A Concussion

On July 6, 2013 Eli went to a roping in Teague, Texas with his friend Brett. They had also signed up to do the wild cow milking. Sounds like fun right?! A group of cowboys chasing a cow and the first team with milk in their bottle wins the competition!! Well Eli was riding his friends horse and as they were chasing the cow the horse stopped suddenly and Eli went sailing. He was unconscious for several minutes, and the last thing he could recall about that night was getting ready for the wild cow milking, and he doesn't remember anything that happened after for the next 13-14 hours. They took him to the hospital and he was responsive on and off but when he actually "came to" the next morning he couldn't remember being awake at all. His friend called me around 11:30 to tell me what happened. I was going to call someone to come sit with the kids while I drove up to be with Eli, but Brett reassured me that with 3 kids at home and being 7 months pregnant that I needed to stay home. He said Eli was doing great. That his wife was taking care of the horses and that he would stay at hospital with Eli. Eli called me around 3:30 or 4 that morning to tell me he was doing ok and we talked for a few minutes. Then he called me the next morning before they were coming home and didn't remember talking to me at all the night before. He had a Doctors note not to go back to work until he was cleared by a neurologists. I have to say right now how thankful we are that we had been blessed with his job at Oncor and hadn't moved onto Empire yet. We did love working for Empire but Oncor paid him in full for the 4 weeks he missed of work and we had wonderful insurance to cover all of his Doctor visits, Cat scans, etc.   Of course he recovered well and went back to work. But only for another month and a half because while he was home recovering Empire called him with a Job offer. We decided we would give it a try, and take the opportunity we had been hoping for- to live closer to family. Since we were still waiting for sweet baby girl to arrive we decided to wait until after she got here to move and start the new job.

 The famous milk bottle. I still have it 2 1/2 years later.