Bad to worse...for me

So, what's worse than having a family member hit by a car and lifeflighted to a hospital?

When he's not the only one that ends up in the hospital.

As my husband Matthew, son Joseph and I sat in a private family waiting room just off the trauma ER, with my father-in-law about to be flown to a bigger, more specialized trauma hospital about a hundred miles away, it seemed like the night couldn't get much worse. Well, just wait.

Matthew has heart problems. In fact, just five days before this all happened, he was in the same hospital, having two stents placed in two days. He's also diabetic. Did I mention the bad back, neuropathy, and anxiety? Yeah...not the picture of health. Well, as we were passing midnight, four hours or so into the worst night ever, Matthew was four hours or so without his medications. No insulin, no Xanax, no aspirin, no nothing. Most importantly, no nitroglycerin, which he normally carried but had gotten lost in the confusion.

Cue the chest pains. No nitro, but hey, it's an ER, at a hospital that has all of his medical records, so that probably won't be a big deal, right? They could help him out, right? Sure they could. But they want to check him in through the ER first. Sigh. Okay, fine. Now it's just me and Joseph in the waiting room, with the chaplain lady relaying information for me between my father-in-law's doctors and my husband's.

Then I have to go back to Matthew's room, so the chaplain volunteers to stay with Joseph, who has just fallen asleep on the couch. I run back to my husband and find out they aren't going to release him. He has to stay until his cardiologist releases him, which won't be until Monday at least. Great. I head back to the waiting room.

That's when I find my little boy crying hysterically. He has thrown up everywhere, and woke up gagging and screaming for me at the one minute that I wasn't with him.

What I didn't know at the time was that Joseph had the start of an ear infection that would be with him for the next two months. Luckily, I had Joseph's backpack in the car, with pajamas in it from his last trip to my sister's house. Cleaning him up didn't take long, but he was restless, hot, and inconsolable.

Within an hour, the helicopter was back. My father-in-law was on his way to Pittsburgh. And I was making decisions. What to do now? Matthew in the hospital, Joseph sick. I had to make the one person who was still my responsibility my priority. I couldn't do anything for my father-in-law or my husband. Joseph...him I could help. I made sure that the hospitals both had all of my phone numbers, and took my baby home.