Monday, April 18, 2011

Tony's Accident

This year has had its ups and downs. Def more ups than downs I'd say. I've won some cool things this year (up) , moved to Utah from Arizona (down..but also a bit of an up), date nights with Tony every week (up!) , telecommuting for my job from Az (up!), no more roommates! (up!) but yesterday was an up and also a down day. For those of you not on Facebook to get my status updates , here was my Saturday.

Started out so great. Tony went to stand in line at the Apple store at the Gateway mall (we are getting the ipad 2 because I won it from my orthodontist) but the line had 30-40 ppl in it by the time he got there. 


 There was a big marathon going on and Gateway mall was the ending place so it was already crowded early in the morning before the mall opened!

The line went around the corner for the Apple Store. You can also see a marathoner running by. Kinda cool!

Then, he went to stand in line at the bridal expo for me so we could be one of the first 150 people in line to get a free getaway (which ended up not being completely free. boo) 

We left and went to Kneaders to eat a late breakfast/early lunch and he was going to drop me back off at the show but we decided to take care of some bank stuff. Did that (kind of) and I was going to head down to Provo to meet some friends at the high school there for a different bridal show. 


Tony went to the man expo with his friend Marc. (Guys in Utah, dont go, Tony said it was "lame, lame, lame") Guess there was not a lot of people or booths there. I had a good time at the bridal show (got my hair done - see below!) and shopping at the mall w/my friends, then we went to Mapleton so I could get Tony's pants hemmed. We are hanging out there and I get a call from him. This is where the day goes from good to bad.


  

He was on the phone  telling me he had been hurt in an accident and he was in an ambulance and he didnt know how bad it was. I was like what?! So I was quickly able to leave Mapleton where I was and get my car and drive the 40 minutes to the IMC , the hospital where Tony was taken to. I went to the ER side and they told me where to find him and I went in the room to find him. That was hard, I was able to stay strong though, amazingly enough even though I was super sad seeing him in so much pain. After a few phone calls we were able to get a couple guys from his ward at church to come give him a blessing. Then they took him away up to surgery.

So here's what happened: he was building our bed at his house and was cutting the wood with a circular saw blade. He doesnt know how it happened but somehow he ended up cutting his hand (fingers) instead of the board. He went in to get help from his roommates , not realizing they had left and gone out. He had gotten his phone to dial for help and a towel to wrap his hand in but at that point he was starting to go into shock and was feeling light headed when his neighbors who were outside heard him calling for help and got an ambulance over. I talked to Tony when he was in the ambulance and then the medic who said he had hurt one of his fingers. I thought , okay, hopefully this isnt too bad (totally forgetting until on the way to the hospital that he was going to buy a saw that afternoon to start working on our bed) so yea when I got to the hospital it was a bit worse than one finger.

Surgery was supposed to last 1-4 hours. He went in at almost 9 and didnt get out til about 2:30 in the morning. No updates the entire time so obviously I was going crazy with worry and what-if's! My good friend Aimee and her husband and daughter came to sit with me and also my sister Laura and her husband came! They all stayed for a good while and then had to leave. Laura came back after dropping Rocky off to a friend and sat with me until the Dr. came out with an update.



The report from the dr/plastic surgeon is that Tony had baldy damaged his pointer finger to the point where there was not much bone even left. They tried to repair it but it was not working so they were not able to save the finger. The middle finger was damaged but they were able to reconnect the veins (so amazing!) , tendons and fuse the bone together. It has a pin in it and will take 6 weeks or longer to heal but it will be okay. Not 100% function expected but it will be able to stay on his hand. His ring finger had some damage so they fixed that and he nicked his pinky.

The door to his room which had to be kept at 75*. Too hot for poor Tony who is always warmer than colder! We spent Sunday sleeping off and on (mostly Tony) but neither one of us had slept very well on Saturday night.  I was online a lot (thank goodness for free wireless!) keeping people updated and we were both on the phone with family and friends, letting them know what happened. Huge thanks to Tony's friends Russ and Cheri who brought me some yummy dinner.

 A real breakfast on Monday morning. Sure beat a day of liquid diet all day on Sunday.

 The left hand that he hurt. Pin sticking out of his middle finger. Makes my stomach kind of turn to look at it. Guess its going to be this way for the next 6 weeks so it can heal. He broke the knuckle and he got the finger bones fused together. I'm glad they were able to save this finger.


Tony & I before I head home to work for an hour and then around 11:30 am I got to pick him up! We filled his prescriptions at Walmart and got some food then headed home. He seems to be in decent spirits and I'm trying to assist him as much as I can. He can walk and get around okay but is mostly trying to rest and take it easy. Love having him out of the hospital but a huge shoutout to the staff at IMC for their care of him and concern and the cleaning staff that made the room feel like there were no germs.Thats a big deal to me. ;-)

Now, on to the road of recovery. Stay tuned.

2 comments:

Ashley Gilbert said...

Oh I am so sorry to hear about Tony! Yeah I would never have known if you didn't post it here on the blog! I will keep you and Tony in our prayers and I hope that he heals up quickly!

adamandrebeccacoughran said...

Poor guy! That sounds like a nightmare. We will pray that he recovers well.