Emergency Room and a Deer

Last Thursday night was a normal Thursday night. The kids were in bed, Ken and I were wading through a messy house without the energy to clean it, wanting to sit down at our computers and check our emails and read a few blogs. Ken decided to take a shower and I decided to take the top layer off the kitchen. After a little cleaning I went back to ask him a question and he mentioned that he felt really dizzy in the shower. Neither one of us thought anything about it until he continued to be dizzy after about 30 minutes, especially when he layed his head back; he said the room spun in circles. I looked up "vertigo" on the computer and it basically said Vertigo was a symptom of something else sometimes serious and you should see a physician as soon as possible. We thought we would wait a little bit and let him rest, but when this continued for about 45 minutes and being accompanied by nausea and shortness of breath probably from anxiety, we called the nurse line. After a lengthy conversation about symptoms and family history (father had a quadruple bypass at 55) the nurse said she thought he might be having a heart attack and should call an ambulance.

Well, my husband along with the majority of our family would need to be passed out and in serious distress to call an ambulance. So we called a neighbor, to watch the kids until my mother could get here, and gathered our things and got in the car to go to the hospital. I was a little nervous thinking I may have to call 911 from the road and was reviewing my CPR skills in my head and I began to think if I would have to break his ribs to do effective CPR... but we made it to the hospital... and let me just tell you a secret. If you have to go to the emergency room tell them you have chest pain, or that a nurse from a nurse line said she thought you were having a heart attack... you will get rushed in and immediately attended to...niiiiice.

Well, after about 45 minutes of initial monitoring, they put him took him to the "heart" wing of the hospital to monitor him for a few more hours. They had taken some blood to test his heart enzymes and they needed to wait 3 hours to check it again. At that point is was 12:45am, and I was thinking I should have called the ambulance. So I told my husband I loved him, and to tell the nurses I would be in the grey Honda Oddessy; just knock on the back window if they needed me. I will be sleeping in the back seat... you think I'm kidding...

I awoke around 3:45 and went back in to find they were releasing him. The doctor said he really thought Ken had a bad case of Vertigo which may have been caused by a strange virus he had had the week before and may come back off and on for a few weeks. He said his heart seemed fine from their monitors, but went ahead and scheduled him for a heart stress test next week. So we packed up our things, thanked the nice nurses, thanked the Lord that we had not called an ambulance, and loaded back in the car to let my mom go home and get some sleep and mourn the sleep that we will not get as we greet our children as they awoke... or at least the sleep I will not get.

As we were driving home at 4:30am chatting about the nights events, right before we went through the town that is closest to us, a deer came flying across the road from my left. Now in all these split seconds as I felt relief knowing I was barely going to miss this animal, a second deer came out of the woods right behind him leaving me no option but to hit him straight on never swerving never loosing control, but watching him spin about 3 times on his side into the ditch on the left hand side of the road and still moving his head when he stopped.

While I was yelling, "I can't believe I killed a deer," and was even more in shock of the nights events, Ken told me we needed to stop and look at the damage. "Damage?" I said. "You think the car is messed up?" Well, we stopped and sure enough the whole drivers side was crushed in. I couldn't believe the damage. Well, were able to drive it home, and then to the body shop the next day and they took it from us immediately saying it was undriveable. So now we have a cool Chevy Impala with a sunroof that does not fit our entire family.

God has such a sense of humor. Thank you Lord that my husband is alive; that you have forced him to get his heart checked, and that I have a cool car to drive if daddy's not with us (something I will not experience for many more years I'm sure).