Team Christensen

We got him into the car, said a prayer, and all he could say was, this is my good arm, I'm so stupid, I'm so stupid, amidst cries of torturous pain. We rushed him to the Emergency Room, and they got him on Morphine right away. Whew!! It took the edge off luckily, but poor guy. He was inconsolable. About every 20 minutes, they gave him morphine, until they could get the Xray techs. downstairs. The nurse told me they would have to do surgery, and I still held it together, until my Dad and brother showed up to help give him a blessing. My brother said they went out and measured the tree from where he fell: 35-40 feet. That is a 3 story building people. I lost it then. I had no idea how close my son came to dying until that moment!

They knocked him out, and took Xrays. Sure enough both bones broken right below his wrist as shone above. They told us they had to wait for a surgery to be done before they could take him up, and we would wait for the Orthopedist. So many blessings. There just happened to be an Orthopedist at the hospital that day. Saturday is not his day for that hospital, but someone had broken their hip and was in emergency surgery. Dr Mattews, our Orthopedist is also an arm and wrist specialist!!! He came down and looked at Brett, when I told them what happened, he looked at me shocked and said"You are very lucky your son is alive today, and with only a broken arm, a black eye, and scratches from head to toe. He could have been impaled, paralyzed,etc, etc, etc........ He said we would have to wait about an hour to go into surgery. Someone was coming in for a ruptured appendix. They would keep him somewhat sedated until then. 20 min. later the Anesthesiologist came down and readied him for surgery. The appendix wasn't there yet, so they were taking Brett up right now!

We got him up to the OR, and he said this is my throwing arm!. We told him it would be O.K., watched them wheel him off and Wade and I both lost it. Seeing out little boy being wheeled away, and knowing I couldn't be there was heartbreaking! 2 1/2 hours later they came out and told us it went really well. The bones when they came out impaled the ground, so there was a lot of cleaning to do to prevent infection. They put 4 rods in to keep it all in place. They would splint it until swelling went down, and he would have to stay overnight in the hospital. The Dr. said that all the OR was a buzz, Drs, nurses, and techs were coming in, everyone had their Iphones out snapping pics of his arm. Most kids break one bone, he broke both, and they came out. So, he is still the talk of the hospital. Everyone asks him everytime he goes in how the little guy was that fell from the tree.

It was a very long night. He was in pain, they tried to get it regulated, his oxygen was low, and he kept having flash backs from falling out of the tree. ( Thank Heavens for Star Wars. He watched 4 movies that night) He was climbing the tree with Braxton and Burke and they were climbing up into the different "rooms" (it was a "treehouse") the limbs were poking them in the back, so they were breaking branches off as he climbed up. He turned around to see one cousin leaving, and he decided to do the same. He went to go down, and he slipped and was hanging. He tried to hoist his legs back up and he slipped again, and the branch broke! Down he came. Lindsey and all the kids watched him fall, when he landed Lindsey went to him, and tried to pull the sticks out of his arm, and realized it was his bones. Thats' when she came running to tell us what happened. The kids had a hard time that night, and Lindsey called me crying. She kept reliving it too and felt that she should have done something to stop him. Poor thing. She is my nurturer.

The Dr. came in to check us out the next morning, and he told us he was afraid yesterday that Brett would have no feeeling in his arm or hand. The nerve and veins had dropped to the underside of his arm, he split muscles, and it didn't look good. Glad to say he does have all feeling, he will throw a football again, and shoot a basketball. Brett and the Dr. both were very relieved.