Saturday, January 3, 2009

Falling Ladders

Aaron needed a new ladder for Christmas. He got one. Now he needs a new ladder for his birthday.
We have a small wooden, shaky ladder that isn't very tall and has 4 legs. His parents bought him an aluminum ladder that I think will stretch out to 20ft. When it rains here, our porch fills up with water, especially right in front of our front door. So, we decided to put up gutters, just on the front porch for now. Last weekend, we got most of it finished. We needed a few more parts from Lowes to finish, so he went New Years day with the girls to go get those parts.
I was working New Year's day and I get a phone call from Aaron. Now he never calls me at work, so I knew something was wrong.
Here's the story. He was working on the last seam. He said he had been on the ladder in the same position for about 10 minutes with no problem. All of a sudden, the ladder is falling out from under him. The ladder stopped when it got under the porch and hit the concrete on the porch about 3 ft above the ground. Aaron was working on the gutters, probably 10ft up. His L leg slipped a little through some rungs and got scraped up pretty bad, when the ladder hit the concrete and he was thrown off onto his R hip. I think his leg getting caught, if just for a split second, probably helped slow him down.
Of course, all the girls were outside and Natalie was watching. Apparently, he was rolling around a little in pain, and Natalie doesn't do well with people in pain, so she went running in the house. Madelyn and Hannah came to watch Aaron, and Princess came to waller on him, probably thinking that finally someone decided to roll around on the ground and play with her.
Since he could feel all his limbs and move them all, he sent Madelyn inside to make sure that Natalie wasn't calling 911. (She has been taking a Safety for Kids class on Fridays at our Coop) She wasn't.
After lying on the ground for a few minutes and having Madelyn hold the dog off, he was finally able to painfully walk into the house, where he was able to call me at work.
The other nurses heard me asking nursy questions, so they were concerned when I got off the phone. My supervisor was standing there and there was an extra nurse that was going to take over for me when I left at 3pm (it was 1pm). So she told me to go on home and check on him.
I still had to give report and chart a few things, so I called Mom to see if she would at least go over there and watch the girls, because I knew she could get there before me. Plus, if I needed to take him to the ER, I didn't want to take the kids.
We did eventually go to the ER, since he had a small abrasion over his hip and he fell on rock. He didn't hit the padded part, but hit on a bony part. Thankfully, he didn't fracture anything.
The ER doctor was very impressed. He kept saying how good Aaron's bones must be for him not to have broken something falling from that height. We are thankful.
But he does need a new ladder. His is bent. We don't know if it bent during the fall, or if it bent and caused the fall.
He did fix the last seam that night, after going to the ER, by putting our old rickety ladder on top of the jeep and having me hold the ladder still while he climbed up to finish. If he had fallen off a 2nd time, I think I would have taken him all the way to another hospital, instead of the one where I work. But the gutters are done, now we wait for rain to see how well done they are.
I was able to work 10 of my scheduled 20 hours this week. They called me Tues. and told me to stay home. Then they called me on Wed. morning trying to get me to stay home, but the supervisor said he would call some of the other nurses to see if they wanted the day off. One did and he called me back and let me work.
Today, Aaron left to go hiking with some of the men from church. Apparently, there is a BIG TREE somewhere in the forest. It is probably a 2 mile hike to the tree. A hard hike. So he is armed with ibuprofen. The hike would normally be a breeze for him, since he does that every day, we were just a little worried about his hip. Don't know what the girls and I will do today.

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