Emergency Services

The last three days have been consistently dreary and rainy, which is a good fit with the awful ordeal John went through.

Two nights ago, I was fast asleep when I vaguely heard a thump outside. Eventually, John crawled into the van and lay down on the floor. I didn’t think anything of it at this point, because I was still half asleep and he has a tendency to pass out in weird places – especially floors.

I later learned that he had gotten out of the van, experienced a bout of dizziness, and collapsed forward, smacking his head on the ground. He has no idea how long he laid on the ground – getting rained on – before he managed to crawl into the van.

At this point, I started to realize something was amiss, but I couldn’t get a coherent sentence out of him. Once I realized that his moaning sounds were out of an inability to speak rather than simply being tired, I knew he needed to get to a hospital.

The first part of the drive was one of the scariest experiences of my life. I was trying to drive through wet roads with weak headlights, having no idea where I was going. Meanwhile, I was on the phone with 911 trying to figure out the closest emergency room, while John continued to babble and moan incoherently from the back. About 15 minutes into the drive, John turned a corner and started to speak sense.

At the hospital, they gave him an IV, monitored him, did a CT scan and an EKG, and cleaned up the wound. In the end, he was deemed ok, and I breathed a huge sigh of relief. We’re not looking forward to the bill, but we are both glad that everything came out all right. It’s funny that with all the potentially dangerous activities we do on a daily basis, it’s getting up in the middle of the night that ends up being the most dangerous.