September 14th, 2007 :: The Story of Crash

This has been a long time coming. Brad and I wanted to share with everyone the fantastically crazy story of how we learned about Crash.

On Friday, September 14th at about 12:20pm, I was driving from work to home for my lunch break. There's a 4-way stop intersection about 2 blocks from work that I go through at least a few times every day to and from work. It was a beautiful day, as though we were hanging onto summer just a bit longer, so I had my windows down and was enjoying the fresh air and breeze coming through my car. I pulled up to that 4-way stop, waited my turn, and started go straight through the intersection. I was very nearly across when I saw out of the corner of my eye a car approaching too quickly on my right side and the next thing I knew I was hit and my left hand hurt. That was strange to me, I didn't understand why my left hand hurt because it never left the steering wheel. I learned quickly that I couldn't move my car at all, so it was going to stay in the middle of the intersection until a tow truck came for it. I was a little bit fuzzy in my brain after the impact and I couldn't really pull myself together to figure out what to do next. Fortunately the woman that lives on that corner came out immediately (haven't heard the impact) and checked on both of us drivers. The other driver must have been fine because I heard the neighbor woman say, "ok, good" before asking me if I was okay. I told her that I thought that my hand was broken and she said, "oh no!" And fortunately she called the police, or 911, or whoever it was that she called every time there was an accident at that intersection. She told me later that they get a couple of accidents a year there, and I later saw a For Sale sign in her yard! I wonder if they got fed up with the sound effects of living on that corner.

I knew that Brad was in a lunch time large meeting and wouldn't likely have his ringer on on his phone, but I decided I'd try calling it anyway. Mom and Dale were in an hour long conference call and wouldn't be answering their cell phones, Grandma was out of town, and I couldn't remember what the meeting/work schedule was like for Linda, so I just kept calling Brad. Fortunately Kathleen, a co-worker to Brad and mutual friend from church, heard Brad's phone vibrating on the 2nd or 3rd attempt to reach him, and he called me back. I can't imagine what it must be like to be on the other end of that kind of a phone call. Brad was very level-headed and told me to "get out of the intersection" and go to the sidewalk if I could. He was going to do everything he could to come to me. That would be a bit of a trick because he takes a bus to work because parking on campus is difficult and expensive. Thankfully Kathleen had her car on campus and volunteered to leave the lunch meeting early with Brad to drive him to me at the accident site. In the meanwhile, Brad called his mom who wasn't far away and she was able to come to me very quickly, thank goodness. Before I knew how Brad was going to get to me and that Linda was on her way, I called Brittany because she's the only other person I could think of that I knew would be on her lunch break at that precise moment. I am so blessed to have so many people around me who love and care for me enough to drop what they are doing to help me when I feel out of control, not that I'm out of control often, but I definitely felt that way in that moment.

The fire station was only a block down the street, so the fire truck was the first to respond to the scene, and the great firemen worked hard to try to help me feel more comfortable and to answer question to the police officer who came next. I can't tell you how many times I told people my address and name in that time. Not too long after that the ambulance arrived and the EMT's were really great in trying to help me stablize my hand, although everyone was pretty much convinced that I couldn't possibly have broken my hand, but maybe my wrist or thumb, and no one could figure out how even that could have happend since my hands never left the steering wheel during the impact. They put me on a strecher just as Linda was arriving. She came up to me as they were strapping me in and I just broke down and lost all emotional restraints! It was such a relief to have someone there who could take over answering questions and who would make sure that my purse made it to me again, and I can't say how deeply thankful I am that she was able to come so quickly.

They moved me to the ambulance pretty quickly, but I was so much more confident about the situation knowing that Linda was there to meet Brad, and answer questions, and all the other little things that come up in that kind of situation, like about the car that I didn't know if I'd ever drive again. Just before we pulled away, Brittany got there and they let her into the ambulance for about a minute to see me and I started to cry again. Every time someone came to help, I let go of a little more of the emotion created by the chaos of the situation. We then started to pull away to go towards the hospital, and I learned just a short time later that Brad and Kathleen were pulling up just in time to see the ambulance leave. Fortunately he was able to jump in the car with his mom and they took off for the hospital to meet me in the Emergency Room. Before Brittany left, I asked her if she would call my mom and leave a voice mail for her because I wasn't sure how soon she'd be done with her conference call.

So the EMT's were so friendly and relaxed with me, which was nice because I couldn't have otherwise felt more stress from the situation. They brought me to the ER and put me in a wheel chair, since my hand didn't require a strecher... :) And at that point it was just me again. I started answering questions for the triage desk nurse about my name and address, again, and my health insurance info, and that's when Brad got there and I lost it again. He helped answer the rest of the questions and then wheeled me over to the waiting area. Brad's mom joined us after she parked the car and eventually I was pulled into another room to get my vitals. The police officer from the scene arrived eventually and asked me more clarifying questions about the accident and we learned that he had determined certainly that she ran the stop sign and I wouldn't be held responsible for the accident. Phew!

After a few more minutes in the waiting room, they took me back to an actual exam room in the triage area. At this point I was still trying to convince everyone that it was my hand that hurt, not my wrist. So the nurse in the exam room brought me ice to try to bring down the swelling. My hand hurt from the weight of the ice though, so we had to do some tricky ice holding. My mom called and somehow we had enough reception for Brad to get the call and be able to go out and meet her to bring her into the room, and Linda got to watch as I painfully pulled the rings of my left hand so that they wouldn't be casted.

Brad got mom to the room we were in and she was another positive person to have in the room. She told me that during the conference call, she saw that she was missing a call on her cell phone and received a voice mail from it, and when she checked it, the message was from a very upbeat Brittany giving her the news of my accident. Brittany was trying hard to not make the accident sound worse or to freak out my mom, but just to give her the news so that she could join me at the ER. Yay for Brittany!

So the order of events gets a little blurry for me here, and this post has gotten very long, so I'll try to short cut it.

The ER doctor came in to check my hand/wrist/arm to try to determine if there was a break, he checked my shoulders neck and head to make sure I didn't sustain any other injuries from the accident, and then told me he'd be sending in some one to take x-rays of my hand to determine exactly the situation. During all of this he asked me if I was pregnant or could be pregnant and I answered "well, we've been trying so there's always a possibility." That meant that in the meanwhile I would take tylenol for the pain and nothing more.

By this point I had to go to the bathroom soooo badly! I was only my way out the door of the room to try to find the restroom when a nurse came by with a "pee in a cup" cup and told me where the restroom was. I really thought that this was to check for internal injuries or bleeding or something like that, so I didn't think twice about it possibly being a pregnancy test. Of course all thoughts were gone when I tried to open the cup with my broken hand, such pain, and found it very difficult to do. I finally squeezed it between my feet and opened it with my right hand. Ha!

Back in the room, there were x-rays, and another exam of some sort I think. Finally, the doctor comes back into the room after viewing the x-rays and says he has 2 things to tell us. At this point, Brad, my mom, Linda and I were all in the room together. He says "first, you're pregnant." And that was the end of concentration! Linda and my mom started crying and exclaiming and hugging all of us, Brad and I stood/sat in amazement. He then said, through the continued exclaiming, "and now let me tell you about your broken hand." Now both moms didn't hear this part because of the celebrating over the first piece of news. Brad had to catch their attention to bring them back to hear about the broken hand. In the meanwhile, the doctor had to close the room to the door because we were concerned we were disturbing other people down the hall, probably not having the same exciting news we were having.

Now don't get me wrong, I was thrilled to know we were pregnant, finally, after almost 3 years of trying. But my hand hurt soooo badly at that point, I just wanted to have some resolution and relief! He showed and explained the x-rays, discussed the temporary cast I'd get that day and the permanent cast I would get in orthopedics on Monday. They gave me the temp cast, and we left the ER.

The rest is just details, but we left elated and quite hungry. Both Brad and I had not been able to eat lunch, so we had an early dinner/ late lunch with mom, Linda and Dale at a Mexican restaurant, made lots of phone calls, both to announce the pregnancy and to get in touch with our insurance agent about the accident, fun. For the weekend, we shuffled all other plans in exchange for making more phone calls, reading the books about pregnancy that mom bought, and having lunch with Steph and Dan, Brad's sister and b-i-l. Steph was so excited when we called to tell her the news on Friday evening, that she and Dan drove down that night to have breakfast and visit with us the next day. Those crazy kids! It was great to see them so quickly and a real thrill for us to have even more people so excited to celebrate with us about the great news!

Over all, it was a fantastic weekend! Of course my hand hurt, and I did have to go through a few weeks with a wonderful purple cast that looked like a sock puppet on my hand, but the whole experience really demonstrated to us God's faithfulness on His promise to bring us healing and a baby. And that's where Crash's name came from. As Brad originally said, it's where our faith and God's faithfulness collide. As with any child, this one is a miracle, but the experience has been and will surely continue to be special in ways we couldn't have anticipated if we had been able to get pregnant right away. A test in our patience for sure, but worth the closeness we have gained to one another and to Him. And of course, the eventual gift of the little one coming soon to a hospital near us!