Horse back riding = pain

Here's the deal: I got bucked off a horse on Saturday and the only picture I got was of Tony's backside while he was trying to get on his horse. Really this is quite ridiculous.

The Story: We bought some tickets through living social a while back for a 90 minute horseback trail ride at Pantano Stables. I wanted to go for my birthday last year, but I was 8 months pregnant and in a bit of pain, so I decided not to. The tickets expired on May 13, so we needed to use them last weekend. We dropped the kiddos off with Danielle at 7:30am on Saturday and drove over to the stables. We were riding with about 7 other clients (4 little girls and 3 adult women) and 2 'wranglers' that work at the stables. We were the last 2 to get on our horses. While one of the women was mounting her horse, she said she was an experienced rider and wanted a horse with a little bit of spunk. Naturally I say, 'I'd like a horse that's exactly the opposite of that, like if he was any slower, he'd be going backwards!' They gave Tony and I what they deemed as tame horses and we were on our way.

There was a wrangler leading the pack and a wrangler behind me bringing up the rear. We went down into the wash to start the ride and I asked the wrangler if he'd seen many rattlesnakes out there on the trail rides and he said, 'well, me personally, no. -pause- but this is my first time doing this.' Turns out he normally drives the stage coach out at Old Tucson but the stables were busy that day so he came over to help out. A girl that was riding about 4 horses in front of me had one of those horses where they just mosey along and try to eat any tree or bush in site, so the wrangler rode up next to her to make sure her horse didn't get too far behind.

All was well, we zig zagged from the left side of the wash, to the middle, the left again. I noticed that when my horse went downhill, he would sorta trot for a few steps, which was fine with me, whatever. Then we crossed over to the right side of the wash, went uphill a bit, and made our u-turn to start the ride back. Before we started going downhill again, my horse started to poo. Earlier in the ride, the wranglers said to stop if the horse needed to pee, but to make them keep walking if they were pooping. I let him stop for a few seconds to figure out what he was doing, then made him keep walking. Then we got to the hill down into the wash and after he took the first couple steps, he bucked and I went flying. It was uphill on our left, and downhill on our right. I flew out of the saddle towards the right side while yelling 'aaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh.' I did a sort of sommersault/roll mid-air and hung onto the reigns while I was in the air. I could hear Tony calling my name as I was flying. I closed my eyes and landed on the back of my right hip and rolled onto my left side. Somewhere in there I let go of the reigns. As I was on the ground I could hear the horses hooves beating on the ground and I just kept thing 'oh God don't let him step on me!' Luckily he didn't.

The wrangler that was supposed to be behind me got off his horse and came over. There was blood mixed with a clear fluid (I'm guessing maybe snot) dripping out of my nose and I had those prickers all over my clothes. Luckily I landed in the 'soft' wash sand. If I had landed further down there were a lot of rocks and if I had gone off the other side it would have been closer to the ground, but also on very hard ground. The wrangler asked if I could move and if I wanted to try to stand up. I didn't really think I should move in case my back was hurt, so I was getting a little agitated and said (in a not so friendly way) 'call 911, doesn't anyone have a cell phone?!' Tony said something about my hips and kept asking if he could get off his horse. I told the guy I have bad hips and he wanted to to roll onto my back, so eventually I did, which hurt SO bad. Then I went back to my side, then to my knees, and I stood up with the help of a wrangler and Tony. An employee drove his truck down through the wash to pick me up. That truck ride was a bit bumpy and really painful and when we got back to the stables, the fire truck with emt's arrived right away. They put me on a flat board, put on a neck brace, and taped me down the the board (including a huge chunk of my hair). My bp was quite high, like 190/130 and eventually the ambulance got there and took me to the hospital.

I was in so much pain on that flat board, I can't even tell you. It was definitely worse than giving birth without an epidural! I asked everyone (the emt's, the ambulance guy, the nurses in er) if I could have pain meds. The first 2 didn't even have any and then some guy (I'm not sure if he was a nurse or what) in the ER said, 'well first we're going to get your IV in, then we're going to do some x-rays, then maybe we'll talk about pain meds'. I swear I almost slugged him, jerk. Then my actual nurse came over (super nice) and I asked her and she said, 'oh I'm giving those to you right away!' and had them in her hand.

Once I went to CT, they got me off the flat board (yay) and saw that my L2-5 vertebrae (lower back) have compression fractures from the impact of the fall. Later they did an MRI which showed that there was bleeding around L3 so they needed to stop my blood thinners. Doing so would mean they'd have to do surgery to put in a temporary clot filter in my groin area. I did that under conscious sedation and I'm happy to say I don't remember a thing. Then they gave me 2 bags of plasma to help clotting and another 2 the next night.

I have a back brace to wear while sitting or standing for the next 6-8 weeks. I'm supposed to keep as much pressure off of my back as possible which means to picking up the kids or cookware or doing any housework or anything that could make me twist. It's supposed to heal on it's own in about 6 weeks, but I have an appt with the neurosurgeon to see how it's progressing in 2 weeks. The hematologist also said that one of my clotting factor blood tests came back funky, so he repeated it and I have an appt to discuss that with him next week. I get to inject myself with low dose blood thinners for 14 days and then they'll decide if they're going to take out the clot filter and start me back on the pill blood thinners again.

I got out of the hospital yesterday and I'm feeling better today. I just have to make sure to stay on top of my pain meds. I was getting quite nauseous in the hospital with the pain killers (they started with diloted, then morphine, and now I'm on oxycodone) so I'm taking some anti nausea meds too.