Back to work

The day it started.

My husband went back to work in January of 2018. At that time they had hired 4 forklift drivers to cover my husband when he was out from the car accident. Once he came back they moved them to a different department or fired them. My husband would always get his work done early and be waiting around for more work to be ready for him to do. Let’s fast forward 2 months to where my husband was waiting for more forklift work to do and the General Manager asked him to install security cameras in the new warehouse that they had just acquired for expansion. This happened 03/27/18. As a reminder this is a business that makes the big “bean bags” so it is a noisy manufacturing facility. Unless you are screaming you can not talk to anyone next to you. Anything I put in parenthesis in this substack please note that we did not find out this information until a month later when we ran into one of his co-workers when we went out to dinner at a local casino and he told us this information. He had just gotten fired and told us that the next morning after my husband's accident they put a gag order on all the employees at the morning meeting. The new building was attached to the old building and just had a doorway in between that was kept open. (My husband’s feet were at the 13 foot mark of the ladder he was standing on while installing the cameras, which put his head between 18 and 19 feet.) He had been doing this for a good hour with another person holding the ladder for him. Up and down he went every time he had to move to put in a different set of cameras. He could put 2 cameras in if he was in the middle of the 2 spots they needed to be with his reach. He would drill the holes for the one camera, install what needed to be installed pivot sides and do the same to the other side. The person who was holding the ladder (didn’t like heights so refused to switch spots with my husband) left my husband up on the ladder without telling him. If he did say something my husband didn’t hear him because of all the noise coming from the main warehouse. As my husband went to adjust to install the second camera the ladder kicked out from underneath him and he went down. 

(EVERYONE heard a huge THUD and came running into the new warehouse. They just stopped what they were doing and came running. My husband was laying on the industrial carpet aka concrete bleeding out from his head for 20 minutes. After 5 minutes Mr. Oscar Soto, the General Manager, ordered all the employees to go back to work because they kept asking if they should call 911.) My husband finally came around and started to head out the door. He does not to this day remember anything from that whole year unless it is something that I have told him over and over. (As he was walking out his co-worker yelled to him “Hey pops your leaking.” My husband felt his head and realized that he had blood coming out of his head and washed it off.) He then called our adopted son Andrew to come pick him up from work early. Something was off with this and it set off my spidey senses and I went with our son to pick him up. When we got there my husband was sitting on a concrete planter outside by himself. He went to get up and he about fell on his face.  Our son and I jumped out of the car and went and grabbed my husband and got him loaded into the front seat of the car. As I was getting into the seat behind him the same co-worker that told him he was “leaking” poked his head out the door and asked if “pops was going to be okay?” and I saw the 6 inch hematoma coming out of the back of his head for the first time. I screamed “I don’t know Henderson Hospital NOW!!!”

*This pictures was a few days after the accident and after he had a shower and cleaned up his head. The swelling had gone down tremendously but you can still see the abrasion and some swelling.*

We got my husband to the hospital and he was conscious but not too lucid. He was in and out of it for the first 3 months. He would tell the nurse what he could when he could remember. So when I get to publishing his records they will say that he was only at 8 feet I believe and that he did not lose consciousness. It is because he did not remember any of that and still doesn’t remember except for me learning from his co-worker a month later. After I found that out, that is when I hired our first attorney to try and help us. 

As you can see from this picture my husband was out of it. No he was not staring at a TV or anything he was in one of the trauma rooms where there is no TV to look at scaring the holy living crapola out of me. My husband being a retired paramedic/navy medic/firefighter hates having needles put into him unless it is for a tattoo. They put an IV into him without him making one little peep. The time before this it took 8 of us holding him down to get the IV in and stopping him from hitting the male nurse who was putting it in just saying. Oh I am glad my husband is out with our daughter right now grabbing some groceries that I pre-ordered because he hates seeing me cry and typing this day out and remembering it brings back so many memories. I would call them bad memories but our Heavenly Father has made this experience a good experience for me that has made our love for one another grow fonder and my love and faith for our Father grow stronger. When I started this latest journey of being my husband's legal advocate I was having a very hard time and crying all the time going through the medical reports for the first time. I love some medical shows and was watching rescue 911 or one of the equivalent and they had a story of someone falling just like my husband. That person did not make it. I stopped that show mid show and ran out of the house before anyone could see me crying. I went to a field and just started crying and praying. Thanking our Heavenly Father that he did not take my husband away from me that day. I finally realized how close he came to going home to our Lord and Savior that day. Heavenly Father calmed me by giving me a word of “I am not done with my son, he is one of my faithful servants and I have more work for him to do.” Seeing how close my husband came to death on TV was a huge eye opening experience for me. It makes everything that we are dealing with now seem small and insignificant but it is still a big deal. 

They ran all sorts of tests and scans on him. Not all was put into his official record but what can you do about that especially when it is so late in the game that I got the records. But the hospital diagnosed him with chest pain, right shoulder pain, back pain, hematoma on his scalp, head pain, jaw pain, and concussion. 

As I go through the timeline you can refer back to posts in the tenant files and the workman’s comp files to see the documents that pertain to this time period. I am trying to get them all out but I have so many it is hard to do all at one time.