First off, everyone is more-or-less okay.

A week ago today, I got a call from my mother that she was in the emergency room with my father. He’d fallen while getting things ready in the truck for a camping trip they were planning to take this week. After a CAT scan or two, they found that he’d fractured his temporal bone and given himself a nasty concussion.

He was banged up, but the biggest concern was the bleeding in the brain. Bleeding that wasn’t helped by the fact that he’d taken asprin (a blood thinner) earlier in the day. They weren’t sure whether they’d have to operate.

Thankfully, with clotting drugs and blood pressure meds and a transfusion of platelets, they got the bleeding under control. He ended up staying about 3-4 days in the neuro ICU and another day or so in a neuro step-down room before coming home.

I wasn’t able to visit while he was in the hospital, but I’ve gone over pretty much every day since he came home. Physically, he’s in a fair amount of pain, as well as dealing with the weakness that comes after being stuck in a hospital bed for close to a week. Mentally, he seems to be much more himself than he was when I talked to him on the phone a week ago. But it’s going to take a while to bounce back from this.

All of which is to say, if you’ve been expecting an email or phone call or anything like that from me, just know that I’m running a bit more behind than usual.

As scary as the past week has been, we all recognize that it could have been much, much worse. So I think we’re trying to focus on the gratitude side of things.