Concussed

Our trip to Utah was great, all except this part.

It was 8:00 in the morning, Jaron came in to kiss me goodbye, cause I was still asleep. Said he was off to the skate park. Around 10:00 I was taking a shower when I got a knock on the door. It was Kel. "Jaron's been in an accident", she said. I got dressed as fast as I could, while Kel called 911 and told them to get to the skatepark where Jaron was. 

Here are the facts that we pieced together over the next 45 seconds: Jaron fell at the skate park with his helmet on, he fell hard enough to knock himself out, he had thrown up, and he was showing signs of short term memory loss. Here's what we didn't piece together: we didn't know how he fell, and we didn't know how he managed to get his cel phone from the car and in his hands and have enough sense to dial my Mom's cel phone after he had just been unconscious. It only took a few minutes on the phone with Jaron, for my mom to deduce that Jaron was out of sorts and needed some help. That's when she called the house, where Kelly answered the phone and came and knocked on my door.

In the car on my way to the skatepark I decided to call Jaron's cel phone. He answered.
"Jess?"
"Hi sweetie, how are you".
"Um. I'm ok. What happened? Do you know where I am? There's a guy here I think you should talk to him".

We talked a little longer than that, but I knew he didn't remember much. I told him to lay his head down and stay still, the ambulance was on its way. "Why is the ambulance on its way? Did I get hurt or something?" He had no memory of what had happened. He passed the phone over to the man, I didn't even get the man's name. We call him Kip, because he reminded us of Kip from Napoleon Dynamite. Kip was nice enough to tell me he was going to stay by Jaron until I got there. "He's thrown up all over himself" he said, "and he's pretty out of it. I think he must have hit his head pretty hard. It's bleeding". 

The ambulence beat us to the skatepark by only a few minutes. When I pulled up, I ran toward the stretcher that was being quickly moved into the ambulence. As I was running up to Jaron I could hear him asking the paramedics "Am I ok?" with a shake in his voice. "What is going on? Do my kids know where I am?". It made me emotional to see him on the stretcher like that. The next few seconds went quickly. I wanted to go thank the man that had stayed by Jaron. He was about 10 feet away from me on the other side of the fence that went around the skate park, but I couldn't keep my eyes off of Jaron. Besides that, if I wanted to stick by Jaron, I had to jump in the ambulance now. Before I knew it we were on our way.

I could see everything they were doing from the front seat. I kept trying to call out to Jaron that I was here in the front seat. Everytime I said his name he responded the exact same way "Jess? Is that you? Hi. What happened?" He went through this same loop of conversation over and over again for the next 45 minutes.

When we got to the hospital I was very nervous that he had internal bleeding or a broken neck or permanent brain damage. I was praying so hard that wasn't the case. His goose egg on his left temple was bleeding a bit, and it looked a little scary to me. I felt worried, but at the same time I somehow felt he was going to be ok.

My siblings were awesome. Rich, Drew, and Kel were all there with Jaron and I. Danny and Aly showed up too. I think the doctor was impressed by the amount of support in that room. I was impressed by it too.  Danny gave Jaron a wonderful blessing, which I'm sure was part of the reason for the great test results from the CT scan which came back with happy results. No brain damage, no neck injury, and no internal bleeding, just a bad concussion. 

All the movement from the CT scan made Jaron sick so he was throwing up quite a bit at this point. I felt so bad for him. His head hurt, he was super nauseous, and he had no memory.  Jaron's pretty sure he cracked a few of his ribs too, and if he didn't crack it at the skate park he's pretty sure that a really hard sneeze finished what the skate park had started on the left side of his rib cage.



In the end, the husb is alright. If he wasn't sold on helmets before, which I know he was, he definitely is now. Who knows where we would be if it hadn't been for that 50 dollar helmet. Wow, 50 dollars.  What a cheap price to pay for the happy outcome it created on my Jaron's skull.

We were at the hospital for about 4 hours. He threw up some more on the car ride home. Rich's driving will do that to you. (Just kidding Rich). No apparently with a bad concussion vomiting can happen, expecially when the person concussed is being moved around. Once we got home Jaron went to sleep. He slept for awhile. When he woke up he felt like it had all been a dream. Unfortunatly for him, it was not a dream, and he realized this when he looked at his wrist and saw the hospital bracelet. His totem bringing him back to reality.

Now almost three weeks later, he is still sore on his rib cage, a little bit hazy in the head, and a lot a bit sleepy all the time.I'm sure that will all go away soon. I hope so at least.  The worst part of this whole thing is that he doesn't get to enjoy summer as much as he thought he was going to be able to, because he has to take it easy, but the good part is he is alive and well and is not a vegetable.

So, grab your glass. Hold it up high. Ready?

 Here's to helmets.