Carol's Corner

Anyone who has seen my other blog, Chattanooga Daily Photo, will know what has been going on. That blog has the Reader’s Digest version. This is a little more detailed but I’ll try not to get too boring.

Friday morning I got a call on my cell phone while I was at work. It was one of my kids and all he said before the call was dropped, “Mommy, I’m in the hospital.” It was like a B movie or a cell phone commercial. I have to admit that I wasn’t even sure which kid called me and the caller id just said “unknown”. I felt like a bad mother but they sound alike on the phone and I didn’t even get a chance to say anything. My first thought was that it was Michael but after verifying that Michael was in his class at the high school I knew it was Alex. Trying to find out about your college son is vastly different from the high school one. The best they could do was give me the number of the hospital in Murfreesboro. I called that hospital and found out from the ER that Alex had been there but he was being transferred to a hospital in Nashville. Not what a mother wants to hear! Now that he’s 18 he’s considered an adult and because of HIPAA they refused to tell me anything. I had called my husband at work as soon as I knew it was Alex. He works 40 miles away from Chattanooga in the direction of Nashville so he left and was making his way there.

I was on my way to get Michael out of school so I could leave for Nashville too when Alex called back again. I told him to tell me quickly what happened in case the call got dropped again. He had fallen out of his top bunk in his dorm and fractured his skull. He has no memory of what happened so we can only speculate. He had his PSP in bed with him and he last remembers playing with it. He found it on the floor and the screen was destroyed so Alex wasn’t the only one to fall.

Alex was in the hospital until Monday and he’s making a full recovery. No permanent damage. He’s glad to be back “home” in his dorm and I’m glad to be back home too. I’m still playing catch-up with everything including my blog.