sleepless nights

Occasionally I'll have a sleepless night. I have a feeling it will be one of those nights tonight so instead of harboring up all my feelings and thoughts I thought I would get it out. 

Often times I'll have a hard time sleeping at night because night time is usually when I lay in bed and cannot get the images out of my head of Troy right after his accident. It's something that will probably be stuck with me for the rest of my life. I wish so badly I could erase all of them but I can't. I never understood it when people say they can see it and feel it like it was yesterday. I've never had that with anything until now. I can put myself right back where it happened, in the moment, I know exactly what I was thinking. At the time it was just me and him, there were people around but they weren't there to me. I rubbed his back frantically while I was in the biggest battle of my life in my head, contemplating what I needed to do to make it better. I remember thinking, this isn't happening, this isn't happening, this a nightmare, I just want to wake up because this can not be happening. 

The first thing I realized when I got to him is that his breathing sounded wet, gurgley and labored. I knew that was my biggest issue at the time. His head, I've never see a head so swollen, so fast before, ever. His eye was swollen shut already and you couldn't make out his facial features because there was so much blood. The corner of his eye was cut and bleeding. I waited for him to show me any sign of movement, I watched his eyes to see if they even flinched, nothing. I screamed at him. I begged him to keep breathing for me and I begged God to not take him from me. I have never prayed so hard, or so much in my life. I knew at this point, my control was gone. 

I remembered thinking, the paramedics will never find us back here and Troy needed to be intabated, ten minutes ago! His breathing slowed and became inconsistant and then I really started to panic. He was lying on his belly with his head off to the side. I didn't know where his injury was; his neck, his back, his spinal cord. I wanted to do this right but it was getting to the point where I was asking myself what I was going to do; not if but when he stopped breathing. Would I flip him over and risk it or would I just sit there and do nothing? 

I kept rubbing his back and I said over and over, "keep breathing, please keep breathing Troy please". Everyone stood around us and watched as my body completely went into full blown panic. I was shaking so out of control. I would cry but then stop and just panic all over again. I didn't know what to do, my world was completely upside down. I'm shaking now just thinking about it. 

When the first responders first started pulling up for some reason, I will never know why, I thought to myself, David might be here. We know David through my aunt and he works as a first responder for that area. The first person I saw was, David. I grabbed onto his coat and screamed, "it's Troy, it's Troy!"

The look on his face went from serious to almost panic. He ran by me and started working on him. I can still hear David screaming at Troy to wake up. 

Next thing I remember is the first responders telling me not to watch and walk away. That was the absolute last thing I wanted. LAST. I needed to see what was going on, I needed to hear what they were saying and I was hoping and praying he would wake up. They broke out the AED and all I could think was, this is just in case, just in case, it won't happen. Looking back, I'm so glad I didn't know that his heart did in fact stop beating and he did stop breathing. From the time of the call to the time the first responders showed up was 7 minutes. If it were to have been any longer, I'm quite positive Troy wouldn't be here today. 

Being in the worst spot ever to get in a severe accident meant that an ambulance had to come from a long ways away. It took them 45 minutes to get to Troy. To me, it seemed like 10 minutes but life wasn't really happening for me at the time, it was all just a dreamy feeling of what is happening right now? They all started yelling, "it's a load and go, it's a load and go, let's go!" After getting in the ambulance I remember telling the paramedics all of troys information. We were hauling down the highway, passing people left and right and it still felt like we were going 5 mph. We couldn't get there fast enough. I kept my eyes on Troy, asking them to give me updates every 10 seconds. They were starting an IV and trying to intabate him. They cut all his clothes off and were packing him full of fluids. If I remember correctly, nearly 3 liters of IV fluids were pumped into him before we arrived at Spectrums ER. That is a lot people! He was losing a lot of blood and his blood pressure was terrible. That issue continued through the first 24 hours post accident. He couldn't make it through his CT scan because he BP would bottom out. 

They took him out from the back of the ambulance and I held onto his hand while they wheeled him into the biggest trauma room I had ever seen. There had to have been close to 30 people in the room if not more; most in long white coats. They took me back behind a glass window as they asked me questions I watched what they were doing. Working in the ER myself I understood a lot of what they had to do; foley cath in, more IV's, meds, cardiac monitors, etc. I talked myself through everything out loud. I could hear them yelling at him to open his eyes over and over. I couldn't believe he still wasn't responding. It all began to become more real when I realized, he wasn't waking up. 

My parents came to join me and I was so glad to have them there. There is no body that could replace your parents at a time like that. They took us back to a room where they described everything that they were going to do and that it would be a while until we would see him again. We were eventually led up the ICU waiting room where I waited and waited and heard nothing. I have never had such an intense panic attack, I had no control over my body. I became physically sick. For a while, I thought my heart was going to beat right out of my chest. My chest ached and my heart literally felt like it had been shattered into a million pieces. AlI I wanted to do was see him, I wanted someone to tell me he was OK and that he had waken up. It was nearly four hours after that that they allowed me to see him. They had given us multiple updates but they said the same thing over and over; "he has a very severe head injury, we just don't know what will happen with head injuries like this", "I'm sorry", " is there anything we can do for you?", "head injuries are all different but we do know his is very severe" as they shook their heads as if they believed he was as good as gone. 

It killed me. I hope to never experience that feeling ever again. It is completely impossible for me to describe to anyone the way I felt then other than your heart just breaking inside you. And so began our journey. 

We have gotten the official results back on Troys neuro pysch but I'll leave that for a different post.