The boys had gone on a father-son weekend with some friends and I was spending my Sunday afternoon at the after-school program getting ready for the week ahead. My cell phone rang and I looked down to see it was Kev.
“Hey, how’s it going?” I asked.
“I fell throwing a football and having trouble walking. We are going to have lunch and then head home. Just wanted you to know.”
Okay, I thought here we go again “Okay, you’re not going to get it looked at?’ I asked.
He stated that it hurt some, but that he wanted to get closer to home as they were over 3 hours away. He promised to keep me updated and I went to inform my boss and best friend. We prayed and then to get my mind off things for a while, I went back to get some work done.
Around six in the evening, I got a call from Kev stating that he couldn’t walk at all and that the pain had increased so they were going to drive over to Northside Hospital and would let me know when they got there. I took a deep breath and tried to think of all the simple things it could be, like a pinched nerve or that maybe he just twisted his hip. Nothing like what was to come.
I grabbed some dinner and got a call from Kev’s friend that they had arrived at the hospital. I told him I was on my way. I got there about 30 minutes later and Kev had already gone back. KC was hanging with his friend who was the son of our friend. Chuck let me know that KC had dinner and that they had taken Kev back. He told me he would stay with KC while I went back.
I nodded, went over to the station and explained to the receptionist who I was. She found out which room Kev was in and lead me back. He was getting back from one of many x-rays and the doctor was just about to tell him what was going on. I shook the doctor’s hand as I came in and he explained that he had a broken hip. What? Really? Just from throwing a football?
The doctor was concerned about the time that had elapsed since the actual injury, and they were going to have to do surgery that night. He wanted to do another x-ray scan. While Kev got that done, I went back out and called his parents and thanked our friend for all he had done, as he and his son left.
His parents came up, and after seeing Kev and getting the update they took KC home with them so that I could spend the night with Kev. We were home a few days later and trying to get things back to normal. Kev had a walker and was doing physical therapy three days a week. The problem was he wasn’t getting any better. So, six months after his surgery we went back to see the doctor to find out there was no blood supply getting to the hip and that it didn’t heal. Another surgery this time to do a hip replacement.
At this time, we decided to walk away from our house and move into an apartment because the stairs were too much for Kev. My mom came down for the surgery and to help us move and have a garage sale. After the surgery, we put Kev in a rehabilitation facility. It really wasn’t what Kev wanted. But with me still working fulltime and not being able to take time off I felt it was the best place for him to heal quickly. Boy was I wrong.
The problems started the night we brought him in they moved his room three times. The next day as my mom, KC and I are at the house doing the yard sale, I get a call from Kev stating he felt weird. I left KC with my mom and went straight to the facility. His parents got there a few minutes after me and we spent most of the morning trying to figure out what was going on and where they had moved him to again. By the end of the night we decided to get him discharged and he would go and stay with his parents until he was walking on his own, and Jerry (his stepdad) would be home with him.
We found out later that they had overdosed him on his seizure medications.
Three weeks went by and the apartment was totally unpacked, and my mom had gone back home. Kev was now in the apartment with us. He was walking without the walker but very slowly and his balance was even worse than before. We knew that he would never run again and that in time he might be in a wheelchair. He decided to take the aide of a cane that my brother had made for him. For the time being.
What we didn’t know, was that God had other plans that wouldn’t be revealed to us until many years later. Life got back to a new normal and we dealt with another problem with KC (yep you guessed it, that’s another blog).