If you are visiting this post, and it's your first time reading about Chase's accident, you are on PART 2 of a series of posts telling the story of Chase's injury. Click here for PART 1.
So when I last left off, the doctor at urgent care had just told us, quite immediately, that Chase needs more immediate care at an actual hospital. The urgent care staff had offered to call us an ambulance, but I didn't want to waste any time waiting for one. Remember that Kennedy and Morgan had been in my car in the parking lot at urgent care this whole time. It had only been about a half hour, but taking care of a newborn in a car for a half hour can feel like an eternity. Honestly, thank God Morgan was there to take care of Kennedy during this time, because juggling a baby and a hurt husband would not have been easy. Okay, now back to the story.
I told the doctor that I would just drive us to Sharp Hospital in Kearny Mesa. It was about a 15 minute drive, and if I drove fast, would only be about 10. I scooped up my bag on one arm and Chase on the other, and we made our way slowly to the car in the dimly lit parking lot. Chase was mumbling and barely conscious. As we hobbled closer to the car, I couldn't make out any of the the words he was saying through the moans and the groans he was making.
The Car Ride There
As soon as we made it to the car, Morgan jumped out to help me get Chase loaded in the passenger side. He had stolen (or they had gladly given us) the bucket from Urgent Care that he was using to regurgitate everything he had eaten for what seemed like his entire life. Sorry to be graphic, but truly he puked way too many times to even count that night. With bucket in hand, we got him in, buckled his seat belt and we were off to the hospital.
I don't think I've ever driven so fast in my life. If you live in San Diego, you know the traffic in P.B.,you know how long it can take you to get out and I was NOT having it. I was weaving in and out of cars to try to get to the hospital as fast as I could. Chase started to say things to me like " It hurts so bad" " I don't think I'm going to make it" and "I want to die" which quickly turned into just screams and sobs, because the pain was so excruciating. Ladies and Gentlemen, I have never seen my husband cry one single tear in relation to any sort of pain, ever. His eyes welled SLIGHTLY on our wedding day, but as far as emotion goes that's about the extent of what I have seen from him. This was on another level.
I was trying to concentrate on driving, but also reassure him that he WOULD make it and he WOULD be okay. My sister Morgan was also reassuring him from the back seat, but to no avail. I don't even think Chase was in his mind while this was all happening. He didn't seem like he was there and like all of these were just gut reactions to the immense amount of pain he was in.
At the Hospital
After what seemed like an eternity, we arrived at Sharp's emergency room. I pulled into the round about and jumped out of the drivers seat to help Chase get into the hospital doors. Morgan went to park the car in the parking garage as we hobbled inside. A nurse saw me struggling to keep him upright and ran to help me while another grabbed a wheel chair. At this point, Chase was barely conscious. He was hanging his head low in the wheel chair, saying mubblings to the affect of something like "I just need to sleep". I just kept telling him he couldn't sleep yet and that he had to keep his eyes open.
As I started the check in paperwork for Chase at the small check in table on the side of the E.R. waiting room, a couple nurses brought him straight back into the E.R. Maybe they understood the gravity of the situation we were in, or maybe they didn't want to scare the little kids waiting in the waiting room, because at this point Chase was WHITE and barely moving but regardless, they took him straight back through the double doors. The check - in nurses asked me what happened, and I explained the circumstances leading up to his injury. They were in disbelief. They kept asking me "Are you sure this happened with a softball?". They later explained that head trauma this serious usually comes from a fall off a motorcycle or a car accident, NOT a softball to the head and that it was one of the strangest things they had heard in a while.
Once the paperwork was complete, I joined Chase in the back. He was changed into a hospital gown, and the nurses were working frantically on him to get an I.V. in him, get his vitals read, and to check his status. I remember standing in on the side of the room, watching the nurses work, and just trying to stay out of the way. There were four or five nurses in that tiny room working on him all at once. It seemed so chaotic but so fluid all at the same time; like they had done this dance so many times before.
Chase parents also showed up at the hospital as all of this was going on. My sister had called them to tell them what was happening and the came right away. She was also able to call my mom to pick her and Kennedy up from the hospital parking garage. My parents live a couple blocks away from Sharp, so they were able to drop everything and come to pick them up right away. I am so blessed and so grateful I had our families to lean on during this time. Truly, I don't know what I would've done without them this night, and through the rest of this journey.
Then, we waited. The nurses cleared out of the room, they turned off the lights, and all we were left to was the sound of the beeping monitor, and ourselves. Chase slept, and I sat holding his hand, watching the EKG wave go up and down as his heart beat. A couple nurses stopped by the check in on us, they took Chase for a couple CT brain scans about two hours apart and then, after what seemed to be forever, the doctor on call came in to see us. The doctor explained Chase's injury to us.
The Injury
He believed Chase had suffered from a subdural hematoma which I have linked a definition for here. In short, the blow to his head caused a bleed in the tissues between his brain and the skull. There isn't a lot of room in your skull for anything but your brain, so this bleeding causes immense pressure on the brain that can lead to unconsciousness and death in extreme cases. Chase's bleed was average at best and seemed to grow slightly, but not too much, from the first cat scan to the second. He explained that it could get worse in the following hours and that the hospital staff would need to monitor Chase's bleed for growth, and determine if surgery was necessary at a later time. For this reason they would need to admit Chase to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) for continuous around the clock monitoring.
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