<\/p>\n

Sunday afternoon, about a quarter past four, I answered a call from Morgan.<\/p>\n

“Dad, I wrecked my car.”<\/p>\n

After confirming that she was okay and off the road, I told her to stay put and that I would be there as quickly as possible. Had I known the condition of her car at that point in time, I have realized how pointless telling her to “stay put” was.<\/p>\n

As I was backing down our driveway, my phone helpfully offered to direct me to my car which it said was parked ten minutes away. After driving a few miles east, I realized my phone was guiding me toward my pickup truck, which Susan and I had dropped off at a nearby dealership for repairs. I quickly opened Life 360 (a phone app that our family uses to track our locations), and asked it for directions to where Morgan was. I guess one app was using Google Maps and the other was using Apple Maps, because no matter what I did one of the two apps kept telling me to perform a U-turn. I finally pulled over, cancelled out everything, and reset my course toward Morgan. All of this transpired over a couple of minutes, but it felt like an eternity.<\/p>\n

At that same exact moment, Susan was standing in the TSA line at the airport, about to board a plan for Washington D.C. Once she was through the line, she called me back and asked if she needed to cancel her flight. I told her I didn’t think so, but I would let her know when I got to the scene. Based on the calmness in Morgan’s voice when we had spoken, I thought she had only been involved in a minor fender bender.<\/p>\n

I was wrong.<\/p>\n

About a mile from the scene of the accident, I got another phone call — this one from an ambulance driver, asking if they had permission to transport Morgan to a hospital, or if I wanted to take her myself. When I asked why she needed to go to the hospital, he informed me that either her collarbone was broken or her shoulder was dislocated. I told the gentleman not to leave as I was 30 seconds away.<\/p>\n

I will never forget what I saw as I topped the next hill. In the OnCue parking lot, I saw four or five police cars, two ambulances, and two tow trucks, all of which had their emergency lights flashing. This was no fender bender. As I turned into the parking lot I saw what remained of Morgan’s car being pulled up onto a flatbed truck. I still didn’t know exactly what had happened, but I could see that it was more than a fender bender. In fact, both front fenders had completely buckled, along with a good portion of the front of the car.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I wasn’t sure what to do first. I immediately asked one of the officers where my daughter was, and he said she was in the back of the ambulance. I quickly located an ambulance and was irritated to find two people in the front of the cab, eating. I knocked on the door to get the passenger’s attention and asked to see my daughter. “Wrong ambulance,” he replied, pointing to another ambulance. Apparently those two guys had simply parked to grab a bite to eat — wrong place, wrong time. At the second ambulance I found Morgan, with oxygen over her mouth and tears in her eyes. The EMTs assured me she was okay for the moment, and so from there I was off to talk to the police officers. One of the officers had been on the other side of the intersection and recorded the incident on his dash cam. I watched the video, and didn’t completely comprehend what had happened. It appeared that Morgan simply turned off the road and proceeded to careen through the OnCue parking lot until she struck a large concrete support post at around 45mph, which stopped the car. The impact set off the airbags, and the seatbelt broke her collarbone.<\/p>\n

While I was talking with the police, the EMTs checked Morgan for low blood sugar or signs of a seizure, and we also checked to make sure she was not texting while she was driving. Morgan can’t explain exactly what happened, but it appears when approaching the intersection she mistakenly hit the gas pedal instead of the brake. That caused the car to lurch, and at that point she lost control.<\/p>\n

With a case number in hand, Morgan climbed into my car and we were off to the emergency room. Susan, who had ditched both her suitcase and her flight, said she would meet us there. Morgan and I arrived five minutes before Susan, and waited to walk in together. By that point, Morgan’s adrenaline was wearing off, being replaced by pain.<\/p>\n

We were in the emergency room for about three hours. X-rays confirmed a pretty serious break in Morgan’s collarbone. Nurses informed us that broken collarbones aren’t emergency surgeries and that we would need to schedule an appointment with a pediatrician to read the x-rays and determine the proper course of action. In between x-rays and consultations, an employee came into the room with a portable credit card reader to ensure we paid before skipping out on the bill.<\/p>\n

On Monday, Susan made an appointment for Morgan with a local pediatrician on Tuesday. (Morgan spent all of Monday on the couch, enjoying Doritos, Impractical Jokers, and Lortab.) At Tuesday’s appointment, the surgeon took more x-rays and explained to us that if the two ends of the collarbone were less than 20mm apart, they could be manipulated and coerced into reattaching with a sling. Morgan’s were nearly 35mm apart, which meant surgery was the best option. The surgeon that the waiting time for surgery was sometimes weeks, but that he’d had a cancellation for Wednesday, and although this felt like things were moving very quickly, if we were ready, he would pencil Morgan in for surgery at 8:30 a.m. on Wednesday. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Wednesday morning, Susan, Morgan, and I arrived at the Yukon Integris hospital. So many family members wanted to come and wait in the waiting room, but due to COVID we were told no more than two people would be able to see her, and to keep visitors to a bare minimum. After two hours, Morgan was wheeled back right on time. The surgeon used a titanium plate to reattach Morgan’s collarbone, with three screws on each side for a total of six. All of the stitches are on the inside, so there are no stitches or staples that need to be removed. The surgeon said she may be left with a “pencil-line scar,” or it may completely disappear. Either way, she will be setting off metal detectors for the rest of her life. The surgery took about two hours, after which Morgan spent two more hours recovering. The procedure was out-patient, and just a little after noon the three of us were headed back home.<\/p>\n

Morgan and her brother have been hanging out on the couch, watching television and funny YouTube videos. Her arm will be in a sling for the immediate future, and she has followings in two and six weeks. Unfortunately, because of the accident she missed a band trip this week, and next week is spring break, so she won’t be missing that many school days. <\/p>\n

If there is a common bond all parents share, it’s the impossible wish of wanting to swap places with your kids and take away their pain. Pulling up to a parking lot full of emergency vehicles was scary, and waiting for your child to get out of surgery is nerve-wracking, but seeing Morgan in pain in the emergency room was the absolute worst. It’s all too easy to worry about what could have happened — and trust me, after seeing tire tracks that nearly missed gas pumps, cars, and pedestrians, we’ve all gone through that over the past few days — at some point you have to put that aside and deal with what did<\/i> happen. Nobody else got hurt, and most importantly, Morgan’s going to be okay.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sunday afternoon, about a quarter past four, I answered a call from Morgan. “Dad, I wrecked my car.” After confirming that she was okay and off the road, I told her to stay put and that I would be there as quickly as possible. Had I known the condition of her car at that point in time, I have realized how pointless telling her to “stay put” was. As I was backing down our driveway, my phone helpfully offered to direct me to my car which it said was parked ten minutes away. After driving a few miles east, I… (read more)<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13496,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-main"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13493"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13493\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13499,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13493\/revisions\/13499"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}