My wife is a medical student, and is currently doing her rural health/family practice rotation about 2 1/2 hours away from me. She got her placement close to my home town, so she is staying with my parents.
The thing with rural health is that the family practitioners also take turns working in the hospital's ER. So, my wife has been putting some good hours doing emergency medicine.
On 7/25 about 7:30 am I got a call from my dad telling me that my wife had rolled our Explorer. They told me that the ambulance was on the way, but they had no knowledge as to her condition.
My stomach flipped, went in to my throat, and threatened to purge. I sprinted out of the office, jumped in to my car and was on the way to her before I hung up the phone. I did my best to break all of the land speed records, desperate to get to her side. Along the way my father called me again and let me know that she was "fine." This comforted me, but there was absolutely no way I was taking his word for it.
I finally get to the hospital to find my parents sitting in the waiting room. I asked where my wife was, and they said "working."
Apparently, the doctor who checked her out, of course, knew my wife and had worked with her in the ER. He declared her fit, and then told her that there was a patient in the next room who had an abscess or something in his hand. He wanted to know if she wanted to get in on the procedure to drain it. With out another word my wife jumped up and got to work.
She is tough.
This little incident made me realize just how much I love my wife. It is impossible to imagine my life with out her. Those moments when I had no idea if she was hurt or not were, by far, the worst moments in my life.
I have been "desperate" before. I have needed to go the bathroom really badly, and was "desperate" to get to a toilet. I was "desperate" to have the Huskers win against Texas Tech in 2005. I realize now that I did not know what desperation was. I was desperate to get to my wife's side. I would have killed to get there. Literally. If someone bared my way I would have killed them to get through. I had only one thought in my head, get to her.
I am so glad that she is OK.
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