Enjoy your trip? Have a nice fall.

We have had several interesting experiences over the past few months.  I was not there for all of them.  If  that seems a little weird to you it will soon be obvious.

I hoped that Gerri' would write about this one but I will do my best to tell what others told me.  We will also be using my "way back machine" because this happened at the end of February.

The only thing I remember was going to the bathroom and "waking up" 3 days later.  Apparently I fell and hit my head.  I didn't crack my skull but I sustained a really good concussion.  Gerri' was alarmed and wanted to take me to the hospital, but I didn't want to go.  Evidently I was "awake" and talking, but I don't remember a thing.  As loony as I normally am, Gerri' said that I was surpassing all previous looniness.  She evidently got her way because she took me to Alta View hospital's ER where they examined me and did an MRI.  They told her that it was just a concussion - no broken bones or brain damage.  I am guessing I was relieved to hear the good news, but I am not sure because I wasn't there.  They sent us home.  The next day she tells me that I was messing with the bi-pap settings and messed it all up.  She had to call the respiratory equipment company and receive step by step instructions to get it working again.  She was alarmed and sure that I had more wrong with my head than the ER people told her.  So she packed me into the car again and took me back to the ER and insisted that they check me out again.  They repeated the exam including another MRI and again told her that there was no damage beyond the concussion that they had already diagnosed. I don't remember any of this.

Some time during the third day, I started to become aware of my surroundings, but everything was a little whacky for me.  Everything I typed came out wrong.  I should have been concerned but instead I found it entertaining and funny.  My hearing was affected.  Everything sounded as though it came from the bottom of a well and was muffled.  For some reason I felt like I needed to adjust the settings on my bi-pap machine.  Of course I messed up all the settings.  Gerri' was very patient with me as she called the respiratory equipment people a second time in two days.

I found that I was laying in a hospital bed and there was no room for Gerri'.  It was like I kicked her out of the bedroom because I needed this new bed.  She was sleeping on the sofa.  That was no good, so within a week or two, Gerri' went out and bought a bed that would fit in the space and sit against my bed as though it was king size bed.

Over the next few days my hearing returned to normal and the general brain fog lifted.

Gerri's version:

In the middle of the night I heard a big crashing thud coming from the bathroom. I screamed like I always do when Kevin has a fall and ran into the bathroom. He was on the floor, having fallen and hitting his head on the tile.  He was conscious and holding his head in pain.  I told him we needed to call 911 and he said "no" so I got him in the car and headed to Alta View ER.  They did the MRI and other stuff and like Kevin said, determined that he had no damage other than a bad concussion.  They wouldn't give him anything for the pain until all of the tests were completed.  They gave him morphine and he was soon out of pain because he was out of it.

It was about 9 or 10 in the morning when we finally left the hospital with prescriptions for some strong pain relief drugs.  He was so "gone" that it took 2 hospital workers to get him into the car.  The morphine totally knocked him out.  He was 160 pounds of dead unconscious weight.  It took a while to finally get him in the car.  One of the hospital people got in the driver's side of the car and the other was outside the car and they pulled and lifted and grunted before they finally got him in the car. They were concerned about how I would get him out once we got home but I knew that I could find some of the great guys in the neighborhood who work from home to help get him in the house.

I had Christine Taylor's phone number in my contacts so I called her, explained the situation and asked her if Dave could meet me at the house in 10 minutes to get Kevin into the house.  I asked her to call Steve Taylor to help Dave.  I pulled into the garage and Dave was there.  He asked how much Kevin weighed and thought that he could do it by himself.  I wasn't sure that was a good idea.  It wasn't.  Luckily, Steve Taylor arrived and they commenced to get Kevin out of the car and into the house.  He was like a 160 pound bag of potatoes.  It took a lot of straining and hard work to get Kevin in the house and in bed.  Thank goodness for great friends.

Like Kevin said, he was totally out of it.  I had the strong prescription pain pills but after seeing how crazy/goofy/out of it Kevin was, I would only give him Advil.  He was so "gone" that he probably didn't realize how much it hurt.  I called Becky, our home health nurse to tell her about what had happened and she ordered a hospital bed immediately.  It arrived in a few hours.  Kevin was a total goof ball.  He did mess up the settings on the bi-pap machine twice and our supplier was kind enough to go over the procedure to reset it two days in a row. I did take him to the ER the second day, sure that he had a brain bleed that had occurred the second day.  Nope, thankfully he was okay.

It was quite the experience.  Kevin wasn't allowed to ever go to the bathroom alone again.

Back to Kevin

I definitely got my wings clipped here at home.  I am not allowed to go to the bathroom alone.  So, when my four kids are here to baby sit me they have the honor of pulling down my pants and putting me on the potty.  When you are in this situation, I'm afraid you have to let go of your ideas about modesty, privacy and personal dignity.   Oh well, that stuff is all vanity anyway.