Family Matters

The emergency room was not where I thought I would be spending most of my night last night.

Art's brother Joe, and their friend Wayne went hiking on Tuesday. Well, hiking is a bit tame. They went mountain climbing. They decided to climb the north face of the Twin Sisters all the way to the summit.

They spent all of Tuesday and much of Wednesday summiting, and they began their descent around 6pm on Wednesday.

Joe made part of his descent much faster than planned. He slipped over a ridge and landed on packed snow four feet below. Not a terrible drop in itself, but he kept sliding and tumbling over packed snow (read: ice) and rocks for about another hundred yards (football field length). When he stopped, he was a little surprised that he wasn't dead. When Wayne reached him, he thought Joe was dead.

Apparently, head wounds bleed like crazy.

Miraculously, Joe and Wayne hiked the rest of the way down, and Joe taught Wayne how to drive stick as Wayne was bringing him to the hospital. Joe never even lost consciousness. They got to the ER around 1:30am, and Wayne called us around 2:30. When we got there, Joe was just getting back from his first round of x-rays.

At 7am, after numerous x-rays, a cat scan, some staples and a few stitches, they released Joe and we drove him home.

The extent of his injuries? A small gash on his head (thus the staples), and cut up ear (stitches), and some fractures in his cheekbones and eye socket. He didn't break one bone. He didn't even have a concussion!

His face is pretty swollen, his whole body is bruised and scraped, but he's okay! ("Okay" in the sense that he isn't dead, and he's not even in the hospital. He doesn't need meds, just a lot of rest). He's probably going to have plastic surgery in a couple of weeks for the bones in his face, but even that is pretty minor. It really just looks like he got into a fight. You would never guess that he went flying down a mountain.

Even more miraculous is his attitude. While we were sitting with him in his hospital room, he kept telling us how amazing the experience was (minus the fall), how beautiful the view was, and how we need to get his camera to look at all the incredible pictures he took. And he wasn't really concerned about his pain, he just wanted to drink some juice and eat something. I have yet to hear him complain.

He's handling it extremely well (even better than Wayne). I think Wayne was a little traumatized by the whole experience, not to mention that he is also sore and tired. I think today's agenda (for everyone) is rest, rest, and more rest. Art will have to work a lot more, and if Joe really has to get plastic surgery in two weeks, than he'll be off work for at least a month.

But really. This whole thing could have been SO much worse, but he's basically fine.

Praise God.