energy). We also have two cats, Taz and Kokomo. Because of Max’s food obsession, we have gated off the basement so that the cats and the cat food have a safe refuge.
My wife has fallen down stairs many times over the years she has fallen in the driveway and she has even fallen walking across the grass. In anticipation of her having troubles with the gate, I moved the gate as far down the stairs as possible. It is just three stairs up from the bottom.
I am sure you see this coming but, she was carrying something down the stairs; thought the gate was open and whoop over the gate she went. The only thing there to break her fall was standard carpeting and pad.
After a call to 911 the ambulance shows up and they strap her to a back board. To tell you how often they are at my house, one of the ambulance people commented on how big my daughter is getting (he knew her by name). Seven hours a CAT scan and MRI later. It is found that my wife did some serious damage to her neck and she needed a spinal fusion.
With the help and support of my family I managed to stay almost all 5 days at the hospital with her, she was in quite a bit of pain and very scared. There was a chance that she would be paralyzed from this, but thank god that did not happen.
You see, I was not home when this happened (I was with my son at football practice) but a friend of mine was there. He kept my wife from moving because of the “unnatural body position” she was in. He called my brother whose wife rushed to the ER to be there with her until I arrived. My brother drove to the football field to get me. My wife’s mom flew back from Hong-Kong to help take care of the house. My mom came over to take care of the kids and keep up their home-schooling. The home school group delivered meals to the house so we did not have to worry about any of the trivial things. We have a constant stream of family and friends coming over to make sure everything was running smoothly and went as well as possible for my wife.
My wife is home now and recovering well, there are a lot of concerns with her Lupus and the healing time. I cannot tell you how important it is to have family and good friends close by to help with these things. This would not have been possible if my family and friends were not close by.
So, when you hear those weird statistics about injuries in the home now you know one of those statistics.
November 4th, 2006 at 2:42 am
What fun I had home-schooling the B&B–although they did tell Dad and Mom that Mom was not as tough as Nana……….
Also, we thank God that things went well with the surgery. The hard part for her now is the soft tissue healing, The bones heal quickly but soft tissue can take up to a year.
I always so feel so blessed each time we can help with the B&B. We treasure all the precious moment we spend with the family. M&S are a special couple and they are great parents.