Saturday morning, June 8, 2024, was a pretty normal Saturday morning. Neal is doing a few projects around the house, Tucker is downstairs (oh yes, I forgot to mention that Tucker was here this weekend to purchase a new car from Greg) working on some bids. I'm busy making platters of meats, cheeses, lettuce, tomatoes and all the sandwich trimmings and cutting up water melon. We are planning on having people over Saturday afternoon about 5:00 to play games. Tucker always wants the family to come and play games when he comes in to town. Everything was quietly going on a good schedule when I get a call from Neal, who is out in the garage. I go out there and he is up on a ladder getting papers down from the loft. He hands me a handful of folders and papers. As I turn around to head back in the house I hear this awful sound of "oh no" to turn around, see the ladder swaying, tipping over and Neal falling to the garage floor. He lands hard and hits his shoulder, hip and head. He is in serious pain and not able to move his left leg and arm without crying out. I quickly text Tucker and tell him that dad has taken a serious fall and will he come up and help me get him in the car and to the ER. This is the ladder that will be going to DI first thing Monday morning. It is an old flimsy ladder and Neal has refused to get rid of it.
We get him to the ER and because it is consider a trauma case he is immediately taken back and the trauma team immediately starts asking him all kinds of questions, taking blood, temperature, heart, etc. They then do x-rays and CAT Scans to check for breaks. The results are that he has an acetabular fracture, also known as a hip socket fracture. It is a break in the socket part of the hip joint's ball and socket structure. The socket, called the acetabulum, is lined with cartilage and is part of the pelvis. The doctors determine that he should stay over night in the hospital and make a determination in the morning whether they will do surgery or not.
In the mean time, Tucker is texting the whole family about the fall, the hospital stay and that there will be no family gathering that evening. Tucker and I head home about 9:30 to find Maren and Greg sitting on the patio. the four of us sit out on the patio until after Midnight talking about everything from Nuts to bolts. Seriously a wonderful time for me to kind of forget the trauma of the day we've just spent. I think Tucker needed the break as much as I did.
The next morning, Lynda Ann stopped by from work and we drove down to the hospital to see Neal. We hadn't been in the room more than 10 or 15 minutes when the surgeon walked in gave us the good news that we wouldn't have to deal with surgery! I was so relieved that I nearly fell into tears - but held my emotions in tact. As the day progressed Neal was told that there was to be no weight put on his leg for 6 weeks! The fractures would heal but he had to stay off the leg. Therapists came and taught him how to use the walker, how to get up and down and made sure that he would have the care he needed when he got home, etc. Tucker and I were able to bring him home around 2:30 p.m. Ken and Mindy, our dear friends, met us at the house and Ken and Tucker were able to get Neal carefully and slowly up the stairs. He went up backwards on his butt. He is now resting comfortable in his chair. So glad that we didn't have to have surgery and that he was able to come home.
Tucker, bless his heart, hung around the whole day instead of heading back to California early this morning like he had planned. He said he wasn't leaving until he knew that dad was safely at home. He left here a little after 4. As always, the tears flowed as I saw him drive away. Sad to see him go but feeling that I was so comforted having Tucker here for the weekend. I couldn't help but feel how blessed I was to be the mom of these wonderful children, Maren, Lynda Ann and Tucker. All three were such a blessing and so very, very helpful to me - all in different ways.
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