Chuck's Accident

Okay, it' s been a VERY LONG week, my brain is fried and I'm exhausted! But I'm home now and all is good.

On Monday just when I walked in the door from picking the boys up from school Chuck calls me from his cell phone to tell me he broke his leg, he thinks it's a compound break but isn't for sure cuz of all his clothes he has on. Said he called 911 and his brother and that he thinks he'll be going to Ashtabula hospital. I said okay and hung up. I got the boys and left the house. I then called him again to see how he was doing and he told me that he was cutting down trees (he's a logger) and one got hung up on another so he moved on and left it that way to get it later with the skidder. He didn't realize how badly the wind had picked up (said had he known it was that bad they would have called it a day) and apparently it picked that tree up, turned it around, and it came down by him. He caught the end of the tree on the back of his left leg below the knee. He said he could here people coming so he hung up. He was a mile back into the woods so it took a very long time for the EMT's to get to him.

When they did get to him, they strapped him on a back board, and put him on the hood of the skidder and his brother Dave drove the skidder backwards as best he could the mile out of the woods, then he was transferred to the bed of a pick-up truck to get back to the main road where the ambulance was waiting.

Now, I am at the hospital in Ashtabula waiting for him and NOTHING! I waited almost an hour, and I even called other hospitals! NOTHING!! Where was he???? Finally, Dave answered his phone and come to find out, no one in our area can treat him, his leg was that bad so they had to life flight him to Youngstown, an hour away.

Come to find out, it took them an hour to get to him and he had to lay in about 6 inches of cold water while waiting for them. So, because of his hypothermia and compound broken leg they had to fly him to Youngstown.

So, the boys and I followed my inlaws all the way there. I have no extra clothes, we haven't eatin since lunch, I was NOT ready to be gone for a few days! We get to Youngstown and we get to see him for a little bit but then he is rushed off to surgery around 8pm. The doctor comes out at 10:30 to let us know how he's doing. Said he broke his leg in 3 places and broke his ankle too. The shin bone did come out of the skin (NASTY) so we have to be VERY careful of infection but the surgery went really well. They put a rod in his leg and 2 screws in his ankle. We got to see him at midnight when they put him in his room.

My inlaws stayed a few minutes and talked with Chuck and then they left and took the boys with them. My sister in law stayed with them the first night. I didn't plan on leaving the hospital until Chuck did. The first night I ended up on the cold tile floor next to his bed and got about 3 hours sleep but not all together. My hips hurt really bad come morning. His roommate seemed nice enough. He gave me a blanket and some pillows, which was nice. He smoked in the bathroom and coughed a lot though, LOL!! He left the next day.

He did well after his surgery, ate well, got lots of rest and stayed on his pain med's so the pain didn't bother him too bad. He did get out of bed and with a walker walked out of the room and back in and sat down in this nice chair that reclined. I then used this chair to sit in and was very nice to sleep in!

Then Charlie came in the evening to fill the empty bed. He's really nice. It was funny because both of them were named Charles, both were hurt having to do with trees! LOL!! Charlie was building a tree stand by himself and fell and blew out his left heal. He did this the day after Thanksgiving and had to wait for the swelling to go down before he could have surgery.


I'm exhausted, I will finish this on the next post tomorrow.