If you are visiting this post, and it’s your first time reading about Chase’s accident, you are on PART 6 of a series of posts telling the story of Chase’s injury.
Click here for PART 1 Click here for PART 2 Click here for PART 3
Click here for PART 4 Click here for PART 5
Wednesday Night, November 21st into Thursday November 22nd, Thanksgiving Day
Chase was suffering from debilitating sciatic pain from laying in bed all of the time. He had a little sciatic pain in the hospital, but nothing compared to the pain he was experiencing post-hospital at our house. Since he wasn’t taking any of the pain medication because of his hallucinations, he was feeling every pain, from his head down to his toes.
Waking up, the morning of Thanksgiving, Chase’s head was feeling great! He only had a minor headache, and decided that he was going to go to our Annual Father Joe’s Thanksgiving 5K run that we participate in.. We both talked about if HE would actually participate in the race though, as he does every year, becasue of his injury. We went back and forth about the positives and negatives of his participation. On one hand, it would get him out of bed, get him some fresh air, and get his body moving and this would, hopefully, loosen up that inflamed sciatic nerve that was bothering him and causing him so much pain. On the other hand, he had just gotten out of the hospital four days prior, and that much activity might be pushing it. We ultimately decided that letting him walk it out in the 5K would be a good idea for his back pain, and that there is no way it could impact his head injury.
We set out for the race. This November seemed to be a little colder than a typical San Diego November. The chill, brisk air blew against my cheeks as we walked from the car to the registration booth to get our Father Joe’s 5K T-Shirts. This year they were blue, Chase’s favorite color. I took this a good sign. We had Kennedy bundled up in her stroller, Khalil leashed up, our shirts on and we were ready to go. We had decided to walk this year when I bought the entries before Chase got injured, and not run, because I was still recovering from having Kennedy two months earlier, and I’m glad we didn’t pay the extra money for Chase to run in the timed race, because it turns out, he couldn’t!
The entire walk, and shortly after everyone, including Chase felt great! Khalil loved sniffing the other dogs on the walk, Kennedy slept pretty much the whole time, and my grandma was 72 and KILLING it, keeping up with us the entire time. It feels really great to get out and walk or run the morning before you are going to literally inhale your entire body’s weight full of turkey, stuffing and more. If you are interested in participating in walk on Thanksgiving, you can find out more information about it here. All the money raised goes to a great cause, and you get some great exercise!
Chase had mentioned to me somewhere around 2:30 P.M., right before we were going to eat, that his headache had returned and he has immense pressure in his head on the side of his injury. I figured he had just walked a little too far and pushed himself a little too much, and needed to rest. I got him some Tylenol, and he laid down on the couch to go to sleep. He ate very little that Thanksgiving day, which I think it maybe one of the worst parts of this story! He even missed the pie!
When we arrived at our condo post-Thanksgiving celebrations, Chase told me that something wasn’t right. His head hurt. And it hurt BADLY. He went straight to bed. The baby cried quite a few times that night, and Khalil barked a couple times causing her to really wake up and scream. I tried my best to hush and comfort her so she would stop crying, because I knew how bad Chase’s head hurt but he woke up in the morning WRITHING IN PAIN. The top of his head was hurting him so intensely, he couldn’t even speak. He was convinced that he had somehow hit his head on the headboard all night, and that caused it to start hurting again. He was trying to find any and every explanation he could for this new pain, but there wasn’t one.
Friday, November 23rd
I called Chase’s dad immediately, and asked him to come pick Chase up and take him to their house in Poway. My thought was that it would be really quiet there, and there wouldn’t be any dogs barking, or babies crying, so he would be able to fully rest. He wouldn’t have to worry about the baby or the dog or anything but sleeping and healing. He also would have his mom there with him, who could take care of him better than I could while also trying to take care of Kennedy. I was thinking it would be best for him to go there, get rid of his migraine and then come home.
The migraine didn’t get better. We agreed that if its got worse by tomorrow, we would go back to the emergency room. And guess what?
It got worse.
Saturday November 24th
Chase was re-admitted to the I.C.U. with CT scans required every two hours. When his first cat scan came back, we were met with news we didn’t want to hear. His bleed had grown exponentially, causing his brain to shift 5 more mm, a total of 10mm to the left. This new bleed could’ve been caused by our 5K walk, or could’ve just been a slow bleed they didn’t catch in the CT scans before. Regardless, his bleed was getting worse and causing him a lot of pain.
This is the moment in this story that I really have to take time to pause and reflect about how scared I actually was for Chase’s life. Up until this point, I had no doubt in my mind that he would be okay. I never had a thought that he wouldn’t be fine, and we would be going home to our baby girl soon. Up until this time I had never cried, I was never worried, and I just had this feeling of ease, and that everything was going to be okay.
But this was different. Chase’s heart was reacting this time. Negatively. His heart rate was slowing down. Chase already has a slow heart rate due to him being so active. Typically is rests in the low 50’s. His resting heart rate was dipping to the LOW 30’s. The lowest I saw it go was 32. He was experiencing arrhythmia along with this bradycardia, which means that his heart was skipping certain beats. I have linked two medical pages above, if you would like to read more about these conditions!
The hospital staff was trying to manage his pain, deal with his heart problems and figure out what was going on with him. He was under constant watch in the I.C.U. For two days, he was in this constant state of surveillance. The doctors didn’t want to perform surgery on, essentially, his brain, if they didn’t have to, but the neurosurgeon was leaning in that direction. They would chat about his head, and heart and go back and forth about the positives and negatives of this surgery, and still just come to the conclusion to monitor him closely. Chase was in so much constant pain and had so much pressure in his skull that he was heavily medicated at all times. He was essentially just sleeping around the clock unless he needed to go to the bathroom or drink some water. This gave me a lot of time to work on my thesis project and paper, which was due for graduate program at the end of December. Between working on my paper, going back and forth from the hospital, and helping Chase, I didn’t have much time for anything else.
Tuesday, November 27th
By the second day, Chase was determined to get out of the hospital. The doctor had come in to chat with him about how he didn’t want to have to “drill a hole in his head” (his words, not mine), if he didn’t have to. Chase and I were both for the non-surgery route, if it wasn’t completely necessary, because head surgery didn’t seem like something we wanted Chase to go through if he didn’t have to. The nurses had figured out how to manage his pain successfully with drugs that made him less sleepy, and more able to function, and the doctors felt confident that his bleed had stopped. The doctors felt as though it would start to get better as long as he took it easy. And not go on a 5k walk, easy, as in laying in bed for two weeks, easy.
We got the call on Tuesday afternoon we would be moved to the west wing again! This was amazing news. We knew, from our previous experience, that being moved up to the west wing meant that we were one step from going home. I was so thankful because I was still pumping around the clock, and running back and forth from Chase in the hospital to Kennedy at my mom’s house. Taking care of them was just so much easier to do from home, rather than having him in the hospital and Kennedy at my mom’s, in two different places. This was also awesome new to me because I was having terrible tooth pain on my left side, in my top teeth. It was radiating up almost to my eye, but, because of everything we were going through at the time, I had put it on the back burner. I knew that if Chase was to get out of here in the next couple days, I could get to the dentist and get my tooth fixed. I called the dentist that day to make an appointment for the 28th, because it was likely we would get out before then, and if not, Chase would be fine to be by himself for a couple hours while I went to get my tooth taken care of.
That night Chase had some friends from his softball team come to visit him. They brought him the softball that hit him in the head that had been signed by the entire team. It was a funny joke, and Chase loved the gesture. They were joking around and laughing, and having a great time. Mid-way through their conversation, I saw something change in Chase’s face. He went from happy go lucky to quiet and not so talkative. The nurses had been giving him a simple neurological test where you hold you arms out in front of you as still as you can. They should stay relatively put and not go up or down. Chase had passed this test with flying colors every time the nurses gave it to him. During this conversation with his buddies, he lifted his arms to gesture about something, and I noticed his arm drift upward. It was subtle, but it was there. I made note of it to tell the nurse.
After Chase’s buddies left, I tucked Chase in, got him water so he wouldn’t have to get up in the middle of the night, and told him that I would be back in the morning. I felt confident that he would be okay if I spent this night, the first in four nights, with Kennedy, rather than with him. I needed some serious baby snuggle time, and she needed me.
Wednesday November 28th
At around 3 in the morning, I got a phone call from Chase. He was sobbing. I couldn’t understand what he was saying. I was trying to make out his words. I was getting a little here and there: “pain”, “head”, “can’t move”. And then he said to me, through his broken sobs, “The pain in my head in a 12/10. I would rather die than have to feel this pain.”
I didn’t understand what was happening. When I had left him, he was perfectly fine. He was great, even!
I rushed back to the hospital to find him surrounded by nurses and doctors, his resting heart rate was dipping back to 32, the bleed on his brain was getting bigger, and he was crying in pain. He was on morphine, and a bunch of other painkillers that should tranquilize a horse, and yet he was still in 12/10 pain.
At around 8:00 A.M. the neurosurgeon came into Chase’s room, and let us know he was being sent back to the I.C.U. to be prepped for surgery as soon as possible.
-Kayla
Stay with me to see what happens next. Subscribe to my website and you will be notified when I post the last blog post of this story!
Part 7 of this 7 part series will be posted soon!
