The phone rang, it was my mother, telling me something I would later forget. Five minutes later, the phone rang again. I figured it would be her again, and answered rather abruptly, still tired from a night of feedings and little sleep. The caller identified herself as Diane from D-Velco, my husband’s place of employment. She told me there had been an accident and that Dan was being taken to the hospital. He had apparently hurt his hand. I would learn later that this was all he wanted anyone to inform me of. I told her that Dan had the car and I had no way of getting to the hospital. She said she would have one of the employees come to pick me up. I hurriedly put some clothes on and called my mother, sobbing what had just transpired. I dressed my daughter Savannah warmly, threw a couple of diapers and a bottle in her diaper bag and waited for the knock on the door announcing my ride to Maricopa County Hospital. Hopefully, this employee would know where it was, because I had no clue.
Bill would arrive shortly, help me load Savannah’s car seat into his truck and off we would go to the hospital. In the mean time, my mother had called the hospital to find out exactly what had happened. Once she learned the grim details, she would try desperately to beat me there, to no avail.
As I sat in the emergency waiting room, next to another D-Velco employee, Gary, I must have been a sight. There I sat, a twenty four year old new mother, with her bundled up sleeping daughter, no make up, barely combed hair, old sweater and jeans, waiting for the inevitable. The emergency doctor would soon come out and tell me all of the details of my husband’s injuries. Both arms had been crushed in a machine, expelling muscle and tissue from the right arm, and nearly severing the left wrist. One artery in the left arm had been severed and the other artery had been crushed severely. He would be lucky to keep both arms, much less to live. The doctor told me they were getting ready to take him straight to surgery and that I could see him briefly. He had been put on a respirator and was asleep, but he took me back to the trauma room to see him.
When I walked in, he was covered with a sheet up to his neck, and a nurse was "breathing" for him with the respirator bag. There was blood all over the floor. I stood beside him afraid to touch him, for fear I would hurt him and began to sob uncontrollably. Another nurse who had been standing behind me, handed me some tissues and walked me back to the waiting area. My mother was there by then, holding Savannah and talking to Gary about what had happened. I rushed to her and cried on her shoulder for what seemed like an eternity. We walked to the chapel for some privacy, which would be our only place of solace for the next month.
As I sat on that bench in that small chapel, I pulled my knees up and leaned on my mother, crying like a little child. I don’t even know what I was thinking at that time, all I could do was cry. I called our church crisis line to ask for prayer. I would later call the church to speak to Pastor Lane when they opened the offices. I also called all the family and friends I could think of to have them pray.
The hours ticked by, and different people from D-Velco would stop by to see how things were. Dan was still in surgery and I didn’t have any information to give them. John Maris, the vice president, Bob Tatroe and Bud Free, two managers, and Bud’s wife would later stop by. John would give me his home number and cell number if I needed to reach him. Everyone seemed genuinely concerned and upset by the accident.
Around noon, the vascular surgeon would come in to tell me what he had done. He had been able to open up the one artery in the left arm and tie off the severed artery, but blood flow was still "iffy" at best. He told me that their main concerns were to save Dan’s life. With a crush injury this severe, poisonous toxins are released into the body and can damage the kidneys and the lungs, causing failure in both. The next forty eight hours would be critical. He said that his portion of the surgery had been completed and the hand and arm surgeons were now working on Dan’s arms to try to piece them back together. He would not get out of surgery until around five o’clock that afternoon. He was transported to the Surgical Intensive Care Unit to be monitored closely. I would be escorted by Chaplain Turner, the Chaplain on call that day and a lifesaver to boot, to Dan’s side for a brief moment. SICU had strict hours and visitors could only see patients for fifteen minutes at a time.
When I saw him for that brief moment, I couldn’t believe my eyes. He was badly bruised from his upper arms into his chest and neck, swollen twice his normal size. His arms were both bandaged and I could not see the damage. He was on a respirator and had a gastric tube down his nose. He had several IV’s in his ankles and cardiac tabs on his chest, along with a blood pressure cuff on his thigh. He was sleeping soundly, still on the affects of the anesthesia and high doses of morphine. I was only allowed to stay for a few minutes, but would be able to come back in a couple of hours to visit for fifteen minutes.
He would be partially awake on that next visit, trying desperately to mouth words to me and my mother that we could not understand, but kept falling in and out of sleep. I kissed him on his forehead and would later leave to go home and put Savannah to bed. She had been blessed with her godparents presence for the majority of the day and I knew she was exhausted. Dan’s brother and sister-in-law would also be coming down from Kingman soon. My mother would follow me home (someone had brought Dan’s car to the hospital for me) and stay with me that night. I must have cried into my pillow for what seemed like hours until exhaustion overtook me and I fell asleep. All I could think about was how the night before, Dan had been his sweet former self, touching my face and telling me how beautiful I was. And that I had not said I love you to him that morning, and could possibly lose him now.
Dan and I were married in 1992, and were deeply in love. Dan had a temper and I knew it before we got married, but I would not witness it's affects until after about two years into our marriage. He would get mad and take off in his truck, but once we moved away from our church and family and friends to Kingman, AZ in 1994, I would soon see another side of Dan that I didn't like. In fact, I came to hate that Dan.
As Dan pulled further and further away from God, he became controlling and abusive. He never hit me, but he would verbally and emotionally abuse me. This wasn't a constant, but it was like a roller coaster ride, one day he'd be fine, his sweet and loveable self; but the next day, you couldn't even be near him for fear of what he would say or do. I would get calls at work from him demanding this or that, yelling at me about the bills or what I didn't do right, and then he would slam the phone down without even a goodbye. I learned that the guys at his work called him Hitler from listening to his conversations with me on the phone. And at home, when he was in one of his moods, you learn to duck real quick, or you would get a phone thrown at you or whatever else might be in his hand. We had holes in our walls from where Dan's fist had gone through and the phone had been broken on numerous occasions from being thrown into the wall. I was not allowed to talk to my mom or my friends, at one point, and would go to the grocery store to be able to call my family at the pay phone.
After two years of this, he ended up getting fired from his job ( I was 8 months pregnant ) and we moved back to Phoenix, to stay with my mom until the baby was born. After our daughter was born, Dan quickly moved us into an apartment, because he thought my mom was too critical of how we were raising our daughter. After we moved, I was barely allowed to see my mom, and when I did he would call every ten minutes to find out when I was coming home. He even got to the point where he didn't want to have anything to do with Savannah, just to get to me.
Don't get me wrong, we had good days, when I would get a glimpse of what he was like when we first got married, but then something would get him upset, and it was over. I had always been very independent and not afraid to speak my mind before we got married, but I learned to best appease him and his temper, I should keep my thoughts to myself, after a while.
Finally, the week before the accident, Dan had gone to church and was really acting like he was on fire for Jesus. He wanted to check into working at the church, and had even gotten an interview for the day after New Year's Day. I thought this was going to be it. I had prayed for so long that God would get a hold of him, and my family had prayed that God would either straighten him up or move him out. I was to the point of insanity and was ready to leave him to wake him up. But, God saw how things were going and knew the only way to wake Dan up was to make him rely on God instead of himself, so then the accident happened.
Dan ended up being in the hospital for almost five weeks, had six surgeries, and lost his left hand just below the elbow. He learned that he could no longer rely on what Dan could do to get things done. He learned that he needed to rely on God. He saw through a dream and what I was finally able to tell him, how he had been to me and to our family and friends. He has completely transformed from the "old" Dan to a new and much better one. He still has a temper, but now instead of reacting in a rage, he will walk away and be quiet for a few minutes until he's calmed down and we can talk about things. And God has given me a new boldness. I am no longer afraid to tell him what I'm thinking or feeling, which can sometimes cause problems, because now I tend to not stop and think about what I'm saying. But I'm learning and so is Dan.
We continue to go to counseling from time to time with our pastor, but for the most part, we just rely on God to see us through the tough times. I probably need more counseling just to deal with getting over the past, but with continued prayer, I'm sure I'll get over it. I've forgiven, but sometimes it's hard to forget, so that's what I have to work on. We now have another daughter, and continue to go to church and work with our marriage ministry. God is so awesome!!
