8/2/05

Three injured as pickup overturns

NORTH BRUNSWICK — Three juveniles were taken to Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick yesterday after a pickup truck overturned, trapping them inside, Police Lt. William Kloos said.

Kloos said the vehicle, driven by a 17-year-old male, was traveling south on Route 130 shortly after 3:30 p.m. when it left the roadway for an unknown reason and struck a utility pole just north of Nimetz Place, ending up on its roof.

North Brunswick Rescue Squad and North Brunswick Fire Company 2 rescued the three using extrication equipment, Kloos said.

The driver and backseat passenger were listed in stable condition last night, while the front seat passenger was listed as critical, Kloos said.

Southbound traffic on Route 130 was diverted around the scene for about two hours.

               My life has been such a whirlwind of emotions and happenings these past few weeks that I can barely process exactly what it is I am feeling at any given moment in time. On Saturday July 16th  my 17 yr old was involved in a truck accident with 2 other boys, my son was the driver of the truck. The boys all work for the local farm in town. They had all gone to market to sell the produce and were on their way home when the accident happened. We know for sure that my son was not speeding because he was following the owner of the farm and he said he was only doing about 49 -45 MPH. We know for certain that something startled Michael and the child in the back seat as the last thing my son remembers was the kid grabbing his shoulder from behind, then he was upside down in the truck.. He doesn’t remember what happened after his shoulder was grabbed, only being upside down. He then managed to somehow crawl the driver’s side window which was down. By the time the owner of the farm got to the truck my son was about halfway out of the truck window. From the tracks of the truck we know that it veered sharply to the right (as though to avoid something…the police said it looked like a defensive move) and then as the utility pole loomed up in front of them, it veered sharply to the left in an attempt to avoid it. They did avoid a head on, but the right passenger side hit and the tire and wheel base were torn off and the truck flipped over.  The 2 other kids had to be extricated with the Jaws of Life.

               I was down the shore at
Point Pleasant
celebrating my birthday that day. Funny thing is, all day long my phone rang constantly, driving me crazy, it was the kids with stupid things and my husband about 6 times because he was at work and the system wasn’t running correctly. After the last call, my friends told me to turn the cell off,  so I started to, but at the last minute said , “No, there may be an emergency”, and left it on. Not more than a half hr later I got the call that he was involved in a serious accident.  We left immediately for the hospital. The picture above is what we saw as we drove by the site. By the time I got to the hospital I was convinced my son was dead. He thank God wasn’t. But he looked like hell, to say the least. Blood covered him from head to toe and his face on the right side and his nose and mouth were swollen and still bleeding profusely. Michael (and the rest of my children) are well liked and it showed by all the friends that camped out in the ER that night as the word spread around town. Not only were my sons and the others 2 kids friends there, friends of both my other sons showed up in support also. They did a CAT scan and were actually ready to send him home when it didn’t show any bleeding in his brain(I was praying they wouldn’t), when a nurse looked at him and said that something was wrong with his face. Long story short, they did another CAT scan and it showed his eye socket and cheekbone were both fractured. The other problem they picked up was that when his cheekbone fractured, it cut into his sinus’ and an air bubble escaped and settled behind his eye, they were now afraid that if he changed the pressure in his head in any way (by sneezing, blowing his nose, etc) it would pop out his eye. So now, it’s about 12:30 at night and we are finally getting him up to a room. His upper lip, inside and out have now been stitched and all the other cuts and abrasions have been somewhat taken care  and we are on our way up the  Children’s Hospital which is part of Robert Wood Johnson. I and my 19 yr old are following the bed and the attendant when all of a sudden I go flying. Literally, I went down hard on a wet, wet floor that didn’t have signs warning of wet floor. All I could do was look at my older son, he looked at me and we went completely hysterical, after all, what else could you do. But dang, I broke 2 nails and banged up my knee pretty damn good, to the point that I though I had fractured my kneecap…I didn’t. though <span style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt; FONT-FAMILY: Wingdings; mso-ascii-font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; mso-hansi-font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-char-type: symbol; mso-symbol-font-family: Wingdings”>J

               On Sun we are waiting for an ophthalmologist to show up (which he doesn’t until Monday, late morning. Meanwhile,  As the swelling on my son’s face is slowly going down we all notice that his face around the eye socket /cheekbone now has a concave effect going on. The nurses call in a resident plastic surgeon who assures us that there is nothing wrong with him. Then the eye doctor comes in and after looking in his eye and telling us his eye is still attached and looks good, he says, “You know his nose is broken don’t you?” Now we had asked about his nose, only to be told it was fine. It wasn’t, it was fractured too. But we are assured that no surgery would be needed as the bones in the face would heal together just fine.  NOT. The nurses and I both noticed the concave effect going on and when the “real” plastic surgeon comes in he says no way can we avoid surgery. Not only did he crush his face, he hit so hard he actually sifted the bones towards his nose and he would HAVE to have surgery. Needless to say my son is freaking out as are the friends who have been camping out in the room during the day (there was never a time at all during the day or night when there wasn’t a minimum of at least 10 or more kids in his room at a time. At one point there was about 25 people in the room or in the hallway, since they are all single rooms they have very liberal visiting hours……anything goes..) and my other children are now hysterical because my son is crying and this is the child who can withstand an enormous amount of pain.  Surgery gets scheduled for the next day at 7:30. By noon, we are still waiting and nerves are bad as the kids and son are all scared out of there minds. We keep being told that his surgery will be “SOME” time in the afternoon. He went down at 6 and had the surgery at 6:30. He had a horrible time with pain and kept asking for more morphine ad telling us this was the worst pain he has ever been in, in his life. He should have been in recovery for a short time, but he was in so much pain that they couldn’t seem to manage it and then his blood pressure kept spiking. It was a very tense night.  Later that night, I had all sorts of specialists and nurses in as they couldn’t control the pain or  his pressure. Finally they decided to take him off the IV morphine and put him on stronger morphine through a pump he could control. The next night again there was a mob scene and the nurse looked at my face and saw I was about to explode and threw everyone out. The bad thing is, we, hubby and I had left the hospital to pick our daughter up and bring her to the hospital as she hadn’t seen him yet and she thought we were lying to her and he was dying. When we got back, there had to be about 25 or more kids there..One day I left the hospital to go home and pay bills etc and yes, keep a hair appt, when I got back I thought he looked funny but didn’t really get close enough to him because of all the people until later on that night. Before the kids all left I imposed a ban on visits and told them all to stay away as my son was in too much pain. Then I freaked out to put it mildly. His eye that he had surgery on looked like it was going to explode and it was leaking a yellow fluid…and he was on IN antibiotics.  I forgot to mention, instead of the ONE plate in his face that we were expecting, he had to have FIVE put in. Things did settle down and his pain was finally minimized to the point that he could bear it and a week and a day6 later we left the hospital. I sat and cried when they told us we could all go home. I told him that one of the happiest days of my life (the day I brought him home from the hospital after being born) was now overtaken by this day….the day I was taking him home after surviving his accident. All the kids had God at their side that day for sure. There is no other way they could have survived otherwise. They were all  being watched.

               My son is doing better now, but having problems with is jaw and we are now in the process of  getting the workers comp stuff filled out. The INS CO also wants to interview him, but we have been told to see a lawyer and not let him talk to anyone until  we do seek legal advice. This could conceivable turn into numerous lawsuits and as he was the driver, they (the other kids parents) could come after us). We are all on hold at the minute.

              One of the boys was released from the hospital; after about 4 days and is ding well with little complications from his ordeal. He needs to see a neurologist, as he had bleeding on his brain at the time.

               The other child is still in the hospital and had to endure 2 operations so far. One to reattach is eye and the other tofix all the fractures on his face. Time will tell  what the outcome will be on his eye. All we can do is pray. When all the kids are home and well we plan on having a celebration for them. To celebrate the fact that they all lived.

              We did go up yesterday to see the child n the hospital and he was up and walking when we got there. What a wonderful sight that was. He then had the facial surgery and is in  a lot of pain. We know how much as we just went through it. The amazing thing is, they went through the roof of his mouth, his eyelid (lower) and the corner of his eye so scars are a minimum as was the swelling and there was NO black and blues on his face at all. Amazing.

               Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers, they helped more than you can imagine. And, more importantly, they WORKED.

               I’m sure there is stuff I forgot, but basically this is it