Craig's ordeal

Good afternoon.
Whew! It's been a week!
Let me fill you in on the details........
Last Tuesday night, I went to bed and Craig stayed up to watch some TV. He said he fell asleep in the Chair. He awoke later, got up to go to bed, and blacked out. The reason he blacked out was most likely due to his blood pressure medication. His new doctor had changed the type he was taking, and the new stuff wasn't keeping it down low enough so the doc said to double up. He did, and everything looked good, most of the time. He was still occasionally getting too high a reading. So at times, he took a third. The day he fell, he had taken 3. And when he awoke from sleep to get up and go to bed, his blood pressure was probably too low, and he stood up too fast. Anyway, down he went.
This is what broke his fall, and his 3 ribs....He must have gone down sideways when he hit.

Of course, the noise woke me up, and I came out to see him on the floor withering in pain. He didn't at the time tell me he blacked out, and I thought he just tripped himself and fell. I helped him up and to bed, not even thinking how serious it might be.
He wakes me up around 2am and says he thinks he needs to go to the hospital. I get up and get dressed, but he's still in bed. He says he can't move, it hurts too bad. I call an ambulance, and they transport him to Sparrow Hospital, St Lawrence emergency. I take a quick shower, and arrived shortly after them.
They do a ct scan and discover 3 fractured, and displaced ribs. That throws up a red flag and he was to be transported to the main campus and the trauma unit. From what I know now, 1-2 ribs is one thing, but when you have 3, the pain level is tremendous. Craig said his was a 10 on a scale of 1-10. They put him on an iv drip of morphine, and it barely touched his pain, They gave him a shot of Dilaudid before transporting him to the main campus. It's supposedly 10 times stronger than morphine and that helped a bit more.
The trauma team evaluated him and admitted  him for pain control and respiratory monitoring. They said his level of pain could not be controlled with oral meds at home and he would have to stay until his level of pain subsided to the point where oral meds would work. There was also the risk of pneumonia, since with such a large area of ribs damaged, deep breathing is next to impossible. So breathing exercises where to be done also to keep the lungs clear.
They got him into a room around 8am, and I stayed with him until about 10, cancelling my morning appointments at the Salon. When I decided they had him settled in with a plan for treatment. I then went into work and and was there until around 5pm. I had cancelled my evening appointments so I could get back up to the hospital and sit awhile with Craig. I arrived to find they had put in an  epidural for the pain. It wasn't helping as much as it should. They had to mix several different blends of medications before finally  they had him down to a 2-3 pain level by Thursday morning. I left Wed. night around 7pm, going home and crashing since I'd been up since 2:30 am the night before. I awoke Thursday morning and called the nurses station for an update to find they had gotten his pain under control. I went to work at 8am until 11am and then up to the hospital for a couple of hours. Then back to work until 6pm and back to the hospital. Friday morning was very busy at the Salon and I didn't get to the hospital until 3 pm. I happened to walk into the room when the doctor was there. He explained with this type of injury, the pain is severe for the first 2-3 days, then slowly subsides. They had switched him from an epidural to intravenous pain medication. After a couple of days, they would switch him to oral medication for a couple of days and then he could go home.
I worked again Saturday morning and got a call from Craig saying they were thinking of letting him go home that evening. They had already switched him to oral meds since he was doing so well. I went up after work around 3pm taking clothes for him to wear home.
They released him at 6pm, and I brought a happy, tired, weak Craig home.
First thing he wanted to do was take a shower and shave. He needed a lot of help, but he got it done.
I got him a little dinner and to bed he went. He was suppose to sleep in the recliner, since trying to lay down in a flat bed is very hard on his ribs at this point, but he really wanted to sleep in the bed, so with my help, we got him in. He slept 13 hours!
Today, has been a busy day for me as besides cleaning the salon, I've had to do shopping, laundry, yard leaves and dinner. But it's worth it to have Craig home.   :-)
I've got to serve dinner now. I'll try to find time to update.