It’s never good news when the phone rings after 10 pm at night. That’s what happened on Wed. Feb. 4th. Greg answered the phone and I held my breath. It was his sister Linda calling to say that their brother Brian (who just turned 57 last month) fell down in his kitchen and was in the hospital. His wife had gone to bed and was calling to him and when he didn’t come to bed and didn’t answer, she came to check on him. He was lying in a pool of blood. Apparently, he passed out and didn’t even put his arms out to break his fall. He literally did a faceplant. He didn’t break his nose but had 5 skull fractures in his face. They took him to the hospital and he didn’t regain consciousness until like 3 am. He doesn’t remember anything and has a concussion. He spent a week in the hospital, a few days of it in ICU. Then on Wed. Feb. 11th he was discharged and sent to a nursing home! He needs all kinds of physical therapy. Basically relearning a lot of things. After a week there, he’s doing a lot better except for mastering how to eat with a fork. 2 things stuck out to me that I’ll probably never get the answers to: Did his glasses break? (maybe that’s part of how he cut his face) And What time do they go to bed?! The fact that all this took place and they got him to the hospital and alerted the family and it passed around to relatives, all by just after 10 pm?! He’ll be in the nursing home for at least 30 days since that’s what his insurance will cover. Now we say, “Be careful, you don’t want to pull a Brian.”
This is another example of how life can literally change in a matter of seconds. You can be doing fine and have something just terrible happen that can impact your life for months! A woman Greg works with tripped over her own feet in her kitchen and fell and broke her hip and elbow back in Nov. She’s almost 70 (yes, a lot of old people work with my husband. They just won’t ever retire!) and has been off work ever since. She had a hip replacement since the bone just shattered. About a year ago she had fallen in a parking lot while on work time and broke her wrist and was off work for a few months. Then another guy my husband worked with in a different dept. fell out off a ladder last June. He was trimming a tree and in a split second he lost his balance and fell off. He broke his back, legs and at least one arm. He came in after the first of the year to put in his notice that he was retiring. He’d been off since the accident. Plus everybody knows someone who had a horrific car accident that changed their lives.
It really gives a person pause to think of all this. I’m overly careful as it is but can you ever be TOO careful?! Apart from living life in a bubble, there are plenty of things that can and do go wrong. Now I’m going to go back to finish the other post before something dreadful happens! 😉
almostakiss 