Among other things, we are thankful that our daughter-in-law was able to come home today, Thanksgiving, after a week in the hospital. She was hit head-on last Friday night on the ranch road that runs through the ranch where she and our son live. Two young hunters were apparently going too fast on the snow-covered, ice-topped winding road near Jody and Scott's house, and they slid into Jody's lane and hit her head-on at a fairly good rate of speed.
Jody was driving a Suburban; the impact knocked the engine and dash into Jody's legs and feet. The hunters were not wearing seatbelts and sustained extensive lacerations when they hit the windshield of their truck. Jody was pinned in her vehicle for a long time, in the dark, below-freezing weather, with snow falling intermittently. The wreck wasn't discovered immediately because the road is so sparsely traveled. And then, we live nearly an hour from town and any emergency equipment including ambulances and the jaws of life.
After the ambulances and firetruck arrived, it took about 90 minutes to cut Jody out, stabilize her, and start her on the trip to town. She has mulitiple broken bones including two badly broken ankles (one with pins), a broken heel, a broken wrist, and a broken arm that had already been broken about 10 years ago and had a plate and pins in it; the impact bent that plate and rebroke the arm, so she now has a new plate and pins. The airbag and seatbelt saved her upper torso, but she is literally black, blue, and yellow from the impact of the airbag and from where the seatbelt restrained her.
If the ankle and heel that don't have pins in them fail to line up properly (which she'll know after x-rays in 2 weeks), she'll have to have more surgery to realign those broken bones and then have pins put in to hold the bones in place.
We are thankful that our 2 grandsons, who normally would have been with her, were with Scott, who'd kept them out of school to go hunting that day. Things could have been even worse had they been in the car. We are also thankful that we are celebrating her homecoming instead of gathering for something not so happy.
Carolyn