Yesterday was an unusual day!

My wife had a scheduled dinner with an old friend, my sister thought about coming up and saying the night with their kids, and my son went on a bike ride with a friend in the neighborhood that he hadn’t seen in 3 years.

I had bad feelings, and was a bit on edge, but I push my fears down thinking it’s just an odd day.  They around 7:00pm, the mom of the friend that my son was riding his bike with rang my doorbell.  I went to the door and she told me that my son was injured but she wasn’t sure to what extent.  Apparently he had fallen off his bike and got injured somehow.

At first, I thought it was just a road rash like abrasion, so I thanked her and as my son entered the house.  I told him to go to the bathroom and undress so I could see the problem area better.  At that time I thought I was going to wash him up and put some medicine and a large bandage on him.  So when I went in to check on him, that’s when I saw a gaping, deep, hole in him that went beyond the skin and appeared to be even beyond the muscle.  I freaked!

Out of the door, I yelled for my daughter to come home, check the level of bleeding from the wound (a little, but not horrible at that time) and threw the kids in the car.  We then rush to the local hospital and sat in the waiting room trying to get admitted.  Unfortunately, it was a bad day and a lot of other people were there with problems too, and the staff was wanting to say the least.

I though about packing everybody back in the car and driving 30 minutes to a larger, more respected hospital.  So I check the wound again, and this time it appeared to be bleeding again, so I went out and asked some of the hospital folks if they were too busy and if I should go somewhere else.  They said it shouldn’t be much longer.  So I went back to the room that my son was at and looked at the wound again.  That’s when I noticed the blood again, and so took the bloody bandages, went out to where there were hospital nurses and asked for some clean bandages and I said that my son was bleeding.  That prompted a doctor (or surgical assistant) to come and make sure that he wasn’t bleeding too badly.  The doctor check and said that while it is bleeding, he doesn’t believe that it’s an artery (which was my main concern).

The wound had the properties of a gun wound, and the doctor asked if my son was shot or playing around with guns.  And since my son knew that he got the injury when he crashed on his friends bike, he wasn’t sure what exactly caused the hole itself.  So the doctor’s order a x-ray, just to make sure that there wasn’t anything left inside (like a bullet).

They believe that their wasn’t much muscle damage and sewed him up.  He got three stitches (it was a bullet sided hole), and then they cleaned him up and sent him home.

Needless to say, yesterday (7/25/2012) was a bad day, but it could have been worse.

Now for the tie in with finances.  The hospital admittance, the room, the x-rays, and the treatment will probably run my over $1,500… easily.  Now most people have insurance so it’s not even worried about, but I have a HSA plan, so that money will come from my pool of savings in the HSA.  But since it’s my son, that cost associated with such an injury isn’t even considered in my head at the time, but now I’m wondering how bad the financial damage will be…   So let say I’m right and it is $1,500 for four hours of work and x-rays, that’s $375 an hour!

Ouch!  Both in my son’s case, and me financially.

What a horrible night!

MR