Maybe Walking Would Be Safer For This Family
A few words of wisdom to the Jensens:
Stay in your house! Lock the doors!
Be carefullll!
The way things are headed, these Spokane residents may want to consider putting on crash helmets during nighttime forays to the bathroom or refrigerator.
Some very sour karma appears to have settled on these good folks. All four members of the Jensen clan have been the victims of accidents involving three different modes of transportation in the last month.
The odds of something so bizarre happening to one family are, um … Well, you figure it out. I’m a columnist not a dang mathematician.
But it’s all very, very weird.
“I think somebody up there is trying to test us,” says Nancy Jensen, 42, who works in the accounting department at Inland Northwest Bank, 421 W. Riverside.
I should note that Nancy laughed off my suggestion that she wear a safety belt during our interview on the second floor of the Paulsen Center. Fortunately, she managed to relate the following story without further mishap.
The Jensens’ summer of doom, she says, began June 29.
Nancy’s stepson, Andy, was hit by a truck while crossing the street on his bicycle at Division and Buckeye. Because of the issue of fault and liability, Nancy declined to discuss too many of the particulars of the accident.
Andy, however, was thrown into the vehicle. Regardless of fault, this kid suffered a skull fracture that put him in the intensive-care unit at Sacred Heart Medical Center.
A week later, on the morning of July 4, Nancy’s 21-year-old son, Jason, drove his car off the road near Davenport.
Nancy is sorry to say alcohol was involved. Jason had been partying with friends, she adds, and was also upset about his brother’s condition.
Jason was airlifted and put in Deaconess Medical Center with a head injury, a broken collarbone, five broken ribs, a bruised lung and lacerations that needed 33 stitches.
The next couple of weeks were a nerve-wracking blur for Nancy and her husband, Bill, 42, a service adviser at Sutherland Motors.
“For awhile we were going like this,” says Nancy, moving her fingers in a flurry.
The couple spent their spare moments rotating from one hospital to the other. At night they would meet for dinner at Sacred Heart.
Deaconess chefs may want to get some new recipes. Nancy, who should definitely know by now, says Sacred Heart has the most edible hospital grub.
Thanks to the wonders of modern medicine, the boys began to mend and were moved out of intensive care. Jason left the hospital a couple of weeks ago. Andy got his walking papers about a week later.
So Nancy and Bill decided to unwind by taking a nice leisurely - pause here to gasp - MOTORCYCLE ride.
It was a very relaxing ride, too. Until the rear tire on their 1991 Honda Goldwing blew about 60 miles east of Libby, Mont.
Avid riders, both Jensens have their motorcycle endorsements. Even so, keeping the Honda upright was beyond Bill’s control.
The big machine flipped. Bill escaped with minor injuries. Nancy flew 25 feet and was knocked cold.
Bill spent a very worried couple of minutes until Nancy came to. “The helmet definitely saved me,” she says. “I’ll never ride without a helmet again.”
This woman has some kind of grit. Instead of giving in to fear and depression by all that has happened, she is looking positively at the events of the last month.
Her sons may have made mistakes, she says, but the important thing is that they will live to learn from them. As for her own tumble, Nancy isn’t letting a little thing like a blown tire stop her passion for an open road.
“We survived,” says Nancy. “It’s all downhill from here.”
, DataTimes