I walked through the door of the emergency room, not entirely sure why I was there. The smell of fresh lacquer on the slippery wood floors making my already light head swim. I shifted the weight of my 21 month old on my hip, his precocious weight making my arms shout in pain, but not as loud as the confused questions in my head. "A2" I said to myself again. I turned left and saw a plaque on the wall by a closed door A1. The door next to it was open, another plaque on the wall A2, a nurse walked through in front of me and I followed. She pulled on the curved wall of curtain that was hiding the room from me, hiding something I did not understand.
The room was small, white, and full of people and tubes. The only thing I saw was Trish lying on the bed, center stage, what I did not understand was looking back at me. The entire left side of her face was swollen and red. Her eye pressed closed from the dark purple swelling. She looked like someone had picked up a flat piece of wood and slammed her across the face with it. That wasn't too far from what did happen.
"Holy cow." I said.
She had fallen in class, hitting her face on a student's desk as she fell. She remembers feeling light headed and telling the kids to wait a minute. The students were standing around her screaming when she came to. "Get Mrs Cox." Trish managed to murmur. The ambulance came with sirens blaring. The EMT's fed Trish a tube of glucose before strapping her to a board and putting her into the ambulance. En route they inserted an IV, pumping the equivalent of three tubs of frosting directly into her blood.
She's doing fine today and recuperating. Her body is still a little stiff and sensitive to the foods she eats, but she will make a full recovery. The baby is healthy and safe too, the little one was wiggling more then Trish had ever felt it, enjoying the sugar rush.
In the end, I think the biggest victims of this episode are Trish's eye and my heart.
Couple hours after hitting the desk.
Shiner as it looks today.The good news is as it turns out, purple looks pretty good on me.
We want to end on a happy note and let you all know that the day ended with this bit of info:
Amy Dawn Ireland
Arriving March 1st 2009
The Birds
Cute couple
The top picture in this set is the first view I had when I went to my back window. It was foggy so I was like, "Is the pool equipment on the power lines?" I slid open the window and my jaw dropped, "Ben, our tree is down! We lost a tree!" It was crazy. Notice all the pictures of the bird house? That is because I am flabbergasted by the fact that this tree had about a foot width of space between the garage and the bird house and it fell right between them! It landed on the power lines and my neighbors garage, therefore leaving very little damage to my fence. What a place for it to fall! Just try to tell me we weren't blessed. However, once we saw this we knew it was going to be a long time before our house had power again and we decided it was time to leave.
This is the street after the storm had been gone a couple hours. If you look at the lawn you can see the line of debris that shows how much higher it was.
These three pictures show the foot path to my front door and the tree that goes over it. The big black branch is the top half of the tree that has broken in half and is now dangling ready to fall on anybody who comes to my house.
My driveway. Ben had to saw our way out. I didn't even recognize half the tree branches (limbs) blocking our path.
This is the view down my street. I kept seeing cars turn around on my street and when I saw this I figured out why. I wish I had my camera in hand when we drove out of our neighborhood. It was worse then we could have imagined. Trees were down everywhere. They were on houses, cars, and blocking streets. The traffic lights were swinging a foot above the ground like pendulums. Restaurant signs were blown to smithereens. It felt like an end of the world movie. . .
