The day after Jacob's birthday was not a good one. I had just gotten home from gymnastics with the girls and was getting ready to cook dinner when Dad (Herb) called me. He said he was driving Jacob to the hospital because he had hurt his hand. He told me Jacob had gotten his hand caught in the tailgate of the dump truck at work and some of his fingers were looking really bad. I found out what hospital they were going to and ran the girls to Mom's (Diane's) house and took off. The hospital, St. Mary's, was about 40 minutes away. When I got there they were doing a shift change so they would not let me back in the ER to be with him. When I finally got to go back he was laying in the bed and was so white. He was able to talk, but you could tell he was in a lot of pain. I don't think it took the Dr.'s too long to decide that he needed a specialist so he would need to be transferred to a different hospital. Setting that in motion, however, took several hours. In the meantime, they tried to clean him up a little and gave him drugs for the pain. Dad and I sat by him talking and Jacob told us what happened. They had been unloading leech rock at a job site and a little bit was stuck in the tailgate so it wouldn't close all the way. For some reason, Jacob reached with his hand to pull it out. As he was doing this, Dad also did something unusual for him and pulled the tailgate shut with the hydraulics (he often forgets until he is driving down the road). It was a miracle, but Jacob heard the hissing so he started pulling his hands away. Both of his hands had been in there up to his forearms, but he managed to pull everything out except the tips of two fingers on his left hand (his middle finger and ring finger, just below his fingernail). Dad didn't know anything was happening and started pulling the truck away so Jacob ran behind him a little yelling until he got his attention.
When they gave Jacob medicine at the hospital, he told them he hardly ever took medication so when he has it, it hits him hard. They gave him some meds through his IV and the three of us kept talking to pass the time. Jacob started to get sleepy and we were hoping he would go to sleep so he wouldn't be suffering so much. We heard a man who was brought in to the room (curtained room) next to Jacob. He must have been hard of hearing because the doctor kept talking really loud and repeating himself saying that the man was having a heart attack. Dad and I were sitting on opposite sides of the bed when we heard Jacob's monitors start beeping. The next thing we knew, literally 8 doctors, including the one who was helping with the heart attack patient, and several nurses came running in. Dad and I jumped out of the way and were holding on to each other wondering what was going on. As soon as I heard them say "Grab the paddles," I almost passed out. I just remember thinking that's what they always say in the movies just before someone dies. Luckily they didn't have to use the paddles and they were finally able to rouse Jacob after several minutes. The medicine had made his heart rate slow way, way down. The doctor said "I guess you weren't kidding when you said drugs hit you hard."
Once all that happened, things changed more for me. I knew things were serious and from listening to the doctors, I knew he would probably have to have the tips of those fingers amputated. But before that, I didn't ever really consider the possibility of him dying. He seemed so much more fragile after that and when he did doze off, both Dad and I kept a close watch on his chest to make sure he was breathing.
After a couple of hours Jacob was taken by ambulance to Arrowhead hospital, about an hour away. I followed him part way in my car and Dad drove his back to the midway point so it was by the turn off to Wrightwood and then he drove us the rest of the way. When I first started following them I kind of felt like an ambulance chaser-except they didn't have the lights and siren going. Of course, they were doing road construction and had the freeway shut down to one lane so we seemed to sit in traffic forever. When we got there, Jacob's brother, Joe, and his cousin, Eric, were already there. They weren't able to tell us much as Jacob hadn't been there long, but at least they could tell us where to go.
The nurses at this hospital were mostly terrible. First of all, they were soft spoken, so even I had a hard time hearing them. When we asked them to repeat what they said, they acted all mad. When they handled Jacob's hand, they just weren't very gentle with him. They had to soak his hand in a bucket of water for a while but instead of adjusting his bed and giving him pillows so it was easy, they put it up high and made him hold the bucket himself-as if he had nothing else to worry about. Thankfully Joe was back there with me a lot so he was able to deal with them. He was an emt so he knew different medical stuff. He would insist on different things to make stuff easier on Jacob that I didn't even think about. Several hours later, when they finally got Jacob's hand cleaned up they decided he did need to have the tips amputated because they were so bad. The nerve endings were exposed and the bones at the tips were completely crushed. I was ready to go outside to wait but Joe wanted to stay and watch the surgeon. They wouldn't let him so he was a bit bummed about that. The surgeon and the resident? who were working with Jacob were much better than the nurses, thankfully. They took the time to explain things to Jacob so he could hear and understand them and they were very gentle when examining him. The surgery took about an hour, one of the longest of my life. Finally they came out to tell us things went well and we could go see him in another hour. When they were ready to release Jacob, they gave us a prescription for some meds to pick up. Problem was, the only pharmacy that the hospital knew was open at that hour (4 am), was located about half an hour in the opposite direction of Wrightwood. Thankfully, Joe spoke up again and insisted that they give Jacob more meds so he could just go home and we wouldn't have to make a side trip taking us two hours to get home.
It was nearly 5 when we got home and Jacob went right to bed. I don't know how much sleep he got, but I didn't really get any. We switched sides of the bed and put a big body pillow between us so that I was nowhere near his hand. I tried to sleep but I had to keep feeling his chest to make sure he was still breathing. I was so paranoid that he would have another reaction to medication. He was really restless in his sleep so every time he moved I had to see if I could help. It was a long night.
I was so thankful to have the girls staying with Jacob's mom. They knew he had been hurt because I told them before I dropped them off because they were with me when I got the phone call and knew something was wrong. I explained what I knew about his fingers and said he would be ok. I guess I didn't explain good enough because the next day Makayla told us that they were all up late at night after grandma went to bed and they were all crying and taking turns praying because they were afraid that Jacob was dying. When we heard this we just wanted to cry. We were so sad they had to go through that. I went and got the girls first thing the next morning so they could see him themselves and know he was ok.
These were the pictures we took throughout the night because Jacob's mom asked us to keep her updated so the girls would know he was ok. Jacob kept saying he wanted to smile in the pictures so the girls wouldn't think he was doing so bad. The picture with the oxygen mask was at the first hospital just before he was transferred. The one in the bed was shortly after he arrived at the second hospital. They had not yet started working on his fingers, this was just the way they bandaged his fingers for transport. The last picture was when we finally got home.
We thought the worst of things was over and that things would start getting better. Ha Ha!
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