Mom's Cherry Picking incident

13 July 2011

Mom and Dad asked Grandma Belton if she would like to have some cherries. She said that she would love some so on the way home Mom told Dad that she wanted to get some for her mother. He mentioned that he would take over some of the cherries that he had just picked to her but that wasn’t good enough for Mom. She wanted to go and pick them fresh from the trees. So they went out to Brother Murray’s orchard and started picking.

Dad was collecting the cherries he could reach, while Mom decided she wanted some of the cherries that were higher in the trees. Dad humored her and went and got her a ladder. He set it and up she went. Dad stayed close by for a few minutes and then wandered off to another tree.

Mom says that she moved the ladder a couple more times and the next thing she remembers is being on the ground having difficulty breathing. She laid there for a while because she couldn’t catch her breath to call for Dad. Finally she was able to call out “Michael, Michael” and he heard her.

He found her lying on the ground with the ladder beside her. He attempted to check her out to see if she could move and found a gunny sack to put under her head. He tried to get her to get up and go to the car so he could take her to the hospital but she refused to move. He then called 911 on his cell phone to summon help.

Dad followed the ambulance to Toppenish Hospital where they attempted to stabilize Mom. Dad called Bishop Winters on the way to the hospital and asked him to meet them at the hospital to give Mom a blessing. She was then taken for x-rays and a CT scan to evaluate the damage that had been done. The results revealed multiple fractures of her ribs and several fractures of her vertebrae. The greatest concern was that her vertebra at L4 was floating and it was felt that it had a chance to sever her spinal cord which could render her paralyzed.

A transport flight to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle was arranged and both she and Dad were flown there. The medical staff there reassessed her injuries (because the x-rays and CT scan results were not sent with her), and she was admitted to the ICU in order to stabilize her breathing. They decided she was stable enough for surgery on her back the next day.

She was taken to the OR at about 1:00 pm and five hours later, the work was complete. After recovering in the PACU, she was transferred again to the ICU where she spent the next 7 days. It took quite a while to reduce her oxygen requirements low enough to transfer her to a step down unit. She spent 10 days in the hospital and finally got to come home.

Now that Mom is home, those of us who are near by are taking shifts to help her out.  It's going to be a long process of healing for her but she is such a trooper!! She's now walking on her own with a brace on!!  We have to watch her still cause she still tries to do things on her own that she shouldn't be doing. 

Mom, we all love you and hope all is better soon!!

Giving Grandma lots of loves!!