Upsetting

In the rain this morning, Grant fell off his bike and hit his head. A neighbor called me, and someone called 911. It was just 5 minutes from our house. I think he slipped on the painted white line at the edge of the road, but he didn’t remember anything until the paramedics had him standing and getting ready to go to the emergency room. When I got there, he seemed dazed. He knew his name, but gave our Fort Lauderdale address for where he lived. Very scary.

An hour later, at Orlando Regional Hospital, he was back to speed. A cat scan show a 3 millimeter subdural hematoma, so he has to stay until that gets resolved. It also showed no damage to spine or joints, so his rib, shoulder, and hip pains are miserable but superficial. His scraped elbow and knees got cleaned and bandaged: the gash in his forehead, I guess from his helmet which broke in the fall, got sutured. 

The big deal is that he’s on blood thinners. The neurosurgeons want to reverse them to prevent any more bleeding. That meant cardiologists and a heart valve specialist were called in to confer about clotting in his heart if the thinners were neutralized. Another cat scan ordered to see any changes. Trauma team over saw the process. Twelve hours later, after the second scan and no one running in the room in a dither, we agreed no news was good news, and I went home.

Poor Grant hadn’t had anything to drink or eat all day since he rides before breakfast and once he got to the ER, he couldn’t have anything just in case he needed surgery. After many hours, they hooked him up to an IV so he wasn’t as thirsty. And they started some meds for all his aches and pains. I left him playing NetHack on his iPad with a promise to return in the morning with the long charging cord. We all have our unique security blankets.