The Day We Lost Our Independence--July 5, 2021

 We traveled to California to attend Heidi Burnham Davies' wedding to Larry Case on July 3.  Heidi is Barbara's niece.

We had dinner with an old friend of Don's from school, Charley Turk, and his wife Carol Sue. We spent the night at a bed and breakfast and then went to Church with Eris Burnham (Barbara's sister) and had lunch with Mike and Eris and Julianne Denney (Barbara';s niece) and family who had come down from Montana.   Then we traveled back to Las Vegas where we stayed at another bed and breakfast.  We got up early because the air conditioner on the car was going out and we wanted to get to cooler climes before the day got really warm.  Uncharacteristically, Don said he wanted to drive.  Usually on long trips like this, Barbara drives first in the morning because she is more alert early in the day than Don.  Barbara navigated on her phone to get us from the bed and breakfast to I-15.  We had  just entered the freeway.  We were in a construction zone and the speed limit was 65. Don set the cruise control.  Even though I-15 goes north, at this point it went directly east.  The sun just peeked over the horizon.  Barbara thought it was good Don was driving because the visor did nothing to block it for her.  She was completely blinded by the sun.  Barbara did say to Don that she thought he should slow down.  Unfortunately, Don was also blinded.  He did see what he called a farm truck which appeared to be stopped, less than one second before he hit it.  The police never talked to us about the accident.  The police report said there was a significant bread spill on the highway, causing a traffic hazard.

Neither Barbara nor Don lost consciousness.  Don said he saw the air bag coming towards him.  He was certain his right leg had been broken below the knee.  Barbara could see that her right hand had been torn open from the base of the thumb up over the lower part of the index finger. A man came to Barbara's side of the car and spoke with her. He pointed out the man who was the driver of the truck we had hit.  He was walking around and not obviously hurt in any way.  The man who came and spoke to us also warned approaching traffic so they slowed in time not to hit us from the rear.  Shortly two ambulances arrived.  When Barbara tried to stand, she was unable to.  We were taken to the University of Nevada hospital to the emergency room. A gash on top of Barbara's head and her hand were sewn up.  She could hear Don telling jokes to the emergency room staff until he was moved too far away.  We were taken for x-rays and probably other diagnostic tests although the memory gets hazy here. Don still had his phone and notified Amy of the accident.  Barbara's phone and glasses and Don's hearing aides were lost in the accident.  Camilla flew in from Texas and Soren drove up from Arizona to help us in any way they could.

In addition to injuries previously noted, Barbara's left hip was fractured.  The dash had hit her knee so hard that the ball on her femur had fractured the hip socket.

 In the picture, Barbara is taken for surgery.  Because it was during the covid pandemic, we had to wear masks when out of our room.  They had put Barbara's left leg in traction because of the broken hip.  To insert the traction, they drilled through the bone in the femur above the knee.  There was a bar which fell down against the knee and this was extremely painful because the knee was so traumatized.

 

 

 

 

 The photo on the left shows the medical description of what was wrong with Barbara's hip. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The photo on the right shows the screws which were inserted to anchor the hip socket bones. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Don had three fractured ribs and his left arm was broken just below where the wrist attaches.   The third day in the hospital, we were each taken for surgery by Eric Kubiac.  He had previously worked at the university hospital in Salt Lake City and knew the doctors who had worked on Barbara's hernias. Don's leg had metal put in it and his arm was cast.   

 

 

 When they went to take Don to surgery, they discovered that somehow he had kept a knife with him.

 

Don had hallucinations as he came out of his anesthesia.  Soren and Camilla tried to reassure him but Don struggled for a long time.

 Barbara remembers coming out of shock after her surgery.  The bruises on Barbara's neck and leg are about four days after the accident.  The one on her neck was caused by the seat belt but who knows what caused the one on her leg.  Neither one gave her any problem later.  Notice the dark spot below the knee on the left leg.  This formed a scab which did not fall off until October 1.

 

 

The registration was missing from the car so Soren and Camilla had difficulty proving that the car belonged to us and that they were entitled to remove our belongings from the car.  Thora and Mary helped by making the phone calls and doing what was necessary to get the proper paper work.  Soren and Camilla were able to go to the car and remove our belongings. 

 Camilla took pictures of the interior of the car.  

Driver's side

Passenger side

Barbara's phone and glasses were found.  Camilla found one of Don's hearing aids but had to search for the other and was successful.

The impound lot was charging for every day the car was in their lot.  They insisted we come down and sign papers to release it to a junk yard.  Finally, Camilla had the idea to have the hospital draw up this letter on hospital letterhead and have Don sign it.  It looks official even though it is signed only by an RN and, as she suspected, the attendant at the impound lot did not argue.  She also told them that they could take the money we owed them to that point or just keep racking it up forever because we would never come to get the car.  As Don said, she was a mama bear and took no prisoners.

Once the car was removed from the impound lot, Soren and Camilla could go through it more thoroughly as they had only been given 10 minutes to remove our belongings. The attendants at the junk yard were Spanish speaking.  Even though Soren is fluent in Spanish, Camilla took the lead.  She spoke so fast, they probably had no idea what she was saying.  They seemed to think the best course of action was just to agree with her demands and they gave her $50 for the car and it was taken care of.  We were so grateful because there was no way we could have dealt with it.  Barbara kept asking all of the nurses and others who came to attend us if they had children.  If they said no, she assured them they should have children as she could not imagine how they would ever navigate a situation such as we were in without the assistance of children.

 Don receiving physical therapy in the hospital.  He felt unsteady like he was going to fall. He was completely unable to move his foot or hop. He said it felt like his foot was nailed to the floor. Finally, they put an arm support on the right side of the walker like the one he had on the left and then he felt balanced and could move.

 We were grateful for our computers as a way to help pass the time.

 

There was a COVID-19 outbreak while we were in the hospital.

They closed off one area of the lobby for beds for covid patients.

When we first called our car insurance, we were surprised to hear them say that they were already on it.  They were sending out a man to inspect the damage done when the tree fell on our house.  Our house is insured by the same company that insures the car, but we had not reported any such damage.  Our house sits on a hill.  It is much higher than any trees around it, so this did not make sense at all.  One daughter reported:  

 

We never learned the source of the confusion.

We considered flying back to Salt Lake but in our condition, that would have been very difficult as we neither one could walk, sit for a long time, or toilet ourselves so it would have had to be a medical transport team.  We considered having someone drive down and get us, but that would have also been difficult for much the same reasons.  We finally decided to do a medical transport.  I believe it cost around $1800 to have us driven to Salt Lake.  Halley did a fund-raiser online and came up with the money necessary.  Vera and Boydean Frazier who had come into our mission in Santo Domingo just before we left contributed $1000.  

 Travis Draney, founder of NEMT No-Lift NEMT/Patient Medical Transport, transported us.  He was the only one in the vehicle with us.  At first we were apprehensive that he would be unable to meet our needs alone, but he did a great job.  We stopped once in Southern Utah for gas, and otherwise, was on the road the entire time.  We found Travis to be very amiable.  We learned about half-way into the trip that he is a member of the church..

 Here we are in the medial transport holding hands.

Travis took us to Sandy Health and Rehabilitation.  This was chosen because it has a partnership with the VA and Don's stay would be covered.  Our first night was rough because a nurse assistant left the door to our bedroom open. Not only were there lights but this particular nurse assistant was very loud.  Also, we could hear TV's from other rooms. We put on our call button light and we verbally called but no one came to our assistance.  Finally, when we could get no attention, we called Halley who called the facility and, finally, someone came and shut the door.  We complained the next day to the administrator.  He was very solicitous of our needs and we liked him a lot.  Unfortunately, he was fired shortly after we got there.  We're not sure what happened but another employee told us that he had fired an individual who spent a lot of time on his phone talking, texting, or playing games when he should have been helping the residents.  We think we saw this individual just once because he complained about the facility and said he was leaving.  Shortly thereafter, people came in from the State and asked questions about the administrator.  We praised him highly, but I guess enough residents thought he wasn't so good that he was fired.  Ashley, the individual who told us this, had really liked him and said that if he were hired as an administrator elsewhere, she would go there and work under him.

We really liked the nursing staff.  Some were permanent with the rehab and others were from a temporary agency. Some of those came often enough that we became fond of them. We got pictures of some, but not all and we have forgotten the names of some of them.

Ashley was our overall favorite.  There was a gal on the nighttime staff from New Zealand that we also really liked.  When Barbara first heard her name, she thought she would never remember it, so she did a mnemonic and associated her name with a couple she had known in Emery:  Ken and Shonna Peterson.  The mnemonic was Kenshonna. 

This is Oksana.  She was in charge of transportation to appointments.  She drove Barbara to the first appointment at the orthopedic surgeon.  She was a native of Russia.

 Don exercising his leg.  The doctor's orders were imprecise about our care coming from the hospital.  At the rehab, they tried to follow the doctor's orders precisely which meant they did virtually nothing.  The support on Don's leg was to be loosed and he was to sit on the edge of the bed and move his leg up and down to prevent the knee from tightening up.  Soren and Camilla had heard the doctor say this but it was not in the orders so it did not happen.

Also, there were no instructions about wound care.  In the hospital they had been checking for infection in wounds and redressing them daily.  It was almost a month in the rehab before the dressings were taken off and stitches removed and this was after considerable fuss from Barbara and Don.

Barbara's hand wound when the dressing was finally removed and the stitches taken out.

They missed removing a stitch which Barbara just pulled out herself.

Barbara was unable to form a fist with her hand.  Much later, she saw a hand doctor about this.  He said her hand had exploded.   When the air bag hit Barbara's hand holding the cell phone, it pushed her thumb way back towards her arm.  Before the ligaments holding the thumb in place break, the flesh tears at the base of the thumb, along the ridge between the top and bottom of the thumb, and over the top of the base of the index finger (look at the scar).  This happens enough that the doctors have a name for it.  Moral:  Do not hold your cell phone where an airbag could hit it even as a passenger.

Don's leg showing the scar.  Metal had been inserted in his leg.

 

Below is the first time we were both out of bed, sitting up to eat our meal.

Don with his physical therapist, Jason

Barbara's physical therapist, Bobby.

 

We had a number of visitors at the rehab.  Some of them were Amy and Oliver, Nicole and Anne Marie Bernshaw, Mandy, Sterling, Jett,  Neal, Halley, Thora, Avram, Eve, and Garreth, possibly other kids, Catherine Workman and Edward Gray, John and Mickee Burton.  our bishop Scott Pehrson, Pat Mahoney, Ron Barlow, and Harry Russell.  Then there was a covid lockdown and visitors were restricted to our immediate family.

One kind of interesting thing happened while in the rehab.  The activities director came in to visit with us and learn of our interests.  She asked where we were from.  We told her we were from a little place she has never heard of.  When we told her that we lived in Mammoth, she said that her sister is our neighbor, Helen Russell.

We went from the rehab to our daughter Halley's home in South Jordan where her living room basically became a rehab center.  Don rested during the day on her couch and Barbara spent the day and night in a recliner Tali had provided.  Halley had provided a bedroom for us but Barbara was more comfortable not lying flat.  Eventually, she did go into the bedroom at night.  One night she got up to go to the bathroom at night.  She used this gadget around her left knee which pumped cold water over the knee.  It had a tub of ice water and then tubes which attached to the pump which inserted in the tub.  The tubes came up to a pad which attached to a band.  She was using a walker with wheels because she was still not permitted to walk with her left leg.  A wheel of the walker caught on the tube of the cooler.  Barbara tried to lift the walker while standing on one foot.  She lost her balance and fell on her butt.  She was not injured, but could not get up.  Don was unable to get her up.  Halley's family were all still sleeping.  However, it was the time in the morning that Mandie would be out running.  We called her and she came to our rescue.

Barbara received Physical Therapy while at Halley's. Her therapist was Cody.  Cody lived in Amy's ward and had served in Young Women's with Amy.  Barbara was still not permitted to use her left leg.

 

Here Barbara is permitted to use 25% of her left leg.  This means she must walk with support but she can put the left foot down lightly.

Part of our entertainment while at Halley's house was to watch the interactions and antics of her kids.

 

 Mandy felt bad that we were so confined to the house and would get someone to join her in pushing our wheel chairs around the block so we could get outside.

Mike Burnham came up to BYU for Education Week and came to visit us at Halley's.

After a month at Halley's house, we moved over to Mandy's where we spent another month.

Our only consistent visitor while at Mandy and Halley's was Nicole Bernshaw and she came weekly, often bringing treats.

October 15, 2021 we moved back to our cabin in Mammoth. Don was driving again. We were still fairly disabled but we were able to meet our minimal needs.  We could cook, clean up after meals, Don was able to get the wood in and ashes out.  It was a relatively mild winter but Don was able to snow blow as necessary.

Sometime in the spring, Barbara noticed that red spot below her knee would get this brown kind of crusty look to it.  She wondered if it might be pus oozing from inside the leg.  She contacted the orthopedic surgeon to see if the x-rays showed a bone splinter or maybe small piece of glass that might be in that location.  She assured Barbara there was nothing there.  Barbara then went to her regular doctor who did a CAT scan to see if the bone were infected.  It was not, so it was determined that the continual pain Barbara suffered in the left knee and lower leg was nerve damage.  She then saw a doctor who specialized in pain and a physical therapist who gave her exercises to help strengthen the leg.  Over time she had an injection in the spine and one in each bursa.  These seemed to help some but did not take the pain completely away.  The problem with these injections is that after a few months, the effect wears off and repeated injections seem to be less effective according to others who have received this treatment.

Now, a year out from the accident, Don is pretty much back to normal although he does experience pain in his right leg at times, and the knee is still stiff. He is beginning to re-learn to play the guitar, but still does not have full range of motion in his left hand.  Barbara's right index finger is tender to the touch where the skin broke open, but she is able to use the hand normally.  Her left knee still troubles her.  The ligaments on either side of the knee feel stiff and she walks with a limp, often using a cane for support.  She avoids sitting long times in metal chairs (even an hour can be too much) as somehow that aggravates things.