Happy New Year!

Happy New Year - 2008 to you all. Hope you're having a great start to this new year. Mine has actually not started out the best. Cheri had plans of coming over to my house with her family as well as my brother, Duane about 1:00. Dad and Ann were coming around 4:00. The guys were going to watch football and Cheri & I had snacks made and were just going to hang out and play games. I received a call around 12:30 from an ambulance driver saying that my brother had been in an accident and needed to go to the hospital to get stitches in his head. You have to know my brother to understand what follows. He did not want to take the ambulance because "that's only for people who are really sick" so I needed to go get him. Cheri wasn't here yet. I tried calling her cell phone but she had forgotten it at home. I kind of waited a bit and she got here so we took off, leaving Dave and Mark with the kids. We got to the accident scene - he had hit a patch of ice and slid and hit a tree - we're pretty sure his car it totaled. His head was all wrapped up. So we debated on which hospital to go to and chose the closest one. We got there about 1:15. They sent him to get a cat scan which all came back fine. The bleeding slowed down so they could get a better look. After getting out all the needles (the dr. asked for the biggest needle they could get) and saline and things, they decided they really couldn't fix it there. There was a 28 cm. laceration from side to side and was cut down to the bone. They were concerned about an area that didn't get a lot of blood flow to it. So we waited for an ambulance to transfer him to Grand Rapids. This time we put our foot down and told him to take it because he was bleeding again. The roads were getting icy so Cheri and I said a little prayer for safety and headed off again, around 4:00. We made it to Grand Rapids and waited for the plastic surgeon. At 7:00, they asked us to leave and told us it would be about 20 minutes or so to fix it up. Around 8:45, they finally called us in to tell us he was done. The dr. felt there was about a 70% chance that the piece would heal up okay. After a confusing exit from the parking ramp (Maybe Cheri can explain it) we picked Duane up and headed home. We got there around 10:00 - exhausted! He has to keep the outer wrapping on for 2 days and will go see the plastic surgeon on Monday. We discussed how this would make a great blogging opportunity but didn't have our camera's with us for pictures. (not that he would have let us take them anyways!)
Not a great way to start the new year but thankful because it could have been so much worse!