This is my Mom's SUV after an enormous tree crushed her in it during a flash tornado almost two weeks ago.
This tree actually fell ON her while she was driving and it hit her DIRECTLY in the face and chest. It came in right through the windshield as you can see. What are the odds?? How does anyone survive this?
She said she never saw it coming. I now understand how life is a game of inches...
I'd just seen her two days before for Mother's Day, and was recording a drum session for Steemit when I saw a bunch of missed calls from my brother. I called him back and he said "Mom was in a serious accident. You need to go to her now. She has severe injuries, and is in bad shape, but she's alive." That's all he was told. That's all of the information I had to hold me over on the rush home. It felt like the entire world collapsed on me when he told me this.
Thankfully one of the first responders called him repeatedly as an emergency contact in her cell phone until he answered. He also cold called my pregnant sister with this terrible news, which was another concern, given that we would've wanted to soften the news for her health. Thank God he got through to us or else we might not have known for a day or two.
For those who have followed me for a bit, my Dad died of brain cancer in February after a 2+ year battle. Our family was still recovering from that and starting to get back on its feet. My Mom was a gladiator beside him during this time, and was just starting to experience some of life's simple pleasures with the doom and gloom of cancer now in the past. After 36 years of marriage, life was going to be different, and she was doing well.
As the closest of my two other siblings to home, it was up to me to get to her hospital immediately. While my Dad was verbally and emotionally abusive to me, I threw that aside and asked him over and over to help her survive this.
I set my cat up with a ton of food and water, and then scrambled in the rain to catch a cab for the train station. My brother was going to race back as well, but he had to wait for the storm to pass as it was moving towards his city.
Since I was playing the drums for a bit with headphones on while this happened, I had no idea that a huge violent storm had swept through our area and rushed up north where my Mom was. When I got to the train station and saw that every train was seized with delays and cancellations from downed trees, I rushed to check out another train station, which was also not an option.
As you can imagine, I felt quite a bit helpless and frantic without transportation. While my sister looked into a car service, I reached out to a baseball teammate to see if he could drive me out of my city in his car to allow me some time to quickly coordinate a rental car on the way. Thankfully, he scratched that plan (not knowing we'd be chasing tornados) and offered to drive me up to the hospital in his Mustang.
The drive was surreal. We didn't know that 5-6 tornados had just touched down in the area we drove through. We were just thrilled to see that there was inexplicably no traffic during rush hour. It felt like the roads were cleared for me to race home. It wasn't until we noticed dark green skies and got some warnings from family friends that we realized what we were working with, but we pressed the pedal to the metal.
I got to hospital about 3.5 hours after her accident and raced to the ICU of the area's WORST hospital she was forced to go to because trees were down, power outages were everywhere (the hospital was without power), and she had a severely broken neck and back at risk of paralysis. They had to stabilize her as quickly as possible and couldn't airlift her to a better place yet.
My Mom was awake and alert when I got there and was fully aware of the situation. I couldn't believe it. I expected to see her incapacitated, but I could actually talk to her. Her face was extremely swollen and one eye was shut. She had bruises and glass cuts everywhere, but she was ALIVE.
Finally - I could take a breath...
With the hospital out of power and relying on backup generators for the ICU, we couldn't get the scans she needed because the elevators were out of order. The scan machines were on another floor. I couldn't stop thinking how it was a bad joke that she survived this terrible accident, but might have something like a power outage delay critical scans necessary to assess her internals.
My brother arrived about 5 hours later. Over the next few days, we stayed with her for 14-18 hour days. Most of this time was spent advocating for her and trying to help her get better attention from lax ICU nurses who didn't seem to appreciate her injuries.
While she was stabilizing, I called the local police department to try to find out what happened to her car so we could make sure her insurance company was notified. By luck, the dispatcher I called was one of the first responders to the scene and told me his first-hand account of the accident. He said he was there within a few minutes of the tree crushing her in the car and helped remove her after they cut off the doors. He said the only reason she survived was because her driver's seat failed and broke backward to be reclining in the back of the car. It really was a miracle.
This was great to hear and explain to friends and family since no one had a clue how she could've survived such a blow to the head, neck and chest when they saw the pictures.
In all honesty and logic, if a tree could break a car seat, how did it not crush her more??? Her airbags didn't even go off!!!! These are things I don't need to think about, but it just doesn't make sense.
Taking a break from the story... This post is getting be too riled up and I need to sleep soon. I'll write another post about some very challenging experiences in this hospital and at the second one she was airlifted to. The new hospital is commutable by subway/train/taxi from my home, to give me some normalcy back.
In sum, our time in both hospitals was horrible. It's disturbing to see how staff treat patients, and how unqualified some people are. I spent a lot of time there making sure nothing slipped through the cracks, and that her urgent need for pain relief from terrible braces was tended to quickly.
During all this time, and around the clock, I've been on the phone with doctors, nurses, family and friends to manage lots of information. It hasn't been easy, but I'm the most qualified in the family now to do it. It's a lot of pressure. I've gotten calls in the middle of the night, calls from my Mom to rush to the hospital ASAP, and staff calling for me to make decisions for her. I had to sleep with one eye open.
Here are the extent of her notable injuries:
-Multiple cervical spine fractures
-Broken back
-Broken jaw
-Punctured lung
-Brain bleed (under control)
-Blood infection (now under control - a terrible thing to experience/witness for 5 days)
Recovery Process:
-Heavy-duty back/neck brace while standing/walking for 2-3 months (hard because it anchors on her broken neck and jaw)
-Neck collar required at all other times
-Jaw surgery next week (TBD if she needs it wired shut for 6-8 weeks)
-1-2 months of physical therapy
-She just started walking this weekend (amazing)
-Just left the ICU (intensive care unit) today
The biggest issues have been how much pain she's been in and her bad reactions to the pain killers. Her septic blood infection also caused 5 days of lopsided vitals, breathing issues, terrible hallucinations, anxiety, panic attacks, and paranoia. It was soul-crushing for me to have to help her through that first hand. It really sapped a lot out of me, especially after seeing that with my Dad in months before - where he became very abusive to me.
For those who believe in the supernatural...
The amazing thing is that she can walk and had no injuries below her lung. She didn't lose any teeth and her face is fine, except her broken mandible. Divine intervention must've been in play here.
I won't show it, but a picture that was circulating from the accident scene on the other side of the car with the tree on it seems to show some faces in it that look like my Dad, uncle, and two of my Grandparents. It's chilling to see and think about. Many people see the faces and appreciate the obvious potential that some divine powers were at play here. No one walks away from an accident like this. All of the medical professionals and responders we've talked to said the same.
After my Dad's terrible back luck to get a rare terminal glioblastoma multiforme stage 4 cancer diagnosis, and this terrible accident, apparently some significant luck was on our side under the circumstances.
My life was upside down for a while, but it'll slowly get back to normal. I'm going to have to help her a lot with her rehab and day-to-day business/home obligations. Thankfully I work for myself and live close enough to be able to drop everything to be with her while my brother and sister can't. While my business should dip, perhaps necessity will help me find ways to be more efficient and productive to keep my sales up.
If my Mom can survive a tree to the face, I'll manage. Everything happens for a reason.
Thanks for reading and all of your thoughts, prayers, comments, messages and support.
