Early on the morning of Saturday, July 31st, my brother in law woke us up with the horrible news that my father in law had hit a deer on his motorcycle and had broken both legs, both arms, and several ribs, causing his lung to collapse. He was being life flighted from Roosevelt hospital to Salt Lake's University of Utah Medical Center, and the family was gathering at the hospital to meet the helicopter. There are a lot of us Taylors, so we caravaned from one house to the next collecting brothers and sisters. When we arrived at the hospital, they told us we needed to meet with a social worker. Right then we thought he'd died en route. But she was just an appointed liaison between us and the hospital.
We spent the next several hours in the surgical ICU waiting room hoping for good news. I know we were all in shock ourselves because we laughed and joked almost the whole time (I remember that same reaction in my family when my Mom died). When Les (aka Dad) arrived, his sons gave him a blessing, and then the doctors worked through the night and well into the next day to stabilize him. He was supposed to go into surgery to repair his crushed wrist and 16 broken ribs, so we all went home to catch some sleep before returning later that day for his post-op recovery. But when we returned, we learned that he didn't have the surgery because they couldn't stabilize his breathing. He was awake, so we got to see and talk with him two at a time. We were relieved to learn that he hadn't broken his legs, but he was still raw, bloody, bruised, and swollen all over. Dad had had a helmet on, but the crash obviously would have killed him instead of the deer if the deer hadn't born the brunt of the impact.
The next day Dad was more awake when we visited. He couldn't talk with the breathing tube down his throat, but he was communicating with hand squeezes and blinks, just like in the movies. The doctors decided they couldn't wait any longer for the surgery on Dad's left hand, so they prepared for that. We waited most of the day for them to start. But then a more-serious trauma came in, and Dad's surgery was bumped again. By that night, Dad was frustrated, in pain, and ornery. We'd gotten some more stories, though: When the doctors in the Roosevelt hospital had discovered the collapsed lung and started to intibate Dad, he frantically started shouting, "DNR! DNR!" until they explained that he was still conscious and therefore didn't need resuscitation. And when the helicopter arrived, it was too small, so they had to cram him inside with his legs up by the pilot's seat. Fortunately, he was out cold for that trip. And Dad kept asking his visitors if they would sneak him in a soda.
On the third day, the doctors were finally able to operate. The surgeon took only a couple of hours to completely reconstruct Dad's left wrist and hand, indicating later that he wasn't sure he was going to be able to save it. We all waited for an alarming six hours for Dad to wake up from the anesthesia so they could discuss the plate they wanted to put in his back to secure the 16 rib breaks and hopefully help him heal faster. When Dad finally awoke, we had to keep talking to him for hours to keep him from slipping back under. He was hungry, thirsty, and in even more pain. But the good news was that he was moving his fingers--and they had determined that his right hand wasn't broken.
By the fourth day, Dad had had enough. He'd been awake long enough to feel like he was being patronized; he felt like he was starving and dehydrated, and he was extremely restless--typical Les. He decided he didn't want the back surgery but would rather recover slowly in his own home on his own diet. Of course, the hospital wasn't going to let him go home immediately, so they spent the next two days "stepping down" Dad's meds and feeding him. He looked 100 times better within hours after eating, so maybe he was onto something there. But as they let up off the pain meds, he nearly changed his mind. His stubborness won out, and--largely thanks to the miracle of modern medicine and an incredible hospital staff--on the sixth day after the near-fatal accident, Dad went home. Of course, it'll be years before he'll be truly recovered. But he's not selling the bike. Man, I love that guy!
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