My father in law, is the bald one in the back row. His name is Larry. Well, Laurence really. He's S's namesake. S is so much like him...it's kind of frightening at times. They are two peas in a pod!
My father in law suffered a brain aneurysm 9 years ago this February. He was working, teaching a class at Easter Michigan, when he said he had a headache, passed out and had a grand mal seizure. We were told he wouldn't live...he did. He actually baffled doctors with his recovery. Other than a blood clot once he was home, his recovery, though LONG and hard for everyone, especially my mother/brother in law who still lived at home. Larry's only evidence of this, is a scar on the right side of his head and some short term memory loss. The miracles that occurred surrounding his accident then are numerous...too much for one blog.
Well, yesterday, February 2,2010, my father in law had another accident...he was changing a light bulb on the outside of a building. He is a meticulous man. The slightest thing will irk him until it's fixed. He's a bit of a perfectionist. He's a brilliant man and a hard worker. He had to retire after his first accident and spends lots of his free time helping other people...that's what he was doing yesterday.
He didn't follow the "ladder safety rules", he so meticulously drilled into his three sons and went up a tall ladder, in the snow, without telling anyone, and without having anyone hold the ladder. He reached the top rung of the ladder - approximately 10-12 feet and the ladder slipped out from under him.
He fell...the concrete below him broke his fall.
THANK THE LORD...he just "happened" to be working on the side of the building that faces a doctors office. There was a nurse sitting at her desk and saw him fall. She immediately called 911 and grabbed a few other ladies and went to check on him. He was unable to move and barely able to speak at this time. If they hadn't seen him ,he could have laid in the cold snow for a long time. He fell on his cell phone and couldn't reach it.
The ambulance came to pick him up and drove him to a hospital that NONE of us would ever go too, but they felt he was in too much pain to drive him anywhere else. They told my mother in law that he was too badly injured for them to touch him....they did nothing at this hospital but give him pain meds and transported him to a much larger hospital...still not our favorite, but a hospital nonetheless.
After a LONG night, he was finally diagnosed with a jaw that is broken in three places. Completely severed in fact. It's an open fracture - which means a bone actually broke through the skin on the inside of his mouth. At last count, the fall knocked out 3 of his teeth. He will have plates installed in his jaw to repair it and then will have his jaw wired/barred shut.
His hip/leg was dislocated. He had to have a pin put in this leg and is in traction for the next 4 days. You would think, in this day and age, that we could have come up with something a bit less primitive than hanging large weights from a persons limb, while they are suspended in mid air.
His leg is broke and his hip is fractured. Shattered would be more of an exact definition. He will have surgery on his hip in 3 more days.
He's facing 30 days in rehab, AFTER he is released from the hospital. He's a strong man...so much so, that his elbow had an open wound...a nasty open wound. The pain form his other injurys was so intense that he was waving, touching and moving his arm around all night. He was proud of that cut!
We continue to pray for his healing and for strength for both he and my mother in law as they face this process!
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