Roaming Renshaw's

Sometimes life throws you curve balls and you have to figure out how to adjust. Coming into this year we had several vacations planned for later in the year and were looking forward to some spring camping trips. I was also excited about ramping up running and potentially signing up for Labor Pains 12-hour trail run on Labor Day weekend. After logging 175 miles in January I was feeling great!! Kristen had recently found out about a job opportunity at the local Zoo and was excited for an upcoming interview. She has always loved working with animals and with her degree in equine sciences she was more than qualified for an open zookeeper position.

On March 15th, we dropped Autumn off at a cousins birthday and Hope decided to go to a friends house, so Kristen and I made the most of free time and ran some errands and were planning on stopping for dinner. Unfortunately, as we were driving along a main road another car turned in front of us and we collided directly into their passenger side. When the accident happened, I saw us hitting the other car and felt the air bag go off. When we stopped moving I looked over and saw that Kristen had gotten out of the car, my first thought was to get to her and make sure she was going to be ok. As I got out of the car I felt very light-headed and probably looked drunk running around to her side of the car. I knelt down next to her and gave her a kiss, thankful that it wasn’t worse than it was. My next thought was that we needed to make sure the kids were taken care of and people knew that we wouldn’t be picking them up. I had to call every number I knew at the birthday party before my Aunt finally answered, I explained what happened and that she should call my mom to arrange coverage for Autumn that night. I also called our friends where Hope was at and they were fine keeping her overnight. Luckily the kids weren’t with us, it could have been so much worse. One of the first bystanders on scene was an off-duty ER nurse, she was very adamant that I needed to lay down and rest, apparently she saw the accident and was worried about neck injuries. Someone must have called 911 right away because fire/paramedics arrived quickly. Kristen and I were both strapped to backboards and transported to a local hospital, my first ride in an ambulance at 43 years old! Kristen’s glasses flew off in the crash and her vision is pretty blurry without them, plus she is claustrophobic so being strapped to the backboard was even more torturous for her. I had a bandaged laceration over my left eye (which is really all I see out of since I’ve always had a bad congenital cataract in my right eye)…I’m sure we were a sight for sore eyes, haha. I was discharged later that night with a mild concussion, strained trapezius muscle and some lacerations (with a nasty black eye), but Kristen was admitted for surgery and got the brunt of it with a broken femur, broken tibia, and shattered wrist.

Kristen ended up getting surgery the next day for her broken leg to have screws put in her femur and tibia and the whole leg was put in an immobilizing splint/boot. The day after leg surgery she was back in the operating room for the hand specialist to put her wrist back together, which also required a titanium plate to secure everything. Everything went smoothly and she was discharged several days after the accident. With the surgeries over and being out of the hospital, we could focus on recovery for both of us and trying to maintain the kids routines for them. Our family during this time was incredible, from re-arranging schedules, to dropping off meals, helping with errands and taking the kids places…all of it was so appreciated. It was overwhelming going from a functioning two parent (both driving) household down to one parent trying to care for the other parent and keep kids schedules moving. It would have been so much more difficult if friends and family weren’t around. Kristen also had the barn and horses to manage, we are so thankful for everyone at the barn that managed the day to day until she was able to start coming around again.

It’s tough to put into words how difficult those first few days home were. I’m good with tasks; getting things done and keeping a project moving at work, day to day chores around the house, running errands or taking the kids places. However, Kristen and I are a team and when one of us is down for the count it became very overwhelming. The top priority was to take care of Kristen, but I also felt that the kids needed to keep their normal routine/school/sports as much as possible. Housework and chores got pushed to the bottom of the list but I knew in my head that those things still needed to be done. There were definitely some mental breakdowns at the doctor’s office and I lost it one day when I forgot to put Autumn’s snack in her lunch. Everything that used to be a quick/easy task to finish now seemed like one more giant thing added to this mountainous pile of stuff to worry about. Having family and friends around all the time and work being very flexible made this easier to deal with, but at the end of the day I still felt like it was all my responsibility to make sure things kept working the way that it did prior to the accident.

My PT lasted a few months and I only have some remaining stiffness in my neck/shoulder. Kristen is mostly done with doctor appointments but still has PT and a long road to getting back to 100%. She’s happy to be back on the horses and able to do some hiking, but she has a lot of tightness in the tendons from the surgery and being immobilized for so many weeks. We skipped spring camping but have been able to keep our trips to Costa Rica, Outer Banks, and Disney on the books. We did have to adjust Costa Rica to do a more basic horseback ride rather than riding in the ocean like Kristen was originally excited about. More to come on each of these adventures!!! I’ve also started to get back into running and while I won’t be doing an ultra this year at least I am logging some miles again.

While the kids were amazing and helpful and understanding throughout this whole process, it definitely seems to have hit Autumn a little harder than Hope. I think this is partly due to their age difference, but also their personalities (Hope is more laid back and care free and Autumn is more concerned). It’s also because of the scenario of the accident, we dropped Autumn off at a party and told her we’d be back to pick her up, then she was cared for by my Aunt and her grandparents until she was able to visit us in the hospital the next day. She just started having sleepovers at the grandparents houses again after 4 months of not wanting to leave Kristen. I’m sure everyone will recover fine but as I said above, it’s a lot to go through and it’s been a tough year.

On top of all the healing and trying to maintain normalcy, there was also the new complications of dealing with insurance and bills and finding a replacement car. Kristen was able to start driving again in June and it has been great to get back to somewhat of our old schedules. My job was also very flexible with me working from home for a couple of months while we were juggling everything. Also, Kristen was able to get a new interview set-up for the Zoo! They want her to come back in the fall once she is more healed but it still sounds like a great opportunity for her.

I think the kids are a little sick of me telling them that I love them…all the time…but otherwise I think we are getting back to our old lives a little more!!!