Friday Favorites, my favorite hero edition (5.6.22.)

Happy Friday, friends! I'm linking up with Erika and Andrea for today's blog post, where a bunch of us talk about our favorites from the week—it can be a product or a moment. This week, mine is all about a moment in time.

Most of you know that my husband is a first responder. He volunteers with our county's sheriff's department and he's been doing this for fifteen years. Before he did this he was a volunteer firefighter, which he did for about six years. Even though this is essentially a second full time job sometimes, it also happens to be his hobby. He enjoys doing this one thing more than anything else and he has seen some crazy things, needless to say. 

But then on a snowy night in February of 2021, he saw something he'd never seen before and was on the call of a lifetime. A sixteen year old boy was sledding with his sled attached to the back of a four-wheeler when he hit a patch of ice and flew off the sled. When he stopped sliding, he found himself impaled by the spike of a hay-baling tractor. The spike went through his rib cage area up through his neck, narrowly missing his lungs and carotid artery. 

There were TONS of emergency personnel who answered that insane call and they all worked together to ensure he made it out alive. There were police officers on the scene, firefighters and paramedics, deputies and Emergency Services, which is what my husband is on. They were holding the young man still, some were consoling, some were with the horrified onlookers, and there was a huge crew of them involved in helping them saw the spike off from the tractor so they could transport him to the hospital. Along with sawing the spike off, still others were passing bottles of water down an assembly line to pour over the metal as they were sawing it off the tractor, otherwise if it'd gotten overheated, it would have cooked his organs and caused more damage. 

They accomplished all of that and were able to transport him to our local trauma center in the downtown area of Memphis. From there he was taken into surgery and they successfully removed the spike and repaired the damage. In all, the only injuries he sustained were some broken and bruised ribs and a punctured lung. I think he was in the hospital for just a couple of weeks, but today he is normal and healthy. My husband has a picture of that spike on his phone that someone texted him from the trauma center, but I'll spare you that image. You can look on Google, if you're really curious, but it's a miracle he survived. 

The trauma center is actually who nominated these guys for an honorable award, The Star of Life award that is stateside. There are eight regions in our state, with one nominee for each area. This is the first time our county has ever been nominated for such an honor! That's where we were this week. We live near Memphis and we drove to Nashville for the night to attend this event, then we got home again yesterday. Needless to say, I took some pictures that I thought I'd share with you. 

These were some of the personnel who were on the call that night. They each got a reward, a lapel pin and the county was given a trophy of sorts.

This is the young man who was the patient. The cool thing about this night was that the patients all came to present their awards to each division, but ours was the only region whose patient or other family member didn't come. I know that was a huge disappointment to all these men. 

It was fun to dress up and attend this.

Our hotel had this cool mural outside on one of its walls. Below are us, Chris (one of Todd's regular partners and good friends) and his wife Terra. We traveled and hung with them the whole time.

It was a great evening. Aside from doing this, we did a few other things when we first rolled into Nashville, one of which was that we had lunch at a yummy local place. I had turkey tacos that were incredible!

We checked into our hotel after this and got settled in our rooms.

We had a nice room/suite with a great view at the end of our hall. After that we toured a local distillery.

And this was our ride, which was super nice and comfy. It's a new model Tahoe that the sheriff's department owns. 

Needless to say, it was a fun twenty four hours. I am so proud of my husband, my favorite hero. I've always called him my Superman, but he really is just like a real life one. As much fun as it was, I'm always glad to be back home...there's no place quite like it. Thanks for reading my blog, friends! Sharing life with you all is one of my favorite things. I'm grateful for the friendships I've found here! Thank you for always encouraging me. Love to all!