| | We'll start with the good news (besides the fact that I have my wedding dress!!). I found out this morning that I passed my EMT-Basic written exam (I passed the practical exam at the end of March)! I am now officially an EMT-Basic. This will be a big help for my volunteering at the fire department (80% of our calls are medical-related).
Now, the bad news, that I mentioned in my previous post. JD shattered his ankle on the Grand Canyon 2 weeks ago!
Here's the jump that caused all the problems:
This is (well, WAS) an extremely popular jumping spot on a small side creek on the Grand Canyon. The cliffs are about a 3 mile hike in, fording the creek several times. Unfortunately, a flash flood last year filled in the creek, so JD landed in about 2 feet of water. Since JD's group was one of the first of the season, no one knew. (It turns out that someone else had done the same thing about 5 days earlier, but there was no way that JD's group could have gotten the news).
To quote JD: "i immediately came up and felt a pop in my ankle and looked down and realized it was dislocated and displaced laterally and rotated about 75 degrees externally. i looked at the group of friends i was rafting with and just said "drugs. helicopter. now." this was about 12.30pm. they helped get me out of the water and after checking and realizing that i wasn't hurt anywhere other than my ankle, i passed out for a few minutes. when i woke up people had already left to go get my big ass first aid kit and materials for making a stretcher. i was covered with whatever spare clothes we had and the two guys left up with me, rob and dirk, did an amazing job of keeping me warm while we waited for everyone else to arrive, even through a couple rain showers where i know they were getting cold themselves. about 3 pm the first guy back from the boats came back with some warm clothes and pain meds. i then started a big enough course of oxycodone that by all accounts should have killed a hippo. as the next few people came in we realized that they had been able to get through to the park
service with the sat phone and after a few tries realized that they wouldn't likely be able to fly this afternoon and either way we would have to start hiking out. we formed a splint out of a sleeping bag, paco pad (big air mattress made out of rafting rubber) and some cam straps, which actually turned out to be pretty damn good. we then rigged a stretcher out of a tarp and some oars and started the long process out. got an iv started but otherwise closed fracture with good circulation, motor, and sensation in the foot, so i was doing relatively ok."
The evacuation was, not surprisingly, pretty difficult. They made it about a mile before deciding to spend the night up the creek. The next morning, the helicopter was able to land in the canyon, about 100 ft from where they had slept.
JD was loaded up, flown to the park south rim, and then 2 different ambulances to get to the Flagstaff hospital, where he finally called me, just over 24 hrs after the whole incident started. I was on my way to a friend's Easter party, and just kept driving straight to the airport, getting in touch with my family to find out what airlines would fly to Flagstaff that day. I made it to the hospital about 8pm, 1.5 hrs after JD was done with his surgery. Luckily I had my gym bag in the car, so I had a few personal items.
Here's the before picture of the dislocated tibia
And the picture after the surgery:
We spent 2 nights at the hospital, and then JD was able to sit & stand long enough to fly back to Portland. My family was great - Julie made the plane arrangements for us, and my parents were kind enough to pay for the tickets. THANK YOU!!
The flight and drive to our house wore JD out, and he's been slowly recovering since then. Last week he got the stitches out and a real cast, and it'll be another 7-10 weeks before he's allowed to start putting weight on his foot.
So I've been working on a lot of "his" projects around the house, such as installing the bamboo flooring, going to the dump, and other fun things like that! He's going stir-crazy already, even with getting out of the house every day this weekend.
JD was actually lucky that his ankle dislocated, or else the damage could have been much worse - shattering both bones, or transferring the energy up to his knee or hip. In the grand scheme of things, I'll take an ankle fracture over the alternatives. (and yes, we've all mentioned what a good thing it is that he didn't dive - he said that he never considered it)
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| | Posted 4/27/2009 1:27 PM - 4 Views - 0 eProps - 0 comments
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