Nobody likes an unexpected trip to the hospital. Last week, I approached a new horse in her stall to remove her blanket, she spun on me faster than I could move. Unfortunately, she kicked me.
When you grow up around horses and animals a majority of your life you learn how to approach them. I am extremely cautious when working with the horses, even ones that are typically chill can be startled and accidentally hurt you. I entered the stall and approached her shoulder while talking to her. I reached out my hand so she could smell me approaching and she immediately started to kick and spin. Instinctively I reached for her to push myself away as best I could but it was not good enough. She kicked me in the lower ribcage. Fortunately she was in what we call the ‘tent’ which happen to have vinyl sides. I spun around and took the blow to the back of my right ribcage. The stall has some give since its not a hard surface and for that I am so thankful. I am also thankful she missed my spine, as two of the fractures are just a couple inches away. The third fracture is lateral and closer to the side. I don’t know how but somehow I escaped her stall, closed it behind myself and collapsed to my hands and knees. The staff and clients came running to my aid. Jason had to drop everything to come get me and rush me to the hospital where an x-ray and CT confirmed three rib fractures. Over the past 9 days my family has had to do nearly everything for me and I have been forced down. This is not something I handle well, the pain meds are too much for my system to process and sitting still makes me feel entirely uneasy. The pain of rib fractures is excruciating and unlike any other broken bones there is nothing to stabilize the pieces. I am healing up well and have learned to ignore the cracking when I breathe and can maneuver pretty well. I am so thankful to have the support of my family which has made this as easy as it can be. Silly things like opening the slider and putting the top on the Ninja prove to be near impossible still but I am progressing and cannot wait to get back to my horse friends!
Our adoption is progressing, its amazing that this is literally one waiting game after the next. The ball was in our court for about 10 days while we worked on photographs and marketing paperwork. All of this was uploaded last week and our adoption profile will become live any day now! Keep your eyes out for another post in a couple days where we share in more detail what is required for marketing to birth mothers. I would estimate over the past 2 months, between the home study paperwork and the marketing paperwork I have committed over 20 hours to simply writing. This doesn’t include the research time and documentation that also occurred. We simply could not be more excited. We have started researching car seats and bottles and are forming a list of baby names. Each step makes this feel all the more real but fortunately, at this point it is so much more of a reality than a dream.
The fundraising has come in pretty slowly now that we have attained our first goal but we are still a long ways from the finish line. Any help we can get is greatly appreciated. Please share our story and help make our dreams come true.
VanBeukering Adoption Go Fund Me page https://gofund.me/2ca5d524
Laurin & Jason's Adoption Story 