Emergency At Home While You're On The Road

At trucking truth we strive to be honest and truthful to help everyone that stops by whether you're experienced, new, considering a career or even just looking to gain knowledge of this often misunderstood industry. We all have various reasons of why we got started, as well as what we enjoy about it. I want to bring up something that happened today that involves my family life and how its negatively impacted by this career. I'm a home daily driver so the extent isn't as devastating as if you're on the otherside of the country.

I took a easy 2 store run to Cedar Rapids IA today, only about 260 mile round trip. I was just starting to head back when I receive a frantic call from my wife telling me I need to get home ASAP. We've been busy remodeling our home and she took it upon herself to use power tools to continue the current project of replacing baseboards as we just put down new flooring. I've always told her no power tools when she's alone, and same for me for safety reasons. The saw ended up slipping and cutting the webbing between her thumb and pointer finger. From her description I could tell it was bad so I'm trying to keep her calm while I'm worried sick about her and our 3 young kids. My wife takes alot of pride in being independent and taking care of things herself. It was a struggle getting her to call her mom that lives an hour away asking for help. Of course none of our neighbors happened to be home today when this happened. After she finally called her mom, I convinced her to call 911. They ended up showing up and had her loaded in the ambulance within 2 minutes of showing up for whats normally a 25 minute drive to the hospital. The nice police officer (1 of the 2 that live within a block basically next door to each other) of our town of 1200 stayed with my kids keeping them calm for 45 minutes until Grandma showed up. One of the medics asked if she wanted his wife who is a licensed daycare provider to watch them until I got home but grandma was on her way and we felt it'd be better for the kids this way. Meanwhile all this is happening while I'm 2 hours away from the yard when I first got the call, plus 45 minutes from home after dropping the truck (hospital was 15 minutes closer to me) As a professional driver we're required to stick to our training regardless of what else is going on to ensure our, and the general publics safety. The entire drive im worried sick about my wife knowing that I'm completely helpless to the situation and she's unable to talk while receiving care so I have absolutely no idea what the heck is going on. My wife is ok thank God, and received 8 stitches. The officer even stopped by later after shift to see how my wife was doing which I thought was very nice.

I wanted to share this to show you one of the downsides of this industry and not being able to help take care of issues at home. Not everything in this industry is great and its difficult on everyone involved in many different ways. With that being said, I love this career choice and everything its provided for my family. Even as a local'ish driver its often difficult to rush home for emergencies.

Good point and praying your wife makes a full recovery, Rob!

This is a great thing to point out to those that may not think about it, nor have experienced this. Another one is a sudden, unexpected death in the family, or of a close friend. I've received that phone call five times so far, and it's a lot to think about when 12 states and two time zones distant.

Wow, Rob...... eye opening, for sure.

I could get 'verbose' as I often do.....but I'll digress & keep it simple.

I SURE HOPE your wife makes a full and speedy recovery; my HAND has an ouch just thinking about it.

When Tom was OTR , I had some male 'friends' in my/our life, that would help with the household things I couldn't handle on my own; they've all left ..in one form or another. I'm shxxx with power tools as well; he wouldn't teach me. Now, I see why.

Ergo, why . . . Tom is comfortable in the 'skin he's in' with this FAB job. He's maximum 2 hours away in case of a crisis. His mom is in her last days; I'm alone w/ an almost 17 y/o son, things can (and do) happen.

Excellent post, man. That sure IS the plus side to being 'close to home'ish.' ...... wish you both well. I'm sure that was hard to share, and harder (more) not to speed!!!

Always caring;

~ Anne ~

Wow, that's tough! I too was in Cedar Rapids today. My day was just as crappy as yours but without anyone getting hurt. Reciever closed till Monday or Tuesday, dropped the loaded trailer, even though the bills said don't drop trailers on their lot, bobtail 60 miles to Muscatine Iowa and the preload isn't loaded..oh...and they have no empties to load. They managed to empty one then took 4 hours to load me. I shut down with 39 minutes on my 14 hour clock and only managed to get 319.4 miles in.

Hope your wife has a speedy and painless recovery.

First day of summer vacation from 3rd grade I put was at my friends house the street. We went to run outside he opened the door screen door and when he let go it swung back in front of me so I put my hand up to stop it and my hand went through the glass instead of stopping the door.

The glass wasn't safety glass so it got i my wrist really making me spray blood like a fountain, shaving bone off and cutting tendons. Had to have surgery to repair the tendons and remove the bone fragments, the doctors didn't think I would have full use of my right hand which luckily I do.

I've been up for 23 hours and forget to say what the point was!

The point was, my mom called my dad and said we are heading by ambulance to the hospital and to meet us there. Luckily he worked 30-40 minutes away and left work, while hitting a rock in their parking lot and putting a nice dent in his van in the process. Had he been a driver instead of a mechanic he probably wouldn't have been able too and could have been stuck hours or even days away.

Glad your wife is OK Rob definitely a scary call to get.

First bad news while on the road with trainer, close family member passed suddenly. Next while on my own for a few months, dad passed suddenly. CFI got me home for the funeral. Wife had surgery and CFI got me home for that.

One of the biggest reasons this lifestyle is not for everyone is family.

Rob, I'm so glad your wife is ok. Most of us know how bad that could have been. Hope all is well with you and your family.

Rob I feel your pain Brother. About 5 weeks ago my wife fell and broke her left collar bone - It was lucky that I had just finished loading and I was still in the yard. A quick call to my FM to let him know the situation and I was on my way back home and I got her to our local emergency room. We live out in the country and I always have a fear that she could have an accident and I can get back quickly. IMHO family emergencies are the number one concern for drivers on the road. The opposite can be the same for the families of the driver having an emergency while on the road. I'm sending my positive thoughts for your wife's speedy recovery.

Thank you everyone, she is doing well but sore. She's got it wrapped with a gauze pad for the next day or so then was instructed to keep it uncovered. She'll go back to the E.R. after 14 days to have the stitches removed. Its been a challenge getting her to stop trying to do stuff as she has a tendency of always accidentally bumping/hitting the part of her thats injured. This call I received was much worse than the call I got that she fell down the stairs a few months ago. Atleast with that one she was just bruised up and had a small fracture in her toe. She didn't seek medical attention for that one and was able to just stay off her feet a couple days. She's quite accident prone, perhaps I need to re- childproof our home and cover everything in bubble wrap

I got the living room carpet ripped out and plan on getting the remainder of the flooring down on my next days off Tuesday or Wednesday. Then comes doing our last section of drywall in the basement. Idiot that flipped this house took alot of shortcuts that we're finding and didn't even insulate a walk-out basement in Iowa.