"DON'T PANIC!"
Those were the first words that my wife said to me when I answered the phone yesterday. Since she didn't follow up with, "...and don't forget your towel," I knew something serious was up.
"There are paramedics here in the living room working on Beloved Daughter." If she didn't have it before, Phreakette certainly had my attention now.
About fifteen minutes earlier, my wife had left the house with the boys to pick up Eldest Son's bassoon from his band director. Beloved Daughter (16) stayed home, swinging in the back yard. She loves to do that and listen to her music. It's her equivalent of a Zen garden.
What Phreakette didn't know was that immediately after she left the driveway in the front, Daughter fell out of the swing in the back yard, traveling on a parabolic arc that ended fifteen feet away, landing face-first on the ground. She was unconscious. She doesn't remember how, but she dragged herself into the house and called 911.
Phreakette's cell-phone rang. "This is Arlington 911. Your daughter called us, and we have an ambulance en route to your house. How quickly can you get home?" Needless to say, she made it home pretty darn fast. When she got home, the paramedics were in the living room, and had Beloved Daughter on a backboard, with a neck brace. There was a splint on her right arm. Her face looked like she had been attacked by #4-grit sandpaper.
That is when she called me. I left work (in Dallas) immediately, and headed for Harris Methodist, in Ft. Worth, beating the ambulance there by ten minutes.
When the ambulance pulled up, and the doors opened, I saw something similar to this*:
It looks like this is turning into a novella, which was not my intent. The Harris ER was extremely busy, but they got her into the trauma center within ten minutes. Since there were far more serious cases to be dealt with, it took about four hours to get her x-rays and CAT scans done. The good news is, the CAT lived. No cranial or spinal damage, "just" a mild concussion. bad news, she broke both wrists. They splinted these, and we have an appointment with our orthopedist Thursday (after the swelling goes down) to either cast them or schedule surgery. Beloved Daughter is back home, resting comfortably, and going into computer/chat withdrawal, because she can't use her hands (grin).
I would like to say that the Arlington EMS paramedics and the ER staff at Harris Methodist Hospital were all both caring and extremely professional, and took very good care of Beloved Daughter. I thank God that it wasn't any worse. Lord knows it could have been.
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*No, I didn't take the picture. Eldest Son, 12, was the photojournalist for the event.
