Worst Valentine’s Day Ever…

Hi,

I know it’s been a while. And this is going to be a huge vent session for me.

Last Saturday I came down with a cough and a sore throat at work. I powered through my shift at the clinic and visited Mom and Poppa really quickly (masked, of course), and then I went to urgent care on the way home. After 3 hours of waiting I got some Prednisone to help with my asthma and told to go home and rest. I go home and change into PJs, feeling cold I snuggle down in a blanket and fall asleep watching TV. Fiks is my hero and takes care of me and orders soup for dinner. Yay. We cancelled gaming because I’m shaking and shivering under 2 thick warm blankets. I go to bed early and deal with my fever there.

I take my Prednisone with some breakfast and I start to feel a little bit better. Still cold and sore and achy, but it doesn’t hurt as much to breathe. So I just take it easy Sunday and watch TV for most of the day. Fiks takes care of Bonnie and the chores around the house.

Monday rolls around and Fiks goes to work, and I stay home with Bonnie while taking the Prednisone but not feeling any better. It’s like I plateaued already after 2 days, which is weird for me. Prednisone normally makes me feel great and I’m bouncing off the walls.

Anyway, Prednisone didn’t help. I still felt really sick on Thursday so I called the nurse line and they told me to go to urgent care. So Fiks and I got dressed and hopped into the truck and headed down the street to kaiser. We got checked in and waited, I got taken back for my vitals and then I got seen pretty quickly because my spo2 levels were in the 80s. So they gave me a steroid shot and a Albuterol treatment and my levels didn’t improve. My doctor said I needed to go to the emergency room for some more treatment. Back in the truck we went and over the hill to the hospital.

We got there okay and they wouldn’t let Fiks stay with me, so he went and got some dinner while I was being treated. They drew some blood, did a EKG for my heart and gave me another Albuterol treatment and my spo2 levels finally came up into the 90s, low 90s but better than the 80s. They released me around 1130 and so we made our way home.

It was really wet and raining. And Fiks and I can’t agree on where the accident happened. I say it happened opposite a fire station, he thinks it happened after a restaurant before the fire station. But we moved into the number one lane to pass someone and the back tires slipped and fishtailed. Fiks eased up on the gas and then I don’t really remember what happened minus him going “This is going to be really bad.”

I come too hanging upside down in the truck, my phone on the roof of the cab. Fiks is groaning and unconscious, but if he hadn’t been making noise with the angle his head and neck were at I would have thought he would have been dead. I managed to get myself out of the seat and to my phone and dial 911. I tell the dispatcher what happened and I start smelling gas in the cab, so I turn off the engine. Fire fighters/EMT/police are there within 5 minutes. They pull the passenger side door open and I crawl out and then one fire fighter looks in at Fiks. I hear them say the truck isn’t stable and they can’t open the drivers side door and we are leaking gas. The CHP move me out of the way as the fire fighters work to get Fiks out of the truck. He stands up and one of them goes “wow, he’s really tall!”

They make him sit back down and start wrapping his head. I knew he had a head laceration at that time because there was blood in the truck above him. CHP keeps me from looking at him, when that’s all I want to do. They get him up and escort him over to a car and I stay with my truck, asking if I can get my bag and my medicine I had just gotten out of the truck. They won’t let me back in but one of them crawls in for me and gets what I ask for before escorting me to where Fiks is. He’s now talking to CHP about what he remembers happening before we get loaded into an ambulance. He’s loaded onto a stretcher and I’m in the seat behind him.

We both get one of those collars put on us because our neck hurts. He gets hooked up for vitals and they give him some morphine and I get hooked up to some O2 again because my levels are back in the 80s. We are taken to the best trauma center in the area, and they take really good care of both of us. We’re both cut out of our clothes because they’re filled with glass/blood. But they give us blankets to stay warm. I get taken back for CTs first, and then they take Fiks back. He gets taken into a different room than I’m in once he’s done. The nurse who stays with me tells me he’s almost lost his ear and they are sewing it back on.

I tried calling a few people, but it was 2am at this point and no one was picking up. I left my brother a voicemail. I sent a group text message saying what happened and that we’d need a ride home. I reached out to my Cousin in England. I called my sister and she picked up, so I told her what happened. We talked for about 30 minutes before I had to go do more tests. I got released from the collar and then I was able to get into a private room and they got me some clothes. I couldn’t sleep, so I just lay in bed and waited until I was cleared.

The nurse asked me if I was okay with blood in order to see Fiks and I said yes. She took me to where he was and there was an ear nose and throat doctor working on sewing his ear back on. I held his hand and we chatted while he was getting worked on. The nurse with him and the doctor were very nice. Once they were done they sent him back to CT and then came back. My brother texted and said he was on his way to come pick us up.

They got Fiks some clothes, and once my brother said he was there we gathered what was left of our clothes and belongings and went to go find him. I could tell he was shocked because he didn’t say anything and his eyes went wide. We made our way to the car and then he brought us home. My sister took care of Bonnie and unlocked the house because I didn’t have my keys anymore. Fiks went to lay down in bed and I stayed on the sofa with Bonnie.

The hospital called and said there was a possibility of a small brain bleed in Fiks and he needed to go back to a hospital. I said we’d been awake for over 24 hours and needed some rest before we went. We stayed home the rest of the day. I called and talked with Mom and Poppa and told them what happened. I told Fiks brother, who said he’d come down in the next couple of days to help. Neither of us were up for driving that day, and we both had so much brain fog we couldn’t figure out how else to get over there. My brother brought us some dinner, which was super kind. He was able to crack jokes with Fiks now, so that was good to see/hear. We both went to bed early that night.

We woke up the next day and Fiks was in a bad way. His face was all swollen, his ear was still bleeding and he couldn’t see out of his right eye. We hopped into his Mazda and I drove us back to Kaiser. We got seen really quickly and put in a room. They have him some morphine and liquid Tylenol and took him for some X-rays and CTs. I just stayed in the room and read until he came back.

They turned out the lights and Ian slept for a while, I just dozed and listened to my audio book while we waited for the results. Once he was cleared and the swelling in his face had started to come down we were able to leave after getting him some medicine from the pharmacy. We then drove back home. I was fine with driving over the hill, but coming home, especially around the area where the accident happened, my heartbeat increased and my hands got really sweaty and clammy. I had to take deep breaths not to have a panic attack. We got home in one piece so that was good.

His little brother D came down on Sunday, and stayed with us until Friday, helping us out. It was so nice to have him here, so I didn’t freak out about Fiks being alone while I was at school. We went and saw the truck Tuesday, and got the important things out of it. We saw the truck, we got very lucky we were able to walk away how we did.

Schools been rough since the accident. I had to go take an exam after seeing the truck, the teacher was not able to delay it any longer. I did not do well. I’ve been struggling with focusing and remembering what to do, so I tried to make an appointment with my doctor but couldn’t get in. Thankfully she saw what happened and emailed me, and wanted to see me. So we scheduled a video visit for Friday. I borrowed the F350 for the rest of the week and swung by work. I talked with my manager, and she said I could work half days the rest of the time I’m there. (I got a new job before all this happened).

I worked a half day Friday and came home and rested before my appointment. I got given some pain meds for my constant headache since the accident that make me sleepy. They’ve helped take the edge off the pain, so that’s nice. She says I for sure have a concussion and possibly some brain trauma since the headaches are constant.

I worked Saturday, leaving a little early so I could rest before going and looking at trucks. We went to a local dealer I’d been talking too and took a few for a test drive before getting some information and leaving. I wanted to go where we’ve gotten our trucks in the past, just to see what they had. They had one with everything I wanted in it, it was just in white. We found one in blue somewhere up in San Francisco, but it was way out of budget. They wanted $1000 a month for it. They asked me what my budget was and I told them. They managed to get the white pickup into that range, so I ended up getting it with Fiks help.

Meet Eve Rose