Kayaking.

I love stories.  Real life stories.  Silly stories.  Odd stories.

In college I took a creative writing course.  I'm terrible at creative writing.  If you notice, I only blog about real stuff.

The stuff that seems creative... that's just 'cause I'm not right in the head.

At any rate, the creative writing class... I decided to take a real life story and turn it into a fiction story just to try to pass the class.

With the two stories that I tried this is my feedback from the teacher:

1) Seems like a real life story you tried to turn into fiction.

2) Seems a little too much to believe.

These made me smile because both statements are totally true!

So, in true Susan fashion, I'm going to attempt to share both of these stories with you.  As well as a story I started this post to write, but it's totally going a different direction.

1) Seems like a real life story you tried to turn into fiction.

Except I'm not going to try to turn it into fiction this time.

A week before our first anniversary, Josh went on a Pastor's Retreat with the other pastor's from our church.  He was the Creative Arts Pastor, which means he got to do all the cool stuff with design and lighting and music.  And he had a really big Mac.

This retreat was in the middle of nowhere North Carolina.

I made a handy little map so you can follow me on this crazy trip.

Here is the cast of characters:

H = main pastor = adventure (was in the Marine's)

J = my awesome husband (worship/creative arts) = adventure (but completely novice)

S = children's pastor = has a head on his shoulders

K = worship/admin = feeling a little dizzy

D & E = H's wife and daughter who visited one crazy day

H & J are all about kayaking.  A kayaking adventure is born.  Did I mention H slept in a hammock all week?  That's inside a perfectly good cabin.  *shakes head*

S is a little skeptical, but agrees to go along as long as there is a raft involved.  K is not feeling well and decides to hang out at the cabin and recuperate that day.

Fast forward to the river.  The river is the blue star on the map above.  J gets caught in the current (a good thing), flipped (a normal, expected part of kayaking), loses his paddle (not good), and reaches for it (detrimental).  The current pushes his shoulder out of socket.  He is still underwater.  He gets above water, feels like he's been shot.  Everyone stares, then gets him out of the water.

They take him a little too far away from the water and when the emergency crews for the river get there, they realize he's too far away from the water, and therefore they cannot treat him and must call the county hospital.

I couldn't make that up, y'all!

So they call the ambulance.  Meanwhile, it's just a shoulder out of socket, right?  So several skilled people try to pop it back into place.  They were all unsuccessful.

The longer a shoulder is out of socket, and the more it is messed with, the worse damage there is.

By the time the ambulance got there, J was nearly going into shock.  Maybe he did for all I know.  I'm not a medical guru.

The hospital is the green star on the map.  Not terribly close.  And they only had 2 or 3 ambulances.  Three rooms in the emergency department (from my memory).  The hospital, best I remember, is one level.

Image Credit

Sooo.... it took awhile for the ambulance to get there.  That's when I got a call on my cell phone.  I was in a summer class at Western Carolina University (the pink star).

It was a strange number, so I didn't answer it.  Then the same number called back immediately, which is cell phone code for "answer this call... you don't recognize the number, but it's important."

So I answered it.  And it was J, barely making sense.  He started with "I'm ok" and quickly told the story.

He had borrowed the cell phone from the EMT treating him in the ambulance.  Is that sweet or what?

Thank you, Mr. Ambulance Guy!

He said it was another 30 minutes or so before he'd be a the hospital so I stayed for the rest of the class and then headed to the hospital.

What hospital?

I called the number back.  Ambulance guy told me which hospital.  What a great guy!

But how to get there?  I didn't have GPS!  This was 2007 y'all!  :)

So I called a dear friend who knew her way around the sticks.  She got me straight there.

Pause.  Remember K?  He wasn't feeling well so he stayed back?  Well D & E had come by the cabin and after a little bit, K passed out.  D called an ambulance.

Remember how many ambulances this county had?

Now back to the river.  All the guys can't ride in the ambulance, so H gets them back to the truck.  He then calls his wife, D, to tell her.

In what I can only imagine to be a very confusing conversation, they both realize that they are headed to the hospital for different reasons.

Once at the hospital, we realized we were taking up most of the emergency room.  What hogs.

J & K were hopped up on amazing amounts of drugs.  We took cell phone videos.  What I wouldn't pay to still have those.  And because he was wearing a wetsuit that had dried after being wet, he stunk.  Not to mention he didn't have a change of clothes.  Or even shoes.

I can only imagine what the hospital staff thought that day.

Honey, I don't know what kind of church they are, but they sure can stir up some trouble.