Hospital Pictures/Little Hero: Desert Vacation Part 5

OK, so I left off with my Mom getting into the ambulance and heading for Burns in my last post. Here she is in the ER, finally getting some good pain medication. This nurse was her new best friend! Great looking splint that the EMT's made for her. The ER doctor was at a loss as how to get it off her. The nurse simply handed him a pair of scissors and smiled:)

After the ER doctor got the splint off, we saw the ankle for the first time. The only bleeding that had occurred was due to her ankle bracelet rubbing on the inside of her boot. Luckily no bones poking through. The EMTs even managed to get her motorcycle boots off her without having to cut them. Boy, was she happy about that!

This cracked me up how the ER doctor posed with Mom's ankle. He was really nice and enjoyed joking around with Mom. The picture doesn't show it well, but the way it was laying was seriously grossing me out to where I couldn't hardly look at it. The X-rays showed that she had broken both leg bones near the ankle and they couldn't tell how bad the ankle was because it was such a mess. They decided to send her to Bend that night for surgery in the morning. Stacie and clan met up with her in Bend while we returned the next day with Larry to the desert to pack him up so he could get all their stuff to Pendleton. Apparently, she had the best ankle surgeon in Bend from what everyone was telling her. It took a plate and 8 screws to put her back together again. She's at home now and doing well. She's already on half the dose of pain pills they prescribed for her. Man, I wish I had her pain tolerance!

This is a picture of our little 5 year old hero. Josiah was the hero of the day. He had a few minor scrapes to show off. We will definitely be getting him a full-face helmet the next time we go dirt-biking. He was thrown away from the bike when Mom hit a rut going to fast. It was an easy road we were on and so I think she just wasn't expecting such a sharp rut. He said he ate some dirt and ran back to his Grandma. She said he started to cry, but she told him she needed him to be calm and she needed his help. She said he went into helper-mode very quickly. First thing she had him do was get the bike off her. No small feat for a 5 year old. It took him a few tries, but he managed to lift it enough to where she could get her leg out from under the bike. Praise God! She said it was all she could do to lift her leg up (because it was freely dangling) and place it on top of the bike because she knew she had to get it elevated. She told him to get the backpack off the bike and he gave her water, sun blocked himself and covered her with her shirt and himself with a towel. Like I said in a previous post, it was hot that day. She told him stories and nursery rhymes and had him go to the top of the hill and wave the towel as a distress signal. He kept her out of shock for the 2 1/2 hours it took for us to get back to her with the SUV. What a trooper! That night, when we were finally eating dinner in Burns, he very tiredly asked me if he had done the "manly thing". I assured him that he had indeed. The next morning we took him to the "Big R" store and let him pick out a "hero toy". We bragged him up to the cashiers and they just thought he was wonderful. I was so glad when he asked if we could go back to the desert to finish our vacation. When we went did go back to the desert the next day, we soaked him in the Alvord Hot Springs really good and his scrapes are now almost completely gone.