Mortality & Thankfulness
Mother's Day Back Country Rescue
As I sit here writing this, my wife and I have just wrapped up celebrating her amazing year as a new mother... but more than that, we spent the day celebrating that she and our second unborn baby (due in August) are alive! You see, this past Wednesday we both received the scare of our lifetimes — a day that started out normal but ended with a life-flight helicopter ride to the Trauma center eighty miles away from our cabin in Boise.
It started when my wife came to ask me if I had any breaks in my workday where I could join her on a walk in the woods — one of the many perks of living and working off-grid that we enjoy. With a thirty minute gap in my calendar, we set off with our two dogs for a short jaunt around our hill at 11:05 am.
Holding hands and enjoying what felt like the first real day of spring, we shared a kiss before my sixth months pregnant wife got a head of me heading down the hill. Only one hundred yards from our cabin our two dogs, a twelve pound shitzu and a one-hundred and thirty pound cane corso, started to get the ‘zoomies.’ Knowing that our bowling ball of a cane corso was less than graceful on his feet, I braced myself for a potential impact and yelled out to my wife to do the same.
As those words of caution came out of my mouth, he zoomed past me on a b-line for my wife and my voice encouraged her to turn and look in the wrong direction — towards the full speed freight train. So, instead of avoiding the wrecking ball she stepped right into his path causing him to throw on the breaks as best he could, but ultimately took out both of her legs with his body right behind her knees.
The violence with which he hit her sent her feet over her head and the first thing to impact the ground was the back of her skull... which just so happened to find the only exposed rock on our dirt road. I saw her feet in the air right as I heard the impact of her skull on the rock which reminded me of a .22 caliber rifle going off from one of my rifles. At the time of impact I watched as her whole body went limp as she crumpled to the ground.
Moving in what felt like quick sand, I made my way to her lifeless body and noticed a pooling of blood at the back of her head. My shouts to her were going unanswered and having seen the violence in which she hit the rock, I was sure she was dead. Sitting on my knees while holding her lifeless and bloody face in my hands I had to make a quick and tough decision — I had to leave her to go and get help.
As I laid her head back on the dirt I was thinking of our unborn child as I made the one hundred yard sprint back to our home, faster than Usain Bolt, to grab my fire radio and to tell our other child’s baby sitter to call for our fire chief on our landline.
By the time I had switched on my radio and contacted our county’s emergency dispatch to get any available EMS units to our location I was already halfway back down the hill to the where my wife had been laying. To my innermost joy, in the time I had been up to get my radio to the time I made it back to her (less than a minute I am sure) she had sat up — and it was only in that brief moment that I realized that she wasn’t dead.
Getting back to her was less encouraging, though. A quick look showed dilated eyes and my interrogation into what had happened proved that she was severely concussed. She wasn’t sure what had happened, why she was sitting in the dirt with blood on her shirt, and she wasn’t even sure if she was pregnant.
But, before I could get done with my line of questioning our small town calvary showed up. Our EMS crew, ambulance, and fire chief were on us in what felt like less than five minutes. Later they would tell me that the panic they heard in my voice coming over the radio indicated that the situation was no drill and that they needed to act quickly.
Once they arrived, I did my best to remove myself from the situation. Though hard, I wanted to let them do their work and get her to the helipad for a life-flight ride to Boise, all while I ran back to the house to try and figure out what to do with our one year old child and two dogs.
Thankfully, our child’s caregiver without question said “go with her, I’ve got your daughter,” which was an amazing blessing to have someone we trust on our side and ready to cover for us. I gave my daughter a kiss goodbye, asked her to say a prayer for her mommy, grabbed our wallets, and bolted out the door to the helipad.
Within thirty minutes of the impact we were watching as an Air Saint Lukes helicopter made its approach around our ten thousand foot granite peak, Mt. Greylock, and made an easy landing on the beautiful sunny day. The flight crew made their way to our ambulance to begin their assessment of my wife while I anxiously waited to see if I would be allowed to fly out with her. After an IV was set, I was approved to go with her, and we loaded up and were on our way to Boise in short order.
Despite the circumstances, my wife was now conscious and we were both able to somewhat enjoy the amazing twenty-three minute long helicopter ride. The ride itself gave us both a new perspective for just how remote we actually live, in every direction from where our home was located was nothing but wilderness, alpine lakes, and nothing-ness... the very thing that drew us to our pseudo off-grid lifestyle. We were also both consumed with thankfulness for the fire, EMS, and rescue training we had completed over the past few years, as well as the tiny thirty-eight person community that we called home.
The reflections did not last too terribly long as we crested the last mountain range and could see the skyline of the growing metropolis that is Boise. We skirted the capitol building, buzzed downtown, and followed the highway until we began to descend towards the roof of the St. Alfonsos trauma center. Wheeling into the ER from the roof helipad, I was grilled with questions about my wife... birthdate, medical history, allergies, pregnancy experience and everything else you could imagine. By the time the volley of questions slowed the doors swung open to a room where we had a team of trauma surgeons, ER nurses, and OB specialists waiting for us.
With Navy SEAL like precision they swooped in to evaluate my wife and get to work. Before we knew it, we were staring at our sixth month old (and healthy) baby on a pixelated screen, which brought immediate joy and relief to my wife and I, and helped dull the pain of the staples and sutures that were about to repair the deep laceration on the back of my wife’s head. Within thirty minutes of landing my wife had some new hardware in her head, a really terrible haircut, and the peace of mind that our child was OK as we were wheeled off to the labor and delivery unit to monitor our child for the next several hours.
From the time of her release later that Wednesday to now (Mothers Day) has been a roller coaster... she doesn’t remember much of what happened but has been in great spirits as she deals with the post-concussive symptoms such as sudden and severe vertigo, headaches, and dizziness. We are resting and focusing on recovery and taking every day to be so thankful for the fortunate circumstances in which this accident happened — making this mothers day that much more sweet and cherished that we had her with us to celebrate, something we weren’t sure would be the case just a few days ago.
For us, mothers day will forever carry more meaning than just being a day to celebrate the best mom in the world, but a day in which we can celebrate the fragility of life, proper training for emergencies, and the need to cherish every minute that we have with our loved ones.
Can't wait to see you all home again glad all is going well
Truly thankful for the positive outcome. Continued thoughts and prayers for you and your beautiful family for a speedy and uneventful recovery!