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The coffee's on, make yourself at home. We are glad you are here. :-)
Have a great weekend!

If you would like on or off of the Finest Thread ping list, FReepMail me.

Mornin', folks ! We made it back to Texas. I'm at Dad's house right now. I'm using his computer, and I don't have any of my graphics and ping lists so my apologies to all. (Jeepers, his AOL vs my AT&T Broadband....I'm crawling again, lol!)

Dad is doing excellent considering the shape his car was in after his accident. It was totalled.

Here's a rundown of how his accident occurred, and his injuries:

He was driving east on I-70 about 100 miles east of Denver, Colorado when he hit some black ice. He lost control and the car veered to the median where he hit a "turnaround" area (where cars can turn around to change direction on the highway). The car hit on the passenger side and rolled probably twice and ended up on the opposing lane of traffic side just beyond the highway shoulder. It landed rightside up, and Dad was able to crawl out the drivers side window (none of the doors would open).

Dad is 71 years old and has a fractured #2 vertebrae in his neck and will wear a neck brace for 8 weeks. His left arm required skin graft surgery, and likely more surgery and P.T. The skin on his left arm was what the doctor called "degloved", meaning peeled off his arm and you could see muscle and tendons. But no major blood arteries or tendons were damaged, so he was very fortunate. He had a puncture in his left leg just above his outside ankle. It was minor, but required about 10 staples and is doing fine and has not bothered him in the least so far. He had a bump on his head from the impact and also appears to have pulled/overextended a muscle in his left shoulder blade. That injury (should blade) has caused him the most discomfort of all his injuries. The doctors have prescribed a muscle relaxer and pain medication to help with that. He's a very lucky man to have been able to literally walk away from this. When the ambulance got there, he had crawled out of the driver's window and walked around a bit. A stranger drove by and stopped. He had a cell phone and called the ambulance for him and put a clean towel around his bleeding arm. He stayed until the ambulance got there. Dad is working through his injuries very well. He's a tough old man, my Dad is. I hope when I'm his age, I'll do as well as he does. Holy cats, I'm only 23 years behind him, lol !

My apologies for ramblin' on here, etc. I'm still a bit worn out from the events of the last 10 days or so. I logged over 2000 miles in the round trip plus driving to the towing place to get Dad's stuff out of the car. When I get the film back from developing, I'll post the pics of the car I took that day.

I want to express my appreciation to all of you for the so nice comments regarding my Dad, the prayers, and everything. My very special thanks to FReeper HiJinx and LadyX. I cannot express in words my sincere appreciation to you both for making contact with my Dad at the hospital. My Dad was very impressed to receive your call, HiJinx and was so pleased and grateful to hear your kind words of concern for him. Likewise to you, LadyX for your ever so sweet e-mail to the hospital. We got your note the day after you sent it to him. Talk about morale boosters! Thanks so much ! :O)

Oh, one more thing. The folks at Swedish Medical Center were so very very kind and caring to my Dad. It is my opinion that SMC is one of the very best hospitals that I have ever seen.

LadyX, your son that used to work at Swedish Medical Center in Englewood, Colorado must be a very special and talented man. I know you are proud of him. I wish that he could have been there at the time my Dad was in the hospital so we could have met him.

Since I'm going to be with Dad for at least the next few days, I'll likely not be too active on FR. I'll be here until he can get around on his own. So ya'll bear with me until things get normal/semi-normal with us again, ok?

See ya'll later! :O)