It was fun till it wasn’t…

We’re home! Yes, you read that right. This is a long post so hold on tight. And here we go! We left Omaha about 8:30 Sunday morning and had a beautiful drive to Custer, South Dakota, not far from Mt. Rushmore. We had reservations at Fort Welikeit, about a mile outside of town. It's a beautiful campground that we have stayed in before. We started setting up the trailer. Dennis backed it in perfectly the first try. No back and forth involved. Score! I began the inside set up and my Hubby started outside. Then I hurried to make dinner because it was 6:00 and we hadn't eaten since about 10:00 am. Next thing I knew I heard a strange sound outside and stuck my head out the door and asked if he was alright. I heard a weak, "no". Uh-oh! 

But first, this is what we saw as we drove into the Black Hills around 5:00. Isn't it beautiful?

Before the Uh-oh....

The scene of the crime and a warning. If you have a queasy stomach at all...STOP reading. I'll write again later. Just don't look at the following photos. Okay? Here we go. Deep breath. (But really, we're mostly all Mom's and Grandma's on here and we've seen this kind of thing before.)

He came around the corner with his hand over his face and blood dripping down. Aren't those eyebrows craziness? I had just trimmed them about two weeks ago. Since this photo, they've received another trim! This photo is the proof that he ended up with 6 stitches total. One on the top right and 5 above his eye. Please ignore the fact that he hadn't shaved. We were supposed to be on vacation and he only shaves about every 3 days when on vacation! :-) It's his gift to himself.

And then there was his hand. Looks like a vampire bite with an extra hole for good measure! I sent these two photos to Mandy and asked her advice since she's our family medical professional. As an RN, her order was to go to the ER immediately.  Well, dinner was ready and he wasn't going anywhere until he ate. Remember that I said we were hungry. So I cut up his pork chop for him since he couldn't use his right hand at all. Then off to the Hospital we went. Would you believe that there was a hospital less than a mile away? I drove the beast of a truck there, even parked it between the lines and he went in. When they asked him what happened he said, "I fell down and went boom!" Seriously, he did. He never lost his sense of humor.  Actually what happened is that he stepped backwards off of the back of the tailgate of the truck. It's an F350 which is really, really tall. At 67 he doesn't bounce like he did at 5 years old. At least that's what he told the nurse.

A CT scan showed nothing seriously wrong in his head and that he really DOES have a brain. The ER doctor put a cast on his hand to hold it immobile after she saw the xrays and stitched up his head. And then the dreaded words..."You have to go back home for emergency surgery."  Noooooooooo. We only had one day of vacation!

The next two photos show his hand today at the orthopedic surgeons office.  It's a pretty green and blue. 

And guess what? Tomorrow he's having surgery to (hopefully), put an unknown number of pins in that thumb that's broken in several places and probably a few crushed small bones. I say hopefully because the surgeon said that until he gets inside the thumb to see it properly he doesn't know if it will be plates and screws or pins. He wants to do pins because they will come out in about six weeks where the plates and screws would stay in forever. That will be bad in the winters here with the cold. The surgery is expected to last a little over an hour.

Meanwhile, back in Custer, on Monday I got a crash course in hitching up the trailer, dumping tanks and putting all of the hoses, electrical and all outside stuff away and buttoning up everything on the outside. That's usually his job. Monday night I packed up everything in the trailer into the truck so we could just drop the camper at storage when we got back and go right home. The plan was to leave early in the morning Tuesday for the drive home. We were both too exhausted after driving all day Sunday, about 11 hours, the accident, ER visit, waking every two hours to check for concussion, etc., to try to attempt the trip on Monday. We sat around the campsite all day and just relaxed in the beauty of the campground. I also called our primary care doctor for a referral to the surgeon, made an appointment to get the stitches in his head out on Friday and make the appointment for the surgeon today. It was SO quiet. After packing everything up, (with Hubby supervising me), including hitching up the trailer, we went to bed early.

At 1:20 we woke up to the truck alarm going off. We shut it off as quickly as we could and thought, "well that was weird." Ten minutes later it did it again. Then again. It's never done that before. We decided we better scram fast if we didn't want to be shot for waking everyone up over and over at 1:30 am. We were dressed, the slide put in, stabilizers up and on the road in about ten minutes. At 1:45 a.m. After four hours of sleep total in about two nights. Oh joy. And my wonderful husband drove the entire way. With one hand. And in pain. Today he could barely move. His ribs are very painful, he must have hit them in the fall somehow.

We did make it back about 1:00 pm yesterday. Safely, thank the good Lord. The accident could have been so much worse if he had fallen the other direction and hit his head on the tongue of the trailer. Or broken a leg or hip. I wouldn't have been able to get him into the trailer or truck to get him home. God is good and I praise Him for all of His help. Our sweet son-in-law, Brad, volunteered to fly his Dad up to drive home with me in the truck while he would fly Dennis back home to avoid a painful trip. But no, Hubby wanted to prove he could drive his truck himself.

When we got home, while I unpacked everything from the truck, he took both keys to have the batteries changed. The alarm hasn't gone off since then, so it was just a low battery. I told him we need to get them changed every year at the same time to prevent this happening again. This morning when the alarm went off for us to get to his surgeons appointment on time, he thought in his dream that it was the truck alarm going off. Now THAT is the only funny thing to happen in the past several days.

He's 67 and has never had a broken bone before. The ER doctor told him that was a great track record and that she couldn't believe how good of health he's in. It was one of those freak accidents that just happen when you least expect it. 

He tells me that he's so proud of me for everything I've done the past few days. He knows how hard it is with my back. But gosh, it sure makes me appreciate him even more, and everything he does for us everyday. He gets so frustrated that I have to help him with so much. I don't mind. I love that man with all I have. Next to the Lord, he's the most important person in the world to me. 

Well, that's the saga of our first three days of vacation. I'm sorry to say I haven't had time to read any blogs since this happened, but hope I can catch up tomorrow night after the surgery. I'll update you all in a few days. And do you know that Dennis asked the surgeon today if we could still go to Montana and Washington and he immediately said, "Go"! So after his follow-up visit next week, if he's recovering well, we may drive the car to see Jamie and the kids in Montana and stay in hotels along the way instead of camping. Then we'll stay in the Queen Suite at our friends house in Spokane where we were going to camp in thier driveway. You wouldn't believe the set-up they built in their basement for Dennis to stay in when he was traveling back and forth for work when we first moved. We have some wonderful friends.

Well, if you're still with me for this novel, all I can say is thank you for being such patient and sweet friends. I'll be back soon.  Love to you all!

Blessings and love,

Betsy