I do my own stunts
| Wednesday morning while at work, I was trying to hurry around to complete the monthly back-up/recovery test for our Document Imaging server. I came in early, since one the admins I needed to work with was leaving his office just prior to 9am for a training session. When I got in at 7am, I started to complete all my tasks (deleted stuff) so that I could go down to the basement around 8:20 to meet with the various server admins for them to complete the recovery. |
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Sometime around 8:15-8:20 I headed to the basement, taking the stairs as I normally do. The stairs case is about 12-14 steps down to a landing, then make a u-turn to get to another 12-14 steps to complete one floor's descent. First set of stairs went fine, but the second half was a different matter that day. The last thing I remember is dragging my right (prosthetic) side heel on one of the top steps. I don't drag a heel on steps all the time, but it does happen occasionally. Normally I just grab the handrail, recover my balance and continue down the stairs. For some reason, this wasn't a normal day. The last thing I remember is missing the handrail and falling.
The following information has been told to me by co-workers:
Shortly before 9:00am someone entered the stairwell and found me laying at the bottom of the stairs face down. It looked like I had slid down the last few stairs, as my head and body were on the floor and my legs still up on the stairs (back bowed in half). I was unconscious but breathing. 911 was called and an ambulance requested. At some point in time, the EMTs rolled me over and put on a cervical collar (which I believe was about 2 sizes to small). One failed attempt at an IV was started in my right arm (pretty bruise shows exactly where they missed the vein).
The first thing I remember is a sharp needle poke to my left arm (successful IV started) and someone rubbing their knuckle in my sternum looking for a stimulus response (reaction to pain) while calling my name. As I was starting to come around, I was being packaged up on a back board and taken to the ambulance (the experience of going up the elevator is a blog post within itself).
Long story short (for the rest of the incident): Numerous x-rays and cat scan showed no broken bones. The ER doc advised I would get much more sore prior to getting better and he wasn't kidding. The next day it felt like I had been run over by a semi, then they backed up to see what they hit (rolling over me again) and then drove away (over me a third time). Being that Renee and the girls were still out of town (in Columbus Ohio seeing friends), my mom came up to take care of me. (we returned to Norman, since she was having work done at her place)
I need to see a chiropractor because I feel like a human question mark, and I may need to see someone about my left elbow as it has a real nice bruise and is extremely sore to the touch. However, considering the fact I took a header down a long flight of stairs and was found unconscious after an unknown length of time, I think I am a very lucky individual!
