The Bigger They Are, The Harder They Fall

What a day.  Gary decided to help Mom out by checking where her flat roof was leaking.  As soon as he got on the roof I heard a loud "THUD" followed by a lot of mumbling I couldn't understand.  I climbed up the ladder to see what had happened.  The roof was covered with moss and about an inch of water.  His feet went out from under him and he landed on a 6" pipe that was almost level with the roof, but not quite.  He could not get up.  I called 911 and we had police, a fire truck and an ambulance here in no time.

They got up on the roof and checked him out, got him up and he was able to get down the ladder on his own.

They gave him the choice of them transporting him or allowing him to get out of the wet clothes (from lying in the water on the roof for about 15 minutes) and into dry things and me driving him.  He elected to take a shower then have me take him to the emergency room.  Several hours later he has been admitted to Swedish Hospital (appropriate place for the big Swede) in Edmonds with 5 broken ribs.  We were lucky--his lungs were not punctured, but they want to watch him overnight to help out with pain meds and do another x-ray tomorrow.  4 of the ribs are fairly clean fractures. Only one is a jagged, messy looking break.

It looks like we won't be heading home quite as soon as originally planned.