Life Delays Twins Saga for More Lessons Learned

I apologize for taking a break from the saga about my Arabian twin foals and their mother, but another one of those life lessons has come along. I thought it important to preempt the twins’ post based on the gravity of the lesson.

I posted last week about the injury I received getting kicked by a young horse. Life Delays Twins Saga for Lessons Learned I really thought I had handled things as I should but I’ve been getting a lot of flack about it.

First off, my husband, Dave, is not happy that he was sleeping in the house and I didn’t let me daughter, Lindsay, wake him up to help me. My excuse was he’d just gotten home for a 12 hour shift and I didn’t want him not to get his sleep.

His contention is that my life is more important than his sleep. Well, obviously, I believe that’s true but I didn’t think that my life was at stake. So I made the decision to wait a couple of hours before I actually got help.

I was operating under the assumption, that I felt fine – I mean my darn hand hurt like a mother bear but once I caught my breath I was a little stiff by ok, my hand was a long way from my heart. I could wait to get stitched up.

Yesterday, Dave and I had lunch with my friend, Jean. She’s a medical professional and works trauma, so she does a lot of emergency room work. She sees it all. She knows what are the biggest mistakes that people can make and what their consequences can be. I trust her immensely, if she says I screwed up, I listen, it could mean my life.

Jean was interested in all the gory details of my accident. She actually likes all the blood and guts stuff. So I explained about the horse kicking me and where – my hand and my chest and what I did to deal with it, and what the doctors did to deal with it. Dave gave his two cents worth about not being awakened to take me for help and I depended my position. We went through the whole thing.

Now this is the part that’s important. Jean started off saying, obviously it turned out ok BUT being kicked by a horse anywhere in the body cavity is considered to be the single most dangerous accident for trauma specialists to work with. The doc that Jean trusts the most states, “give me a gunshot any day of the week, I know what to expect from that but a kick by a horse can be deadly and not give me any clue. The patient can be fine one minute and dead the next. That’s why even if they check out ok, I tell them it’s imperative to stay quietly in bed for three whole days after any kick, no matter how good they feel. I warn them f they don’t do it, the consequences can be grave even deadly.”

Jean definitely has my attention. While I knew it was possible to be injured internally and not know it, I believed that they docs could tell by my blood pressure that I was ok. So I had made it a point to notify the emergency room that I had been kicked in the midsection and had the wind knocked out of me. I, obviously, was not triaged by someone who understood the injury potential of being kicked by a horse. Only my hand injury was attended to, The possibilities of internal injuries were not explored.

Normal protocol should have been a chest x-ray to verify I didn’t have a lung collapse or partial collapse. Blood work run, examination of the injury site on my body, possible CT scan and, even if all other tests don’t show anything ,the ordered bed rest.

Now I could go into all the technical terms of what all the possibilities are but I don’t think the terms are as important as the outcome. What it all boils down to is it’s very possible to be injured in such a way that you feel fine but just moving “the wrong way” can cause a “bleed” (rupture in an organ) and you can bleed out (to death) in minutes. Normally with a few days bed rest that injured surface will heal enough to prevent the bleed from happening.

Many people don’t know the same thing is true with head trauma. If you have a concussion and don’t protect yourself (staying quiet until it heals) and you bump your head even slightly again, you can drop dead instantly. The risk of further head trauma goes up with each concussion, but a concussion on top of another concussion the danger level goes up to scary extremes.

Most horse people I know either don’t know these facts or ignore them about both circumstances, the kick to the body or head. We tend to believe if we can get up and walk away from it, we are fine. Well, there’s a really good chance that we’re not fine and I for one will not take another chance with my life like I did last Tuesday.

Next time, I’m calling 911. And if the ER docs don’t order the required tests, I’ll be making lots of noise because the odds are NOT in my favor that everything will turn out fine. And I’m writing up a set of emergency instructions, leaving copies by all the phones and in the barns, in case I’m unconscious or not lucid the next time.

For more information Handling Emergency Situations on the Farm