I want to start off by saying that everything is fine with us. I would like to send our prayers and thoughts to all of those people who suffered any loss in the recent hurricane Sandy. I feel so bad for those folks, and I hope that we can get the power, food, clean up, and all other forms of help to them QUICKLY!
We had a scare on Friday night! Katy and I were invited to a wine tasting by Hospitality Homes (who found the apartment for us-Great people!), and we were heading down to the event, which happened to be about 2 blocks from Brigham Women’s Hospital. Have you ever had one of those days where you should have listened to your self, but didn’t? I should have listened to myself last Friday! I kept saying that we were going to take a cab so that we wouldn’t have to deal with parking, etc, but, at the last minute, we decided that parking was cheaper than a cab (trying to be frugal). So Katy and I circle the block a few times, and finally find parking about 3 blocks from the hotel where the event was. The nice people at HH were really nice to invite us to this event, and we were looking forward to a nice dinner and wine with these wonderfully generous people, so we made our way down the street. At the corner across from the building, we discussed going down the block on our side and crossing, but decided not to because the cross walk sign had just changed in our favor. We crossed the street, a full 150 feet from the door we were going to, and all of a sudden Katy flies out of her chair, and lands face first on the concrete! She was howling almost immediately, and I was horrified! It turns out that the ramp to the sidewalk from the street had a split in it that was covered by leaves and it grabbed the wheelchair wheel causing a dead stop. This is such a freak thing considering how many miles Katy and I walk with her chair, and in MANY, MANY areas with bad streets or cracks, and we have never had this happen.
I rolled Katy the few blocks to BWH because she was in terrible pain, and took her to the ER. She was hurting, my mind was racing, it was horrible. We got her admitted in the ER at BWH, got her x-rayed, and, very gratefully, nothing was broken! For the hour or so it took to get the x-rays, and then the hour or so to get the results, we were so nervous. The nerves didn’t help Katy’s pain level, but the doctors finally got her pain under control. After several hours, we all decided that it would be best for Katy to stay the night so that they could manage pain and so that I wouldn’t have to transfer her 5-6 times. I went home to a sleepless night, and returned the next morning to find her “ready to go.” She was still in HORRIBLE pain, and couldn’t move her arms hardly at all, but was cleared to go. The staff was very nice (MUCH better than some of our previous experiences with hospital staff), and answered all of our questions, gave good care, and seemed genuinely concerned.
Since then, we have remained around the apartment, letting Katy rest, and she is improving. She is still sore, but I think she will be moving almost fully by Monday or Tuesday. Katy says it was a perfect storm because she usually positions herself in her chair differently (making it harder to fall out if we hit a bump), I didn’ listen to myself about taking cab, and we both talked about going down the block, but didn’t. What a comedy of errors! I am just SO thankful that it didn’t do too much damage! Katy, of course, hates, hates, hates not being to move as much as usual, but I try to make it up to her by making her wonderful breakfast, lunch, and dinner….:-)
I hope that this post finds all of you well, and that you all have a FANTASTIC rest of the weekend!
Love,
Al
