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naomikritzerEd and Molly are off skiing, and I took Kiera to the park to go ice skating. We have a nice park about three blocks away that floods their playing fields to make an ice skating rink each winter. Part of the rink is enclosed and used for hockey; the rest is for figure skating. There's a warming house that has loaner skates in limited sizes and sometimes has hot chocolate.
Kiera and I were out on the ice; the other people present were another mom with a kid, plus a teenager in the hockey rink. As I rounded the hockey rink I heard this loud cry behind me and turned to see that the other mom had fallen down, was holding her head, and saying, "oh my God, oh my God, help, please," while gasping for breath.
I said, "I'm coming, I'm coming," and skated back to her and knelt down.
She was holding her head so I supported it with one hand and put my hand on her shoulder with the other. "You're going to be okay," I said, "I'm here, I'll help you."
"Help my son!" she said, flailing her free arm. Her son was sitting, unhurt, right behind her.
"Your son is fine," I said. "He's right here. He's fine. He's not hurt."
The teenager had skated over, and about this time I realized that this wasn't just the sort of injury you shake off, so I told him to go into the warming house and get the kid the park pays to monitor the rink, and he skated off.
"I think I need -- can you call 911 for me? Here, use my phone," she said, and dug it out of her pocket. I started to tell her I could use my own phone and then remembered my battery had died earlier in the day, so I took hers. It was an iPhone and it took me a minute to figure out how to bring up the keypad, and once I did and dialed, it took so long to connect that I thought maybe I'd done something wrong. When I dream about emergencies, I can never actually manage to CONNECT to 911 (the phone is dead, or it rings and rings and no one answers), and it rang four times before someone picked up.
I told the dispatcher I was at Hiawatha School Park at the ice rink and someone had fallen and hit her head --
"I didn't fall," the woman said. "I got hit with a puck."
-- got hit with a puck in the head and fell down, and she was in a lot of pain and very freaked out and could they please send an ambulance?
The dispatcher confirmed the address, asked for my name, and then asked for the approximate age of the injured person. I looked down at her, trying to guess. "Maybe her mid-thirties?" I said.
She laughed at that, which I found reassuring, and said, "I'm forty-six."
In retrospect, they probably mostly cared whether she was an adult or a child. They said an ambulance was on its way and hung up.
The park supervisor (who was also a teenager) arrived as I was finishing the call, and the injured woman sat up but didn't really want to try to get onto her feet. She was feeling better, though really shaky, and said that she wasn't sure whether her legs would hold her up. Now that the ambulance was on its way, though, she started wondering whether she really needed it; maybe she should have just gone to a clinic to get checked out?
"Do you have someone who can drive you?" I asked.
"Yes, my boyfriend," she said, and got her phone out to call her boyfriend, who turned out to live very close to the park and arrived a few minutes later.
The first emergency responders to arrive around here are always firefighters, because we have fire stations sprinkled through the neighborhoods while the ambulances may have to come from hospitals. They asked her what had happened and she gave them the full story: the puck had hit her in the head and everything had gone black and she'd fallen. Although she said she didn't lose consciousness, but in point of fact, for future reference, guys, if everything goes black and then you're on the ground, that's what "losing consciousness" is. You don't have to be unconscious for hours. In fact, if you ARE unconscious for hours, that's a far, far, far bigger deal than Hollywood has led you to believe. The fact that she lost consciousness at all was a pretty big deal, and the firefighters were quite concerned about whether she might have hit her head a second time when she hit the ice and not even realize it.
A police officer arrived second. The ambulance was the final arrival and they brought a stretcher out across the ice. The firefighters had helped her sit on one of their first aid kits, so she'd be less cold. The EMTs, to her surprise, did a quick examination and then put a cervical collar on her. The possibility of a serious neck injury hadn't occurred to me (or, I think, to the firefighters, who'd helped her stand up and sit back down). They reassured her that this was just a precaution. She had, at that point, I think pretty much decided she'd let them check her over but then just go to urgent care or something to really get checked out but the EMTs treated anything other than going directly to the hospital as a non-option, and she didn't argue.
Her boyfriend had arrived at about the same time as the firefighters, which was good; he took her son in hand, got her boots, etc. I stayed nearby through all of this as I wasn't sure if they'd need to ask more questions of the witnesses.
The teenager, FTR, had hit the hockey puck. He clearly felt really bad about it. He hadn't done anything wrong; he'd been in the rink, where the hockey players are supposed to stay, and hitting it out had been an accident.
After they put on the collar, they helped her lie down, covered her in blankets, and took her to the ambulance, and I went back to skating.
So that was MY afternoon.
Kiera and I were out on the ice; the other people present were another mom with a kid, plus a teenager in the hockey rink. As I rounded the hockey rink I heard this loud cry behind me and turned to see that the other mom had fallen down, was holding her head, and saying, "oh my God, oh my God, help, please," while gasping for breath.
I said, "I'm coming, I'm coming," and skated back to her and knelt down.
She was holding her head so I supported it with one hand and put my hand on her shoulder with the other. "You're going to be okay," I said, "I'm here, I'll help you."
"Help my son!" she said, flailing her free arm. Her son was sitting, unhurt, right behind her.
"Your son is fine," I said. "He's right here. He's fine. He's not hurt."
The teenager had skated over, and about this time I realized that this wasn't just the sort of injury you shake off, so I told him to go into the warming house and get the kid the park pays to monitor the rink, and he skated off.
"I think I need -- can you call 911 for me? Here, use my phone," she said, and dug it out of her pocket. I started to tell her I could use my own phone and then remembered my battery had died earlier in the day, so I took hers. It was an iPhone and it took me a minute to figure out how to bring up the keypad, and once I did and dialed, it took so long to connect that I thought maybe I'd done something wrong. When I dream about emergencies, I can never actually manage to CONNECT to 911 (the phone is dead, or it rings and rings and no one answers), and it rang four times before someone picked up.
I told the dispatcher I was at Hiawatha School Park at the ice rink and someone had fallen and hit her head --
"I didn't fall," the woman said. "I got hit with a puck."
-- got hit with a puck in the head and fell down, and she was in a lot of pain and very freaked out and could they please send an ambulance?
The dispatcher confirmed the address, asked for my name, and then asked for the approximate age of the injured person. I looked down at her, trying to guess. "Maybe her mid-thirties?" I said.
She laughed at that, which I found reassuring, and said, "I'm forty-six."
In retrospect, they probably mostly cared whether she was an adult or a child. They said an ambulance was on its way and hung up.
The park supervisor (who was also a teenager) arrived as I was finishing the call, and the injured woman sat up but didn't really want to try to get onto her feet. She was feeling better, though really shaky, and said that she wasn't sure whether her legs would hold her up. Now that the ambulance was on its way, though, she started wondering whether she really needed it; maybe she should have just gone to a clinic to get checked out?
"Do you have someone who can drive you?" I asked.
"Yes, my boyfriend," she said, and got her phone out to call her boyfriend, who turned out to live very close to the park and arrived a few minutes later.
The first emergency responders to arrive around here are always firefighters, because we have fire stations sprinkled through the neighborhoods while the ambulances may have to come from hospitals. They asked her what had happened and she gave them the full story: the puck had hit her in the head and everything had gone black and she'd fallen. Although she said she didn't lose consciousness, but in point of fact, for future reference, guys, if everything goes black and then you're on the ground, that's what "losing consciousness" is. You don't have to be unconscious for hours. In fact, if you ARE unconscious for hours, that's a far, far, far bigger deal than Hollywood has led you to believe. The fact that she lost consciousness at all was a pretty big deal, and the firefighters were quite concerned about whether she might have hit her head a second time when she hit the ice and not even realize it.
A police officer arrived second. The ambulance was the final arrival and they brought a stretcher out across the ice. The firefighters had helped her sit on one of their first aid kits, so she'd be less cold. The EMTs, to her surprise, did a quick examination and then put a cervical collar on her. The possibility of a serious neck injury hadn't occurred to me (or, I think, to the firefighters, who'd helped her stand up and sit back down). They reassured her that this was just a precaution. She had, at that point, I think pretty much decided she'd let them check her over but then just go to urgent care or something to really get checked out but the EMTs treated anything other than going directly to the hospital as a non-option, and she didn't argue.
Her boyfriend had arrived at about the same time as the firefighters, which was good; he took her son in hand, got her boots, etc. I stayed nearby through all of this as I wasn't sure if they'd need to ask more questions of the witnesses.
The teenager, FTR, had hit the hockey puck. He clearly felt really bad about it. He hadn't done anything wrong; he'd been in the rink, where the hockey players are supposed to stay, and hitting it out had been an accident.
After they put on the collar, they helped her lie down, covered her in blankets, and took her to the ambulance, and I went back to skating.
So that was MY afternoon.
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