The Puddles

On Saturday, Chris fell from a set of scaffolding at church. He was preparing the church for Christmas Eve services. This day is so important to him. He has been working on it for months. He had rented a scissorlift for church to do all of the hard work staring Monday, but he needed to get some work done prior so that he was ready for the bigger work when it arrived. While climbing the scaffolding he fell. He landed on a pew with his full weight on his elbow.

It shattered his elbow. The bone split up the length of the humorous bone and shattered the base of the bone near the elbow. He also messed up the “funnybone” nerve. And to top it off he broke his clavicle for good measure. Both surgeons that worked on him were very impressed with his injury.

He wasn’t alone. He had a friend with him to hold down the scaffolding and Ben was in the other room. So his friend Robert took him to Conroe Regional Hospital.  The staff there was fabulous.  The ER doctor advocated for him and kept calling orthopedic surgeons until one was willing to take Chris’s case.  All of the hospitals but one didn’t want to touch this case, due to the complexity.  So that brought Chris to Memorial Herman at the Medical Center.

The orthopedic team performed his surgery on Sunday morning.  They put in plates and A LOT of screws. We both can’t wait to see his X-rays!  I bet it looks amazing! A truly bionic arm!

He is in tremendous pain.  The type of injury that he has and the fact that it involved his nerves means that it is hard to stay on top of the pain.  Luckily we have a people in our family with a wealth of legal drug info.  Dave and Sarah have both been up here at the hospital helping to make sure that we stay on top of his pain management in an effective way.  Dave helped Chris navigate through the ER while I made my way down to Houston and then he stayed with Chris when I went to crash at their house for a few hours of sleep.  Sarah words of wisdom last night were particularly helpful.  Play music, massage the fingers that were causing the most pain, and keep track of the meds and time given helped get Chris through the night.

I think we are still in shock.  I am not sure what our new reality looks like.  We will take it one day at a time. In the meantime while we hold up in the little bubble of Chris’s hospital room, life moves on for our children.  Right now, they are at Grandma and Papa Grace’s house.  My sister took the kids to church yesterday so that they could be amongst our second family.  They all laughed and smiled while being at church.  It was good that they were there.  They needed the distraction.

Ben feels like this is all of his fault.  He was so strong at the hospital and behaved like a real pro. As soon as a got home, he fell apart.  He didn’t see the accident but he saw Chris in tremendous pain. “If I had just been in there, I could have kept Daddy safe.”  We reassured him that this was not his fault and this was truly an accident.

All Chris can think about is getting ready for Christmas Eve services. His first comments when he woke up were about how Sunday’s worship was taken care of and how the prep work was going for Christmas Eve.  He told the doctor that he wanted to start the pt service a day early so that he could be at church on Christmas Eve to preach and lead his church on this important day.  He is a determined man.  The same determination that wouldn’t listen to me about a 41 year old man getting on scaffolding is the same determination that will get him out of the hospital early.  He is so worried about making that worship perfect, meaningful, and honoring to God.  But we can’t predict the future.  I had no idea that we would be in the situation that we are in now.  So we will take it one day at a time and see what tomorrow brings us.