Traumatic Day

Yesterday, around 2pm, I got a phone call from Annie that her and my mom had just been involved in a car accident. They had a green light, pulled out into the intersection, and a kid ran the red and sideswiped them. He hit the rear door on the passenger side, and spun their car around so it was facing a bus. They quickly determined that there were no major injuries and after trading information with the other driver, they drove the car home.

Annie has been in two other car accidents in the last five years, and each time, it messed her back up, so they decided to play it safe and take her to the hospital to be checked out. We figured it would be a fairly uneventful “take it easy, use ice packs, and have some ibuprofin” kind of trip.

While Annie was talking to the entry-area nurse, and describing where her back hurt, she mentioned that her neck was a little stiff. At the very mention of the word “neck,” that nurse was on the phone, and within minutes two male nurses showed up with a neck brace and a backboard, which they promptly forced her to lie down on.

Watching her get strapped to a backboard was pretty horrifying, and Annie was clearly a little freaked out, in addition to the pain. They wheeled her into a room, and another nurse came to ask where it hurt, and determined that she was hyperventilating, so she hooked her up to some oxygen, and asked her to try to slow her breathing.

At the time, I was pretty irritated, because they had been trying so hard to get her onto the board, that none of them seemed to notice she was freaking out, which made her back tense up, which made everything worse. However, after about 20 minutes on her back with the oxygen, she had calmed down, and her back had relaxed, it became obvious that was the best thing they could have done, because she hadn’t been able to really take all the pressure off her back until she laid down.

After another 30 minutes or so, the doctor came in and prodded her to check for pain, and determined that her neck was fine. We helped unstrap her from the board, and she was able to stand up and stretch a little. After that, it all went pretty quickly. The doctor said she had probably just strained her back, and that she didn’t see any need for x-rays, so she sent us home with a prescription for Vicadin.

By the time we got home, Annie seemed to be totally fine, and after taking a hot bath to relax, we ended up going out to dinner with my parents for my birthday, which had been the original plan for the night. When we got back from that, Annie took a pill, and went to bed, and she’s still sleeping now.

So in summary, Annie’s been in her third car accident, but appears to be uninjured except for aggrivating her back injury, which we are very used to dealing with, so everything should be fine.