annathepiper | solarbird update

Everyone, thank you very much for your comments; I've read every single one of them and I deeply appreciate them. To those of you on my Friends list who are prayer-inclined, thank you as well. I will be telling Dara that you're all asking after her. Thanks to all of you who have called my cell too. You're welcome to call me directly if wish, or just watch here for further updates.

I'm home now, but

spazzkat and

risu are still at the hospital and plan to be there all night. I came home because a) frankly, I'm freaking, and I'll be useless until I can get some sleep, and b) somebody needed to come home to deal with the pets. So

kathrynt and

llachglin, who showed up to give us moral support for as long as Q's Very Pregnant State could let her, gave me a ride home. As of when we left Harborview,

mamishka had also showed up bearing stuffed animals and hugs, and she gave me a huge hug, chocolate, and her stuffed gator as I tearily informed her I had to go home and crash. Kathryn told me on the way home that as she and her spouse were heading for the hospital, she was in fact mentally composing the speech she intended to give me to get me to come home. Kathryn knows me very well. :}

Medical-data-wise, Dara's sustained a nasty head injury. She has a small skull fracture as well as some bruising along the front part of her head. They have her on heavy sedation and a breathing tube, but while I was there they woke her up to make sure that they could, and they did get her to raise both her thumbs and wiggle her toes on command. Moreover, as near as we could tell, she was definitely in there in her head and very, very annoyed that they had her on the breathing tube as well as restraints. The nurse specifically told us that this was the best possible reaction to see out of her, and I spoke briefly with one of the surgeons as well, who seemed fairly casual about the situation. They'll be doing another CAT scan on her around 4am just to make sure that those results are consistent with the scan they gave her earlier tonight. But it is likely that she will be in the ICU for 2-3 days. I hung out long enough to make sure she heard my voice and to tell her I was going home to crash, that she was in good hands and should let them take care of her, and that I loved her very much. I don't know if she actually heard me, but I wanted to make sure she heard my voice. I also asked the surgeon as well as the nurse if they'd call me if anything remotely urgent happened, and I'll have my phone by my bed, so.

We are pretty sure at this point that it was a hit-and-run accident, as I mentioned. I got a call this evening from a passerby who said that she'd found her by the side of the road, and one presumes that this lady managed to get out of her what her home phone was, and/or found it on Dara's cell phone. Since it was quite literally four blocks down the hill from our home, Paul, Jenna, and I all hastened down there. When we arrived on the scene, medics and a couple of fire station guys and a cop were all around and they were doing triage on her. She was conscious, but not terribly coherent, and the lady who called me said that Dara didn't remember very well what had happened to her. This person also up and vanished pretty much immediately as soon as we showed up, so we didn't get a chance to get any other data out of her. A few confused-looking neighbors had also come out of their houses, and were asking what had happened, but nobody had seen anything.

We were asked to leave her bicycle (the rear wheel of which was quite mangled) and her backpack lying where they were for purposes of investigation, and we'll have to pick it up from the Kenmore Fire Station, so I'll be checking on that tomorrow.

That's about it. There's no net access at the hospital, so further updates over the next 24-48 hours may be somewhat erratic. Y'all might keep an eye on

kathrynt's journal or

mamishka's as well as mine at least for the next little bit, in case they get to post again before I do.

Current Mood: drained

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From:

fleetfootmike.livejournal.com

*ouch*

*hugs*

Not a lot I can do from here, but thoughts and prayers are with you.

From:

And it's all your state of mind

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