Mickey's Accident-5/4/11

Hey everyone, I've got the story of Mickey's accident written up below. The pictures are ones I took yesterday. I'll post about his hospital stay over the course of a few more posts. Writing this up and taking the pictures are a kind of therapy for me but I still think I'll need to see someone. I'm okay until night time when I'm trying to fall asleep. Then, all the worst pictures pop up in my mind. :( So, here's the story and if you don't want to read it, no worries. I'll have some fun scrappy stuff and kid stuff in a few days.

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It was the evening of Wednesday the 4th and Andrew and I had decided to take the kids to get ice cream. I grabbed a couple coupons and told Andrew that I needed to put some make up on. When I was done I stepped out our master slider to get the kids.

I saw Mickey on the slide and in an instant I realised what had happened. He had attached the dog leash to the play structure at the top of the slide and then put it around his own neck and either fell or tried to go down the slide on his own. He was on his belly, feet down. I screamed his name repeatedly and ran out to him. I pushed him back up the slide and then ran around to the steps to get up to him. When I took the leash off his neck I saw that his chin was purple and he wasn't breathing and I was so afraid that he was dead.

I lifted him up and carried him off the play structure and laid him on the grass. I was now screaming for Andrew. Mickey still wasn't breathing and I couldn't find a pulse. Andrew ran towards me and I screamed for him to call 911. He ran back into the house and I began chest compressions. I didn't have to do them for very long, maybe 30 seconds when he started breathing again. It wasn't normal breathing however, it was a kind of gasping, sporadic breathing.

By this time, Andrew was back with 911 on the phone and he started relaying questions to me. I grabbed the phone from him so I could answer them directly. I looked up and noticed that two people were walking across our lawn. It was our neighbors, Chris and Cindy. I hadn't known it before but Cindy is a nurse. She helped me answer the 911 dispatchers questions and we told them about his weird breathing and that he wasn't responsive and his eyes were rolled up in the back of his head.

Waiting for the paramedics was awful. We live a bit south of town and because of the way the wind was blowing, we could hear them long before they arrived. I was so afraid that he would stop breathing before they got to us. When they arrived, I told them what happened and they started to cut off his clothes and get him ready to transport. They told me that he was going to be taken by Life Flight to OHSU and that I couldn't ride with him.

My neighbor, Cindy, drove me out to the air strip across the street from us where Life Flight would be landing as the paramedics said that the Life Flight crew might have some questions for me. After they landed the crew didn't get Mickey from the ambulance right away and I found out later that it was because they were intubating him so they could help him breath.

My mom had arrived to take Audrey and Andrew and I went back to the house with Cindy. She told us to pack some clothes and toiletries and she would drive us to OHSU. When we got there I ran straight to the ER admitting and was told that a social worker would be coming for us. She took us into the Pediatric ICU's waiting room and the on call doctor came to talk to us. He was very straight forward and told us that at this moment every outcome for Mickey was still on the table. He told us that Mickey was posturing which is movements that are a sign of a major brain injury. He wanted to chill Mickey to help prevent any more damage to Mickey's brain. I had actually read about this before and was so glad he had suggested it.

After a while in the waiting room, we were taken back to see Mickey. It was so distressing to see him. I've kind of blocked a lot of it from my mind. He was moving around because they were chilling him and a lot of it looked like posturing and a lot of it looked like he was trying to warm up and to get the tubes out of his mouth. We tried to calm him when he thrashed and to stay out of the way of the nurse and doctors as they tried to cool him.

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So, that's it for Wednesday. All this took place from about 7:00 am to midnight. I'll be back soon with the rest of the hospital stay and then some thoughts on the whole experience. Thanks for all your thoughts and prayers during this whole thing. They have helped so much and we love you all!