Uncle Tim

So Tuesday night started out ok, and got really bad, really fast. My sister Rachel got a phone call around 6pm telling her that her husband Tim had fallen at work and broken his ankle. Tim works construction and has been working in the Flint area lately. Rachel had just spoken with him around 5 and he was fine then. I headed home thinking, that sucks, but not much else. When we finally got all the details, they were terrifying. Tim fell alright, from the 8th floor of the building they were working on. He was throwing some large pieces of pipe out of the window into a scrap pile below. The piece he threw had an elbow on it and caught his shirt and threw him off balance and he went out the window with the pipe and landed on the pile of scrap metal. Amazingly enough and by God's grace he is alive and has relatively minor injuries considering how far he fell. The rescue crew took him to Hurley Medical Center and they are doing the best they can for him right now. Tim as of right now has a broken femur a demolished ankle (on the same side) broken ribs, possible broken arm and cuts and bruises on his face. As I writing this he is headed in for his second surgery on his ankle.

We have been doing our best to help Rachel get him transferred to Spectrum. Hurley is in a bad area and is a filthy hospital. Everyone that has been there to visit has been appalled at the condition of the floors, bathrooms and Tim's room. Hurley is not a major trauma center they are way out of thier league. We have talked to surgeons who work for Spectrum and they have urged us to do what we can to get Tim transferred as soon as possible. We have also been told the first mistake made by Hurley is not to have airlifted him immediately to Spectrum. The guy fell 8 stories, admit it, you are way out of your league and not equipped to handle this Hurley! If not Spectrum he should have been sent to Uof M. Somewhere where he could have gotten better trauma care immediately. Now part of the problem is that Tim was conscious through it all, talking, yelling, screaming in pain. No one could believe he wasn't hurt worse. They might have chalked it up to a miracle and thought they could handle it. Or maybe they were misinformed like the inital report in the paper stating he only fell 4 stories and landed on a platform of some sort. Either way we want him out of that damn place now.
The biggest obstacle in moving him is that we are told he isn't stable. Why isn't he stable you ask? Wednesday morning (yup over 12 hours later) they did a cat scan of his head and neck. And as of last night they still did not have the results, so they can't tell if he has neck injuries so therefor he is not "stable" and can't be moved. And my sister was told that it is normal for it to take that long to get results back. Guess we better hope he isn't bleeding internally anywhere huh? The fact that it took all freaking day and still no results of a cat scan is prime example of why we want him moved! The guy fell over 8 stories and they didn't think to do a cat scan of his head and neck till the next morning? What the hell- I am no medical student but even I can make the connection as to why he should have been scanned from one end to the other immediately!
So here I am waiting for more word on what is happening and what is going to happen. Tuesday night was really hard for me. Call me emmotional, but I just couldn't wrap my mind around the fact that he was alive. I keep seeing this image of him falling over and over in my head and all I can think about is what must have gone through his mind, the pain, the fear. And then we come back to God, thank you Lord for sparing his life. Thank you for granting my sister and nephew the miracle of not having to say goodbye. By all means, we should be attending a funeral not making trips to the hospital to visit him. It is utterly amazing the things God can do. Thanks for this one Lord.