2024

Emergency!

My brother fell on New Years Day, and he was injured.
 
At three o’clock in the afternoon my sister Brenda received a phone call from our brother David.  Brenda is sitting across from me on the couch with her husband.  I didn’t think much of it, he would call or text either of us since my sister and her husband had been staying with me for the past week.  It was Brenda and Tom’s fiftieth wedding anniversary this past December 22nd which just happens to be my birthday and the winter solstice, and they had a small party at my house to celebrate.

So, David called, after listening for a moment, Brenda looks at me and says David fell, he wants us to take him to the emergency room.  And the memories come flashing back…

It’s August 2020, David is living with Dad at his house a few blocks from mine.  I had bought a house close by Dad, who was 93, so I could spend more time with him and help him as needed.  It’s midnight, I had gone to bed but wasn’t asleep when the phone rings, its David. “Dad fell, you, need to get over here.”

David now lives in Dad’s house which became David’s after Dad died and whenever something is needed, or some house crisis happens, David calls me which I immediately rush over to his place.  Like the time there was smoke coming out from under the sink… but that is another story. 

After hanging up the phone, Brenda tells me more, “He was getting moss out of a tree in the neighborhood when he fell off the ladder, hurt his back and thinks he should go to the emergency room.”  Getting moss out of a tree? You may ask… well that is another story.

Brenda gets into the car with me, and we drive over to David’s while her husband Tom drives their car over.  We pull into the driveway where David’s car sits halfway into the garage with the back hatch open and the ladder halfway sticking out. While Brenda is getting out of the car, I take the time to take the ladder out of David’s car, put it on the driveway, and close the hatch then Brenda and I proceed into the house though the garage door where we find David sitting in his favorite lounge chair, the one Dad used to sit in. Across from him was Mom’s chair, now vacant, except for the memories it contains. 

Well at least he’s not lying on the floor, I think as we rush over to him and ask him a barrage of questions. “What happened? Are you hurt? Where does it hurt? Can you move?” David answers each in turn, he was hurting and thought he should go to the emergency room.  Wow! I thought, and I’m sure Brenda did so too, he must be hurting if he thinks he should go to the emergency room.  David has a strong aversion to doctors and has always avoided them at some time precarious costs. Like the time he had a spider bite, or when he had a detached retina… but those are other stories.

Brenda and I quickly decide David must go to the emergency room and figure out the logistics of getting him up out of the chair and into the car with the least amount of pain. With Brenda under one arm. and I under the other, we manage to get him out of the chair with only minimal pain, and then mostly carrying him, stopping every ten feet, we manage to get David to the car and into the seat.  He took it pretty well, but I could see he was hurting when I looked at him. 

The emergency room is only five minute from Dad’s, errrr… I mean David’s house, so we quickly arrive and pull under the covered entrance, and I jump out of the car and say I’ll get a wheelchair.  And the memories come flashing back…

Dad's Broken Wrist

Dad calls and tells me he needs to go the emergency room. I ask why and he tells me he fell and hurt is wrist.  I get into the car and rush over to Dad’s and tells me how he fell and hurt is wrist and it was hurting really bad.  Dad tolerated a lot of pain and only complained if it was really bad and bad enough for him to ask to go to the emergency room, well it must have been bad.  Dad, able enough, walks out and gets into the car and I dive him to the emergency room some five minutes from his house.  We pull up outside, I get out, he gets out and we go inside.

I rush up to the doors which magically slide open like some scene of sickbay on Star Trek. There are several wheelchairs in the foyer, stacked like shopping carts at the grocery store. I grab the handles and pull but it doesn’t move.  I pull harder, shake it from side to side, they are stuck together.  Fucking A, I think as I look out the door and see Brenda has the car door open and is getting David to swing his legs out the door.  I take a pause, take a look, it must have some type of wheel lock, I think after my experience with Mom’s wheelchair.  That is another story…

Of course, squeeze the bar at the handles releases the wheel, I pull out the wheelchair and rush it over to the car where Brenda and I manage to get David into it with only a grimace on his face and we wheel him inside to find there is no front desk.  There is some sitting in the room behind a darkened glass window and a security guard sitting in the corner.   And the memories come flashing back…

I follow Dad into the emergency room and he walks up to the receptionist who quickly asks what is wrong and what he needs.  Dad explains he fell and hurt his wrist.  She asks if he had been there before and explains he had and gives her his information and she quickly finds him on the computer.  Seem David had taken him there before.

Now there is no receptionist, a cost-saving measure I’m sure. A young couple is standing at a kiosk with a computer screen that has a sign above it saying, “Check in Here” with an arrow point down.  Ok, we will just have to wait.   The guard gets up and says there is another kiosk around the corner and he’ll show us and we follow him to find another kiosk.  We wheel David up to the kiosk and he stares at the screen. Option A press this, Option B press that… Brenda and I are reading the screen trying to decide the proper press when the guard recognizes our dilemma and asks a couple of questions and tells David which button to press and David is soon checked in and we have a seat for the next phase, waiting to be called in.

Surprisingly, a nurse comes out within ten minutes and calls David’s name, Brenda, and I both say “Here” as David doesn’t have his hearing aids in. The nurse comes over and says only one of us can go back with him. Brenda ask do you want to go or should I. I respond, “You can go.”, and the nurse wheels David though the open doors with Brenda following.  I watch as they pass through the open doors and stop just inside the doors where the nurse pauses at a scale and asks David, “I don’t suppose you can get up and stand on the scales?”  He says no, and as the doors are closing, I hear the nurse ask his weight and height.  And the memories come flashing back…

By the time Dad finishes the signing in a nurse comes out and tells Dad to come with her and I follow them back through the doors into the emergency room where we pause at a scale just inside the door. The nurse asks Dad to stand on the scale, which using a ruler in front of scale, she records Dad’s weight and height on her computer pad. I thought Dad was taller, he seem has shrunken with age.

No, I did not want to go back with him.  Yes, I wanted to go back with him. My feelings ran amuck, with thoughts of the worst, would he be OK, would he be paralyzed, would he walk again.  I felt guilty not going back with him but rationalized that Brenda was more suited to comfort him, after all she did admirably so with Mom her last few years, Brenda is a preacher’s wife had comforted many in their time of need. Yes, it was best Brenda went. Brenda is a saint.

I sat in an uncomfortable lobby chair waiting, I knew what came next, the waiting.  Just because David was taken into the back doesn’t mean the doctor will see him anytime soon.  From those times of taking Dad to the emergency room I know it can take an hour or more before the doctor examines him. By the time they do Xrays, have a specialist look at them and then the doctor comes back it could be several hours.  I settle into the chair, if you can call slouching down with my elbow on the arm of the chair to prop up my head settling, I pull down my hat over my eyes and try to get a few moments of rest.

After a few minutes the security guard comes over and asks about the name Mixson, telling me that he had known some Mixson’s when he lived in Micanopy.  I told him our family is from Micanopy and had been there for many years. We talk for a few minutes and he mentions other people’s names from the Micanopy area, several of them I know, some are distant cousins. Before going back to his post, he says he hoped my brother was okay.  He seemed to genuinely care.

Slouching in the uncomfortable chair, inevitably one part or another of me starts to become numb, so every ten minutes or so I shift in the chair to yet another position which is no less uncomfortable. I look at my phone, its been forty five minutes, then the couple sitting in what looks like a more comfortable two person sofa chair leave and I quickly claim it as my own.  Definitely more comfortable I think as I again pull my hat down over my eyes and settle in.

If you ever watch the TV show ER you know that emergency rooms can be an interesting place in a tragic sort of way.  With all sorts of people, couples, whole families, passing through with some crisis.  As I’m sitting I hear the siren of an ambulance outside and a minute later an EMT comes rushing in followed by a young man in carrying an infant and his wife in tears crying in grief. The EMT opens the door with her badge and they all go rushing into the back.  I really hoped the baby was ok.  

An hour later Brenda calls me and gives me an update; they did a cat-scan which the orthopedic doctor examined and ordered another one and with iodine to injected into David which enhances the results.  Oh, and the first one was not good because David forgot to take off his watch.   

Another hour Brenda comes out and tells me what’s going on. David had slightly fractured three of his lower vertebrae and perhaps something in the hip joint and might need surgery.  Also, much of his right side including his arm was bruised from where he fell on it.  They were going to transfer him to the hospital but weren’t sure when it would happen as there needed to be a room available.  They only allow one visitor at a time, so Brenda stayed in the lobby, and I went back to see David.  He was in pretty good spirits but was worried about going on some of his adventures he had planned for the next few weeks.  I talk about it with him and then sat with him for a while until tells me that he will be ok and for Brenda and me to go home.  As I leave the room he asks me to turn off the light and he was settling in when I closed the door.  And the memories come flashing back…

It’s four thirty in the morning, I had brought Dad to the emergency room around six and been with him ever since, most of the time waiting for one thing or another, doctor, nurse, x-rays, tests. With all that done they thought Dad should be transferred to the hospital but are waiting for a room and thought it would be the next day.  Dad was half asleep so I told him I was going home to get some rest and would check on him in the morning.  I turn off the lights as I leave the room.

He will be ok this time, after a few weeks of recovery he will be fine.  But what of the next time, or the following time when he would not be OK? Who will look after me if it is me who falls?

What a way to begin a new year!

more comming..