Yesterday was a day. A DAY. Luckily we came through it and live to tell the tale.
I left for the grocery store around 9:30 am. Tony went out to work with John, on building the playhouse/storage shed behind our house. Not an hour into it I get a text. “I fell off the ladder. Maybe bruised a rib.” What??!?! Shit! “Yep. I’m going to lay down.” I call him. Seems he was maybe three-four feet up on the ladder when the ladder and him lost balance and fell sideways onto the electric fence. He hit the ladder with his left side. I wasn’t there so I can’t tell you the cuss words/expletives that were uttered but I can imagine. Tells John to unplug the fence so they can pick up the ladder. Comes inside and texts me.
I’m rushing through the grocery store, because I know, I know it’s worse than he said. Ten years ago he slipped on the ice in front of the garage, landed on the same left side and broke four ribs. He was not long back from Haiti and we had an ice storm. I remember clearly. The original x-ray supposedly showed nothing broken but when we followed up with the doctor, they could clearly see four breaks. That took a long time to recover from.
Fast forward to yesterday. I’m checking out at the store and I see I’ve missed a call. I try to call him back, once, twice, THREE times with no answer. I try calling my kid, I try calling John. Nobody is answering. Finally he calls me back after I’ve gotten the groceries in the car and am on the way home at breakneck speed (yes I know it wasn’t life threatening, but I was very worried.) He tells me he tried to get up from the bed and something shifted and now he can’t get up at all. We decide we’d better get to an emergency room.
When I get home I find him kneeling on the floor in the bedroom, I’m like “how on earth did you get down there?” He says Baby Girl helped him but now he can’t get up. I ask if we need an ambulance. He says no. I direct Baby Girl to go start the car, open the door and lean the seat way back. She jumps into action. Y’all, she really steps up to the plate when it’s required. By the time I had gotten back home she had gotten all the blankets off the horses by herself, sans one. (The cranky one she’s slightly nervous of). I ran out to the paddock to take that blanket off and then we slowly inched our way to the car.
For some days now my air pressure sensor for the tires has been showing me that the front left tire has a hole in it. Tony plugged the hole the other day, but with the cold weather it was still losing air. I air up the tire before I leave for the store. BUT, as we are tooling down Frontier Parkway in Prosper the tire sensor starts going crazy. 26 psi, 22, 18, 15, etc. I’m freaking out – what the hell am I supposed to do?! We see the high school and the tire is completely flat by now. I pull in and am crawling along trying to get to an out of the way place while kids in trucks are whizzing past us not giving one iota that we have a flat. I pull to the right, onto some gravel.
Tony cannot help me. He can’t even get out of the car. I grab the Bronco book out of the glove compartment. I manage to get the spare tire out, the jack and the pipe thingie that you use to loosen the bolts.
Tony is out of the car. Barely standing and crying out like a little girl every time he moves. He tells me to go ask one of the kids in a white truck to help us. I go up to the truck and he rolls down the window. “Can you help me change a flat tire?” “I don’t know how” he says and brushes me off. I walk back to the car. He can’t help, I tell Tony. He’s clueless. So Tony, screaming, and myself, grunting, manage to get all the lug nuts loose and the flat tire off. The bell has rung and kids are streaming out of the school and the outside buildings, some are getting in their car and leaving. NOT ONE PERSON stops to help, or even to ask if we need help. Maybe because Tony is there, but surely they can see that he’s completely incapacitated?
Then, and this is the truth y’all, I swear. I am trying to get the spare tire on and the damn jack gives way and the car falls on my arm. Now don’t get any gruesome ideas in your head. After all, I’m obviously still typing. But I was leaning against the car hood and we were on gravel. The gravel made the jack slip out of place and since I was leaning with my right arm basically under the car hood, while trying to get the spare on, the wheel well area of the car fell, scraping my arm severely as it went down. Arm goes numb for a minute, then the pain is shooting up into my shoulder. Tony asks if I’m ok. I’m standing with my eyes closed and gripping my arm. Mmm-hmmm I say. I try to ignore it.
FINALLY an adult male sees us struggling and stops his truck. Can he be of assistance? Oh yes please! He takes a look at the puny little jack we have and goes off to get the auto mechanic students and a big power jack (I don’t know what it’s called?!) The auto mechanic student he brings back with him zips here and there and next thing I know the spare is on and everything back in place. I am so grateful I want to cry. (I don’t of course.)
We finally make it to the hospital. There is more to the story, but it’s not as interesting. To make a long story shorter, we finally got an x-ray which did not show any broken anything, nor any internal bleeding. Tony’s pain says they are lying on the nothing broken bit but we simply ask for the CD and go on our way (hours later of course).
It’s super fun trying to get him in and out of the car but we make it and I dope him up with some tramadol and a muscle relaxer. He’s sleeping in his recliner as he can’t get in and out of the bed.
I kid you not, all this really happened. Exactly how I expected and planned my day yesterday to go.
My arm is ok, just severely bruised.