Continued from: When Your Child Is Hurt–The Unexpected Trauma Injury
Our Lives have never been the same since the day my 9-year-old son was seriously injured and taken by Life Flight to the trauma hospital. Our family had been enjoying an ordinary snow day when tragedy struck, we watched the helicopter take off with Sean inside and scrambled to figure out how to get through the icy roads to the trauma hospital.
It was about an hour since the phone call and our world was upside down. It was only around lunch time when we let our son go play with his best friend as they did almost every day. We just had no idea the boys would be given sleds and sent out to play on the streets unsupervised.
My son took one last ride down a street which is an 18% grade. The sun had just set and everything re-froze. The fire department estimated the impact was 70-90 mph when he lost control and hit a mailbox post with his left leg. He broke his femur bone and severed his lower leg nearly completely. As he was being transported to the hospital a doctor was called to amputate my son’s leg.
Of course, we didn’t know this because we hadn’t even seen our son since he was given permission to play Nintendo with his friend. It took us a good half hour to call all the important people we needed to notify and find someone with a 4-wheel drive to get us to the hospital. Once we arrived we entered the emergency room, still stunned and not yet feeling the complete impact of what had just happened.
Our family was taken to a dimly lit waiting area which was extraordinarily comfortable and nice. Eventually, different groups of doctors, nurses, social workers and other hospital type people started to meet with us. Several tests and different procedures had been done, and we were informed that there was a very slim chance his leg might be saved, but it was experimental in the fact that this method had never been used on a child who had shattered two growth plates in the same leg.
We were told there was a chance things might go well and if they didn’t then they may eventually have to amputate anyway. And we stood there in shock because just hours before I was making fudge and life was normal. I remember feeling calm on the outside and completely hysterical in my heart. We agreed there was no other choice then to try and save our 9-year old son’s leg and we were given the chance to see him before the 6-8 hour surgery started.
To be continued…
Related Blogs:
- Part 1 When Your Child Is Hurt–The Unexpected Trauma Injury
- 5-Things To Know If Your Child Has To Fly To A Trauma Hospital
- Life Flight Membership