The Backstory

On Thursday, November 6, Dad was supposed to meet Mom downtown at 2pm to leave for Mena, Arkansas, for his sister MaryJane’s 90^th birthday party. He called to tell Mom he was running late, and that he would explain later. When he did arrive he said he’d stumbled on the basement stairs while trying to set the alarm, fell down the stairs, hitt the back of his head and scraped his arm. He insisted he only had a little headache he felt fine and was ready to head for Mena.

Mom says he seemed fine Friday and Saturday, and it was only when they were heading back Sunday that she started noticing anything. He was sleeping (not unusual), but was also a little more slumped in the seat than normal. The most significant thing was that once they got back to town and went to pick up his car he pulled out of the parking garage, sat through a couple of cycles of the light, and then made a series of left turns which resulted in going the wrong way on a one-way street. Mom was right behind him and called his phone, told him to pull over, and then drove him home. Even then he was insisting he was just needing to eat, and was fine. They went home, had some dinner, and he went to bed.

Monday morning she found him sitting propped up next to the bed. She asked him why he was there and he said he was transitioning from the bed to the bathroom. When she suggested he go ahead and get up off the floor, he couldn’t. At that point she called 911, and they brought Dad to Vanderbilt.

Very shortly after getting to the ER, before either Amie or David could meet up with her, Dad had a seizure, and when he came to his speech was difficult and he was very weak on his left side. Dad’s on Coumadin to thin his blood; after his fall he’d started a slow bleed that had grown large enough by Sunday to induce symptoms. They did a CT scan to see how large the bleed was at that point. Mom asked two doctors if she should call the children and both said she should. Thus began the first of many rounds of phone calls. David was already with Mom, Liz drove in from Memphis and Steve flew in from Tulsa on Monday night. Alex and I left Carlisle about 8pm Monday & got to the hospital around 9am Tuesday.