When Life Slaps You in the Face

This morning I wasn't feeling too good, so at about 5:45am I camped out in the bathroom for awhile. After that I went upstairs with the intention of doing a little work before heading to my job. I got into my email and found one from my brother Ken which changed all that.

Last night Ken and his wife Jean were driving down from Show Low to have dinner with their two daughters. Somewhere between there and Payson the roads were slushy. They had rain and sleet and snow and sleet off and on, in one spot they hit some ice and lost control, and ended up rolling twice.

My brother came out of it rather battered, but able to get out. They had to use the jaws of life to get Jean out. She didn't fare so well. They rolled in her direction, so she took the worst of it. We figure her right arm must have gotten pinned between her and the arm rest. She ended up with a compound fracture and inch or so below the elbow, both bones broken above the wrist with another piece broken off, and several cracks in her wrist and hand. On her left arm, the lobes of on of the humurous bone were sheared off. She had a chip broken out of her hip, and she smacked the back of her head pretty hard. She says she remembers the first roll, but that is all.

She had surgery this afternoon to put her right arm back together. The doctor said he wasn't even sure how they were going to do it because there were 7 sections of bone to put back together. There was a possibility that they would work on the other arm, but they said they would probably schedule a second surgery for that. We haven't heard how the surgery went yet.

DramaMama and I went over to the hospital around 10:30 and stayed for a couple hours. Ken was in pretty good spirits, and Jean was awake and talking to us.

Jean does stained glass with their own business, and had several pieces in the back of the Yukon. They got obliterated, and all of the windows in the vehicle were gone. You would think with all of that glass that they would have been sliced up, but neither of them got cut.

Apparently, they had just gotten car insurance re-instated. In fact, Ken said that about 20 minutes before the accident, their agent called and said they were covered again. Where they were, they had very limited cell service, so he called the agent and was able to say they rolled, Jean was hurt, and the call dropped. Once Ken got into Payson, after they life flighted Jean to Scottsdale, he was able to talk to the agent and get it all squared away.

THEN... Ken had to rent a car and drive for an hour and a half to get to the hospital where they took Jean. I personally think that would have sucked big time.

So all in all, they came out of it fairly well considering. The Yukon was destroyed, but it held is shape and protected them.

Oh... and it was Ken's birthday.