one year ago.

It was the end of the school year – our first day of freedom!  We had just enjoyed the first barbeque of the summer.  On the way home, Daniel decided he’d meet up with some friends who wanted to mess around on their skateboards.  I was pretty wiped out, and went straight to sleep.  Around 11pm I woke up and have [I don’t know how many] missed calls.  My phone rings again and I answer, still groggy from sleep, only to hear that there’s been an accident and Daniel is being rushed to the hospital.  I check my voicemail and hear my friend screaming that “there’s so much blood” and Daniel is in the ambulance on his way.
The medics called me in the midst of all these missed calls and voicemails and ask me for Daniel’s name and information and let me know to which hospital they are headed.
By this time I am no longer groggy, just in shock.  I didn’t know who to call – so I tweeted.  I know it seems strange, but being able to put it out there was somewhat comforting – “please be okay.”
When I arrived at the hospital I had to wait almost an hour before I was able to run back to the ER and see Daniel.  I was so frightened…I didn’t know what I would see.
I was finally granted access through the double doors, and there sits Daniel, wrapped in a sheet, covered in blood. Hair caked, beard caked, and his right eye was swelling quickly.  As I walked in, Daniel half smiled at me [the way he does when he’s just woken up] and said “I’m sorry.”  If I hadn’t been bawling already, that would have set me off.  Daniel had suffered a multitude of head injuries.
He fell backwards from his skateboard while he was going down a pretty steep hill.  There was a fracture on the back of his skull, air bubbles throughout his brain, fractured a bone in his ear, and had another hemorrhage in the front of his skull [causing the black eye].
Due to the nature of his head injuries, Daniel was throwing up profusely.  Once I was there, the ER resident shoved a few barf bags into my hands and told me this was my job now.  I think the hardest part for me – the part where I almost fainted – was when the residents had to put a tube through Daniel’s mouth and into his stomach to keep him from throwing up.  I paced around to keep from falling over.
It was probably around 1am at this point.  Luckily there was an amazingly sweet woman whose son was in a motorcycle accident in the bed next to Daniel’s.  She gave me the best hugs as I stood there by myself…freaking out.
While I was in the waiting room I called Daniel’s parents and sister.  They arrived around 3am and we all took turns going in to see him.  Daniel spent about 12 hours in the ER before they moved him into the neural ICU.  I documented the 17 days Daniel was hospitalized on my old blog.
The worst part was the night Daniel forgot who I was.  At first I thought he was joking because he kept messing with people in that manner…but he referred to me as “little girl” for a couple hours…when he finally winked at me from his bed a few hours later, I was relieved.
THIS is the first entry I made, and the second, which offers more detail about the injuries [if you are interested in reading on, just hit “next” at the bottom of each page].
Head injuries are so up in the air.  We were constantly frustrated with the one step forward two steps back of the whole situation.  Thank GOODNESS Daniel ended up being alright….after so much suffering.  It’s been a year, and it seems like Daniel’s hearing is almost 100% [he lost a LOT of hearing in his right ear].  The only thing he notices sometimes is he doesn’t remember some things from the past.
I love Daniel so very much and am so thankful that he survived such an insane head injury.  I am so paranoid this time of year….
Sorry if I creeped y’all out – since about April I can’t stop thinking about what happened on June 7th, 2009.