A year ago today I had just brought Kris home from the hospital after he had been through a major surgery for his shoulder and collarbone.
Why you ask? Well, let me tell you the story.
On the late afternoon of May 23rd Kris headed out the door for a bike ride. For any of you that don't already know, Kris rides bicycles a lot. He was on a racing team at the dental school with some friends and went/goes on a lot of rides alone and with friends, whatever works. He usually rides a long ways when he goes, at least 10 miles but usually more.
Anyway, this night he was going riding with a couple of guys from the cycling team. He left from our house.
I wasn't feeling that good that day, and so I was resting and getting Max ready for bed when suddenly my cell phone rang. Usually I don't answer my phone if I don't recognize the number. I'm a big proponent of call screening. Anyway, my phone rang with some weird kansas number, and against my instincts I picked up. It was a stranger who immediately told me that she had found my husband lying in the road. He'd had an accident evidently and had hurt his arm or shoulder. She put him on the line, and he talked to me and told me he needed me to come and pick him up (obviously!). My stomach dropped down to my shoes. This is like one of my nightmares! I immediately grabbed Max, strapped him into the car and took off. The unfortunate thing is that Kris had ridden miles and miles before this accident. It took me about 30 minutes to get outside the city to where he was. By the time I got close I was so nervous. I pulled up to the side of the road, and there he was, holding his arm. He was with the guys he originally left with--however, turns out that they had ridden far ahead of him and weren't there when he had his accident (which I'm still mad about).
The rumor is that he was riding along a kind of narrow country road and came upon a really cruddy one lane wooden bridge. There his front wheel must've slipped into a rut or somehow gotten stuck, and he went over the handlebars and fell on his head and shoulder. (He doesn't remember any of this--this is mostly just what the lady that called me said. Evidently she saw most of what happened)
Here's a picture of the infamous bridge. You can't see much, but maybe it'll give you an idea of what it was like. When you drive up on that thing, there's a big chunk sound. It's not well put together at all.
I loaded Kris into the car to take him home. Once I got him in there I realized something funny was going on. He had told me that his shoulder hurt and that he thought he probably had broken his collarbone as I was getting him into the car. As soon as I got myself into the car and closed the door he told me the same thing again. Then he told me again a minute later. He kept asking me about what had happened and where he was. He asked over and over again if his bike was ok. It was about the scariest thing that's ever happened to me. I started to cry. That didn't help. All that did was make him ask me over and over if I was ok!
I realized this was more than just a shoulder injury and figured there was something really wrong and that we should head to a hospital right away. Unfortunately we were in a part of town I was completely unfamiliar with. So I called up Kelly (Kris's brother that lives in Kansas City). Luckily he answered right away. He went online, found the nearest hospital and gave me directions. He also said he would head to the hospital right away to pick up Max and take him home. So nice to have family around.
We got to the emergency room, Kelly came to pick up Max and Kris kept repeating himself. Over and over. It was so freaky.
The doctors took a look at him, took some x-rays and did an MRI. They seemed to think his repetitions were kind of funny, which I didn't appreciate. Finally they told me he had a concussion and a broken collarbone. They told me he should probably get his short term memory back soon, but it could take as long as a couple of weeks. Well that was great to hear he was going to be ok, but I wanted him to have his brain back NOW! Turned out later when we looked at his helmet that he had cracked it straight through. I'm so glad he was wearing that helmet or else he might not be around right now.
They gave us the name of an orthopedic surgery place we needed to go to in the morning and sent us on our way. It was the middle of the night by the time we got home. Kris had started to normalize a little by that time so I was feeling a little better.
Here's a picture of his shoulder from that night. Doesn't it look weird?
You can tell that something's wrong there, can't you?
We headed off to the surgeon the next morning, where max threw fits the whole time, and we waited for ages. They finally told us that his collarbone was so badly broken that it was poking up through his shoulder muscle. It had to be operated on.
Here is the shoulder the day after the accident, but the day before the surgery.
Ouch, right? What a crazy bruise. They tried to set his shoulder in the dr.'s office before they realized it was so badly broken and he almost passed out. Poor guy.
Here's one of the x-rays. Can you see the bone?
My friend Vicky watched Max all day so I could take Kris to the surgery. It took a lot longer than I expected and made me nervous, but he came out just fine. In a LOT of pain, but fine.
Here he is the day after surgery I think. Ouch again.
I thought I was going to be ok dealing with everything until I got Kris home from the hospital and realized that he was SO out of it and so in pain that I had to watch him every second. I called my mom and begged her to come. She flew out the next day. Aren't moms great? She helped me take care of Max and covered for me with a lot of other stuff too. I wouldn't have survived without her help.
Kris started to feel better after a few days of almost constant sleep. A care package from his mom certainly didn't hurt.
Max got jealous and told us he wanted a "collerbone" too, so Kris hooked him up with one. He felt pretty cool.
Cute huh?
Kris was supposed to be in Utah about a week after the accident for an externship with the U's pediatric dentistry program. He manned up and decided to go in spite of everything. I drove us out there and he went ahead and did the externship without really having to tell anybody about the injury. He healed really pretty fast luckily. He made a connection with one of the residents at the U which eventually led him to the interview for the RI program we're in right now. It's lucky things worked out the way they did.
And here he is close to a month after the accident. Looks pretty normal, huh?
Thank goodness he's a strong young guy. All he has to show for the accident is a titanium plate in his shoulder with a whole bunch of little screws you can feel through his skin. Yeah, it's weird, but ok. We can deal with it.
Just thought I'd share for those that didn't know the story! I was thinking about it this week as the year anniversary went by. Thanks for listening. :)
***addendum
Kris just found this xray for me. It shows the before and after and is very scary looking. He also corrected me and said that he usually goes out for at least 20 mile rides, but usually more.
Whew. Telling that story wore me out!!
