The Phone Call You’ve Been Dreading Your Entire Life

Yeah – that phone call. The one that comes from a hospital letting you know that someone you love was in a terrible accident.

1 week ago today my cute husband had been out of town with some friends climbing the Grand Tetons in Jackson Hole. I was back in SLC and had just been out to dinner with my kids and my parents. My kids had asked to ride home with their grandparents so I just had the baby in the car.

I had a missed call from Jackson, WY. Weird because if my husband was calling me it should have come from his cell phone. I had a message. I knew something was wrong. ““This is (insert nurses name), I’m a nurse calling from St. John’s Medical Center in Jackson Hole Wyoming. If you could please give me a call at area code 307-xxx-xxxx, Thank You.”

I knew it was bad. I called back and got the E.R. – those moments waiting felt like an eternity. I couldn’t feel my arms or legs and I felt like I was going to throw up. The nurse returned to the line and told me that my cute husband had been in a head on collision and had broken his back and had internal bleeding and that they would be life flighting him soon.

I did what you think you would do in that situation. I made incoherent phone calls and then I went and cleaned my bathroom. It would be a few hours before I could actually go to the hospital and there was nothing I could do. So yeah – I cleaned the toilet.

When I finally went to the E.R. I stalked every ambulance that drove in until the nurse sweetly educated me about how that was illegal and how I needed to stay put.

This all happened on Friday the 13th. Worst day ever. Write that down. 3 surgeries and one week later we are finally out of the ICU and have graduated from “critical” to “serious” condition.

I’ll be posting a few more things over here – including a post dedicated to my love of the IMC cafeteria food (for realsies). In the meantime, if you’ve missed the other updates – I’ve made the notes on my Facebook page public so you can catch up on the accident and all that’s gone on in the past week.

August 14th

August 15th
The Crash
August 16th
August 18th
August 19th

The point about the phone call though — when you think of receiving it, it paralyzes you. When you do receive it, it paralyzes you. But shortly after your body kicks in and draws on it’s reserves to get you through it. A weird sense of calm and logic comes over you and you just start taking everything moment to moment. I think I’m up to day by day now. But it’s ok. Somehow we’re built to endure it all whether we think we can or can’t.

We’re hanging in there! More to come!

Editor’s Update: A charitable account has been set up at America First Credit Union (in Utah) to financially aid Mark’s recovery. To make a donation: visit any AFCU branch and request to make a donation to the Mark Herrscher Charitable account OR mail a check with Mark Herrscher in the “To” field and Charitable in the “Memo” field to PO BOX 9199 Ogden, UT 84409.

Tags: been, Featured, my life, phone, you've