Last Friday, Andrew and I decided to take Mia to her first circus since he got free tickets from work. So after about an hour of extra work at my place of business I swang by home to pick up my lovely husband and baby. We were running just a bit late for the 7:30p circus, but we weren't in a huge rush so we were taking the non-main highway to the coliseum. Well, about a mile before we got there, I heard Andrew say "uh oh"... which was immediately followed by a huge CRASHING sound. The next thing I knew I was half conscious, in a very broken car, in the ditch, hearing Andrew make a strange "I can't breathe" gasping noise and Mia crying her head off. I think Andrew asked me if I could get out of the car... at which point I pushed on my door only to find it was getting stuck in grass and mud and felt very very heavy. I somehow managed to get out and get to the other side of the car to sit in the ditch (though I have no recollection of how that happened). The next thing I know, I was sitting in the ditch with Andrew about 5 feet away and a nurse who just happened to be an eye-witness carrying Mia back and forth behind me trying to calm her down. Andrew and I were both spitting glass out of our mouths at that point. It seemed we had cracked a few windows.
I kept asking Andrew if he was okay... and he would say yes, but he was really quiet and not very responsive. It seemed to me that the ambulances were there almost the second it happened because soon there was an EMS worker asking me if I had any medical conditions. It seems like it took my brain forever to remember that I was 12 weeks pregnant. They were asking me if I remembered the crash... which I only vaguely did, so the decided I had retrograde amnesia. An EMS worker told me that my husband was refusing transport in the ambulance, but a few seconds later he changed his mind because I guess the nurse on the scene had told Andrew that he had so much adrenaline he probably couldn't feel the pain so he should go. Everytime someone new came to check on me, I kept asking them if they had found my glasses yet. After about 5 people had scrounged around in the car, they came to the conclusion that my glasses were long gone. But good news was that they found Andrew's! They also brought me Andrew's cell phone, which upon opening I discovered looked a bit like a Picasso painting.
Then both Andrew and I were put into neck braces and placed on gurneys to be hauled by ambulance to St. Francis. They put Mia in the same ambulance in her car seat where she continued to scream her head off as Andrew and I attempted to sing lullabies to calm her down. The EMS workers in the ambulance were so nice. They kept assuring us that the fact that Mia was crying was a really good thing and that we were both responsive was also very good. Once we got to the hospital they put me in a separate trauma room from my hubby and baby because they knew the would do x-rays on them and didn't want my pregnant self near the radiation.
The next hour or so was a bit of blur. I could hear Mia crying across the hall and the doctors and nurses were poking and prodding at me. They kept asking me what day it was and where I was. I knew those answers though it may have taken me a bit longer than usual to answer. They sono'd me and discovered that U2 was flipping around, so I was very thankful for that. Finally they asked if I needed to call anyone, at which point I said I really wanted to call my parents. The sweet nurse who called mom pretty much freaked her totally out and she had to hand the phone off to my dad. It was about 9pm when I talked to Dad and he said they were on their way down. Over the next hour, they finally wheeled my bed into Andrew & Mia's room where I attempted to nurse my baby girl and thank God that my husband was okay. Marianna arrived to help with the baby. And we called EGD to see if she could bring her old car seat up to us since we couldn't use Mia's since it had been in a wreck. The hospital staff informed us that they would release Andrew and Mia but keep me for observation since I was pregnant and possibly had some retrograde amnesia.
We finally got up to the floor where my room was about 10:30p. Andrew's grandparents and EGD were up there waiting for us. My parents arrived shortly after that with tears in their eyes that we all really were "okay."
I spent the night in the hospital with my mom sleeping in the recliner at the end of the bed while Dad went home with Andrew and Mia to help them out; I didn't sleep much that night as the nurses were in and out checking my pupils and asking me questions about who and where I was. They released me from the hospital Saturday afternoon and though I was unbelievably sore... at I felt so happy to go home.
As for our injuries: Mia came across with the least. She has a few little abrasions and bruises leftover from the car seat straps. Andrew has a very sore abdomen where either his belt, his seat belt, or his air bag jabbed into him. He has bruises on both arms, both knees, his back and a pretty ugly looking bruise on his left pinky toe and foot. I took the brundt of the injuries. I have a fairly sizeable wound on my head above my left eye (just found another shard of glass stuck in my head today when I was messing with the scab), a bruise above my right ear, and a bruise on the back of my head. I have two massive bruises on my right arm. A bruise on each knee. A fairly sizeable abrasion from where my seat belt was on my shoulder and neck. Lots of scractches on my arms and some pretty serious back pain. I also have a yellowish bruise across my lower abdomen where my seat belt hit. On top of that there are random little scratches and bruises all over the place. My body looks like a battlefield.
The aftermath: We found out when we got the accident report yesterday that the SUV that hit us ran a stop sign. We didn't have a stop sign. Both witness accounts said it looked like our car was going to flip but we ended up not flipping. The SUV flipped 2 or 3 times. There was a middle aged couple and 2 little boys in the SUV and as far as we know they got checked out at the hospital and were okay... though we haven't made official contact with them at this point. Yesterday (Monday) I thought my muscles were feeling a lot better, but I must have done a bit too much, because about noon I began having a back pain so bad it knocked the wind out of me. We AGAIN had to call EMS and I AGAIN found my self in ER for about 2 hours. They ended up deciding it was worth the risk to the baby to x-ray my back, and they found no fractures. So they just sent me home with instructions that I should use ice and if need be I could take slightly more tylenol than I was taking.
Andrew, my sweet candidate-for sainthood husband, is now playing mommy, daddy and nurse around the house even in the midst of his pain from the accident, but he's doing it with great spirits. I'm having a hard time humbling myself enough to realize that I actually need help with everything right now... including getting up and down from a chair and getting around the apartment, but God is good and I'm trying to keep my spirits up because the accident could have been so much worse.
Here is a picture of our car just so you see what we went through. Sorry for the long post, I just figured this would be a good log of how this weekend went down in a couple years when the memory begins to fade...
