Monday afternoon I ate lunch with my sweet Daddy and boyfriend, Spencer and then headed south towards Valdosta. I stopped in staples to look at laptops because 1) my 4 year old Dell has been giving me issues and 2) I just had some time to kill before I had to be back in Val. While in Staples my younger sister, Sami, called and asked if I had heard about Justin(our brother-in-law. I call him Bubb. Don’t get confused!). I said I haven’t and immediately knew something was wrong. She didn’t seem very upset/panicked so I wasn’t really sure. I asked what was wrong. She said that Amanda said he shot himself in the hand and was in Tifton(I assumed at the hospital). I freaked! Sure it was his hand and he obviously was still alive or she wouldn’t seem so calm but this is my BUBB!, my only brother, one of my best friends, I was very scared!
I rushed to the register to check out what I had in my hands and rushed to the hospital. I had no clue where they were so I went to the emergency waiting room. No sign of them there. I was PANICKED! I grabbed a girl that worked there who I recognized from a church we used to go to and asked if she could help me find my brother. That was when I lost it and began crying. She talked to the girls at the desk in the emergency room and confirmed that he was indeed there and she went back to try to find them. I collected myself and quit crying. Then the sweet girl returned and asked me to follow her. She took me back to where Bubb was and I immediately started crying again when I saw his parents standing outside the room. Poor Mrs. Desiree just held me as I cried all over her pretty little shirt. She asked if I wanted to see him. I didn’t know what to expect but i DEFINITELY wanted to see him!
I walked in the room with no idea what to expect. There were two guys who I didn’t know there asking him questions and my sweet big sister, his wife. I immediately hugged his neck. Just seeing that he was alive made me feel 10 times better! His hand was wrapped in gauze and bloody but he was there and seemed fine(I am sure from the adrenaline!). I asked him what happened and all he could tell me was he was playing with a gun. The whisked him back to another room so they could clean him up for surgery.
A little back story. Bubb had just gotten a new revolver the day before. He had never owned a revolver but has several other guns and has been around guns for what seems to have been an eternity. Sunday night when I was at their house he was showing me the gun and just playing around with it(unloaded of course!).
From the best we can tell, he still doesn’t remember exactly how it happened, he thought the gun was unloaded. After the accident happened, my daddy went to Sarah and Justin’s house to remove the gun. Daddy said the gun had four empty chambers and there was one spent round in the gun(the one that had shot his finger). When Daddy tried to remove the shell, the gun pushed the shell back in the gun. He had to literally grab the shell and pull it out. My guess is that when Bubba unloaded the gun, he just dumped the bullets out and never checked to see how many he took out or if the gun was truly empty, and by the malfunction of the gun ejecting the bullets there was one still in there. So he truly thought the gun was unloaded and in reality it was loaded with one round.
They performed surgery to reattach his finger and kept him in the hospital for 48 hours. They couldn’t give him any information as to what would happen with his finger for at least 2 days after the first surgery. They released him from the hospital yesterday and referred him to a hand specialist in Macon to discuss whether or not to put in an artificial joint or to amputate his left pointer finger. He was able to get an appointment today which is nearly unheard of in any office let alone one as prestige as this and they decided that amputation was the best option for him.
I know he is excited to get going with the recovery process and I know he is ready to get back to work! He has been blessed with many visitors, Facebook notifications, texts, calls, and prayers sent over the past few days. I hope they continue to come as he starts his recovery process!
Bubb learned the hard way that we should always double check behind ourselves when dealing with guns. He made the comment that he never thought it would happen to him. I personally, am thankful that he only lost one finger, rather than his life, and am glad that he is looking at this as a learning experience. He is so positive about everything and I am sure he will recover and be back to the fire department/EMS soon!
Here’s a picture of my cutie patootie Bubb in the hospital!
