Riding Gone Wrong

Since we've lived in California, Zane has been talking about getting a toy hauler and going camping out in the desert. We finally decided to plan a weekend out with our friends John and Linda and their kids to try out a toy hauler and see if it's something that we would like to do. They too were looking to buy a toy hauler so we rented one together and off to the desert we all went for a weekend of riding and camping.

After settling into our campsite, everyone got on their "toys" and went for a ride. I stayed back with Cally and Leah and watched them play in the sand and have a great time. We played, sang, had snacks and they rode Cally's little "quad" around for a while. 

John and Linda

 Johnny

 Zane (before the accident)

 Cally and Leah having a blast

About 2 hours had passed since everyone was gone so I briefly started to worry and tried to shake the thought out of my head thinking I was just being silly. About 10 minutes later, I see only John pull up and tells me to get the girls in the truck because Zane had had an accident and we had to go get him. At first I rolled my eyes and shook my head thinking that Zane, being the risk taker that he is, probably hurt himself a bit, maybe broke an arm or something, but I wasn't too overly concerned. John proceeded to tell me what happened and I began to worry. Apparently, he was on a pretty high hill and tried to go off of it. When he went up into the air, the wind blew his bike somewhat to the side and he didn't land properly causing him to be propelled over the handle bars and crashing against the hard ground. When he hit the ground, he lost consciousness and was unable to be woken up for several minutes. By the time I got there, he was sitting on a chair that some people had brought to him. I tried to talk to him but he was confused. He recognized who I was, where he was, and the date however he had no recollection of what had happened. His back was all scraped up and he was definitely hurting although he kept insisting on riding back (yeah right!). With some help, we got him into the truck and drove back to the camp site. During that time, he kept asking what had happened to him and I would tell him only for him to just ask me again not realizing he had just asked me. His short term memory was completely gone. He kept saying he didn't want to go to the hospital but with his behavior I knew we needed to. Also, his body was pretty bruised and I wanted to make sure there was no internal bleeding. So Cally, Zane and I headed to the nearest hospital, Pioneer Memorial in Brawley, CA and after a CT, x-rays, and some morphine we got the bad news. Zane had broken 4 bones in his lower back! I was shocked to hear the news and so was Zane. The good news was that there was no spinal cord injury and he only broke a small part of the L1-4 vertebrae. All he will need now is time to heal. There is no permanent damage and it will not affect him at all. All in all, good news. So after a few hours in the ER we drove back to the campsite and settled in for the night. 

Our fun camping trip didn't turn out the way we had planned, but it could have been worse! I'm just glad that Zane will be okay after all is said and done! Now he needs to just take it easy for a few weeks to let his back heal. That, however, is where the problem lies since he doesn't know what "taking it easy" means. Hopefully time goes by fast and he recovers quickly. Until then, I will try my best to keep him from exerting himself.