Thursday, July 25, 2013

Life is Unpredictable

This post isn't like any of my other posts.  I am more writing this for me to document it and learn from it more than anything.  I do hope that if there is a lesson to be learned from this post, that those reading it can learn something and pass it on.  I would also like to thank Ray from Reel Finatics for suggesting that I write this post.  Check him out and tell him I sent you his way.

A couple of weeks ago I was busy working my job for Fremont County Juvenile Probation.  We were attending court as usual on a Tuesday afternoon around 2:00 pm.  When court gets over I am usually pretty antsy to get out the door and head back to the office but today we sat around and talked with a family who was in court for their child.  After visiting for a little while, my co-worker and our two interns packed in the county vehicle and headed back to the office.  We were all talking and joking around until we saw a kid laying on the side of the road with his bike next to him, with blood on his legs.
This is the road where the kid was laying
We pulled the car over and went over to the young kid.  At this time there was another vehicle who had stopped to make sure everything was okay as well.  We made sure that an ambulance was called and told the boy to stay laying down and to not move.  We parked the vehicles so that traffic would have to go around the boy while we took care of him.  The young kid was laying in the road and said that he didn't know exactly what happened. All he knew is that something went wrong and he crashed and was now hurting really badly.  We could tell this young man was in a lot of pain and that he was in shock.

I was trying to wrap my head around the sight of a young man who was 11 years old, laying in the road with blood covering nearly his entire lower body.  The young man had shorts on and both of his legs were just covered with blood.  This young man had a friend with him who also said that he really didn't know what happened.  The friend stated that they were both heading to his house and riding their bikes down the road until his friend started weaving back and forth and then crashed really hard onto the road.  We kept asking if the young man was hit by a car and both of them said that he had just crashed by himself.

I knelt down by the injured boy and talked to him about what happened.  He told me his name. He said that he and his friend had just gotten finished swimming and that they were headed to his house to play.  He said that he was riding his bike when all of a sudden he lost control and went up and over the handle bars of his bike.  Talking to me was extremely difficult for the young man to do, due to the extreme amount of pain he was going through.  We continued talking about swimming and how it was, his family, and other information, such as where he lived and where his parents worked.  Every few words he would stop, close his eyes and let out a soft, "It hurts so bad."... My heart was aching for this young man because I could tell he was hurt way beyond my First Aid training I have for my job.  While we were talking, a vehicle pulled up and an older man jumped out.  This man was a man I knew quite well who works for the local EMT unit.  He was in his personal vehicle and saw a few cars parked in the road and decided to see what was going on.  He quickly grabbed a bag out of the back of his car and came to the boy's side.  He told me to keep talking to the young man while he checked out the injury.  I visited with the young boy while the man lifted the boy's shorts and looked at the source of all the blood.  I got a quick glimpse of the wound which made my stomach sink.  He quickly put the shorts down and grabbed his radio.  I heard him report to his other EMT staff that they needed to bring lots of pain medication and that they needed to get another unit who could get him to a better hospital as fast as possible (not in those exact words but I knew what he was saying). I continued to visit with this young boy and assisted the EMT man in anything he was asking me to do.  Those tasks varied from talking to the boy, to directing traffic, and to getting him medical supplies out of his bag.

It turns out that when the boy crashed on his bike, his handle bars turned sideways right before he went up and over the front end of his bike.  The boy's bike did not have handle bar grips on them, which left nothing except an exposed, hollow, blunt end of the handle bars.  The handle bar caught the young man right where his torso and right leg met.  The end of the handle bar stabbed the young boy and then proceeded to rip down his leg while his body was going up and over the front of the bike.  The boy's leg was ripped wide open, his femur was broken, and his femoral artery was nicked and bleeding quite badly.  After what seemed like an hour (I can only imagine how long it felt like for the boy), the ambulance showed up and took complete control of the situation.  They kept the boy as still as they could, loaded him up and took him as quickly as they could to the hospital for emergency surgery.

After the ambulance left, we went over to the young boy's bike and noticed that the end of the handle bar was all bent up and (without going into to much detail) full of an unusual substance.  During all of this time my mind and heart was racing of what may happen to this young 11 year old boy.  He wasn't doing anything dumb, immature, risky, or dangerous.  He was simply riding his bike home with a friend on a road he had traveled down hundreds of times...and now he had a life threatening injury.

I am a new father to a beautiful baby girl who just turned one a month ago.  I am constantly wondering how she is doing while I am at work and constantly worry about her safety.  I take caution when she is near swimming pools, stairs, sidewalks, roads, and any other area I foresee risk.  I am CPR certified and trained in First Aid.  In essence, I do what I can to make sure she is taken care of and is safe in every situation I can.  But this situation shows me that there are so many things that can go wrong that it is nearly impossible to have all of your bases covered.  While at the same time, this situation also taught me that, while there are so many things that we cannot control, there are also so many things that happen for a reason.  The fact that the two vehicles both stopped to take care of this young boy and that a trained EMT was driving on the same road at just the right time shows me that things happen for a reason.

Later I received a phone call from an officer who showed up at the scene.  He told me that it took him over an hour to get a hold of the child's parents but the young boy was luckily okay and going to be alright.  The trained professionals were very skilled in what they were trained to do and were a huge reason this boy was lucky enough to survive his injuries.  This phone call was about 4 hours after the accident, and during those 4 hours, I probably said over 100 prayers for this young boy.

Life is so unpredictable that you never know what may happen at a single moment.  I shared just a few of the small lessons I learned through this experience, while holding the more personal lessons I learned sacred to me.  I hope we, outdoors men or anyone else reading this, make sure that we prepare as much as we can for any situation we may find ourselves in or that we may come upon while also never forgetting that there is a Man up above who we should always thank and include in all of our adventures.  Even if that adventure is your daily drive to work, be sure to be aware of your surroundings and offer a helping hand to anyone in need.  You never know if you are going to be the guy who drives by or if you will be the young boy on the bike doing nothing wrong.  Remember that something as simple as saying, "Hi," or having a conversation with someone can go a long way to someone who needs it. 

4 comments:

  1. Kevin, this is the best thing I have read all year. I work in insurance, and all too often people don't take the time to plan.
    Cherish every moment, even if it is tedious. Say hello and chat with folks, it is a wonderful two way gift.

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    1. Thanks John, I'm glad you liked the post. I agree that we could all do a lot better at taking time to plan. This experience was a good wake up call for me and helped me get a few things in order that I needed to!

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  2. I truly believe that people are placed in situations at the right time. Good thing that you were there for that young kid. We all take life so lightly. This is an intense read and a great post because it ended well. Crazy stuff!

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    1. Thanks Dustin, I didn't know how this post would go over being so different than what I normally write but I learned a lot from it. Thanks for the support!

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