I have had many hellish experiences from our vacations over the years. Usually, I am the one who was hurt, sick or injured. The one stuck in my mind was one of our annual family vacations to Outer Banks, NC, almost 17 years ago.
My son was 2.5 years old, my daughter was 1 year old at the time. We had a great week windsurfing and enjoying the beach life. On the last night there, we went out to dinner at a local restaurant that was located on the 2nd floor with an outdoor stairway. We were the last customers to leave when the restaurant closed. On our way out, the staff turned off the lights, which included the outdoor lights. I was the last one walking down in our group, somehow missed a step in the sudden darkness and fell to the bottom. Our waitress heard the commotion, rushed out to see a ball size leg bone sticking out of my front jean pocket. She happened to be a local EMT, and thought that I had dislocated my left hip, so she called the ambulance. While we were waiting, DH decided to take my mom and our two kids back to the rental house, he got back just in time to see me wheeled into the ambulance. The nearest first aid station back then was 40 miles north in Kitty Hawk, so DH drove behind the ambulance to follow me to the hospital.
While in the ambulance, the EMT gave me a shot of morphine to ease my pain. Within seconds, I could not breathe. I was strangely conscious but had no air in my lung to make any sound to alert the first aids. My whole body went limp immediately. The EMTs realized that something wasn’t right, one person picked up the phone to call a doctor, who was asking how much I weigh. The other one prepared another shot to revive my heart, while telling the ambulance driver to step on it. DH was totally confused seeing the ambulance sped up all of the sudden. Turned out, I had a severe reaction to morphine, so it almost killed me instead.
The ride to the first aid station had to traverse through a lot of road construction on this one lane each way highway, which was and still is the only way to get off the Outer Banks. Unfortunately, the first aid station did not feel that they were capable to treat me, so they sent me to a hospital in Norfolk, VA, another 80 miles north. My husband thought he would park the car, but saw me got wheeled out again heading elsewhere. He had to frantically catch up with the ambulance, all the while, had no idea what’s going on.
By the time we reached the hospital, I got wheeled in to the emergency room and had an X-Ray immediately. The X-Ray technician was a surfer by heart, he asked how I got hurt and what did I do during this week of vacation. After I told him, he looked at me solemnly and said, “Look, you need to come up with a better war story, like you were windsurfing doing a forward loop flip off this giant wave and did not land right or something. Falling down the stairs is just not very exciting”. I told him I would keep that in mind next time.
The X-Ray revealed that I indeed had a dislocated hip plus a crack in the neck vertebrate. Somehow, from this bumpy roller coaster ride, my leg bone had popped back into my hip socket. Now all the doctors were fussing over my neck instead of my hip. I could not recall when I “broke” my neck, it could be from many different other things I did like downhill skiing, mountain biking or rock climbing. It’s my hip that was in pain! Anyway, after this whole ordeal, the only thing the doctors would prescribe was two Advil, they refused to give me any other “real” pain killers.
So by dawn, my poor DH had to drive 3 hours south to get us back to the rental house, pack up the car and the kids, then drove 13 hours north to go home. I also had to take turn driving with my good leg for a bit too because DH was so exhausted. Both kids were so good with grandma in the backseat, they knew something wasn’t right.
We still go back to Outer Banks every year. There were many other stories and minor injuries from our vacations; none was as bad as this one time when I almost died in the ambulance from missing a step.
