Accident and First Night

Fred was in a bicycle accident on Tuesday afternoon riding down Hesperus hill. He was alone and wearing a helmet. We think a rock caused the crash. There was a car behind him that saw the whole thing and called in the accident.

The accident happened a little before 4 in the afternoon, and I got a call from the emergency room a little before 5. What an awful call to receive. I was told that when they got to him he was unconscious and not doing a very good job of breathing on his own, but they intubated him in the field quickly. Between the time of being told he was unconscious and that they were taking him in for a CT scan to look for brain activity I went into shock. I called my mom and she planned to meet me at the emergency room and I would go pick up Kalyn. Having Kalyn in the car on the drive helped me maintain some sense of calm and carry on a conversation with her.

When we got to the hospital my mom and Peter and Tom were already there and the doctor came to talk to us. Honestly, I don't remember much of what they said other than the fact that they wanted to send him to Denver. He had a broken scapula, clavicle, a deap puncture wound on his elbow, road rash and bruising over his entire body, and most serious of all, a head injury.

I was able to fly with him on the plane as copilot and there were two nurses in the back with him. They said his vitals were good and stable during the flight. I was still feeling pretty numb but able to hold a positive outlook on what was going to happen and I could also feel a lot of love and support holding me up as word was spreading.

An ambulance picked us up from the airport and took us to the emergency room at Swedish. At the ER there was a whole team of doctors and nurses waiting for him and began to examine him. That part was hard to watch and I nearly passed out. The doctors talked to me and again, a lot of it went over my head, but I did gather the fact that the swelling from the brain injury was not bad enough to require surgery at the time.

He was put into the Critical Care Unit (ICU) and the nurse was able to get him to move his arms and legs. Family and friends started to arrive shortly thereafter and helped keep me company. My step dad had flown in that night and we got a hotel about 3 miles away from the hospital around midnight and were able to get about 2 hours of sleep that night.