It could have gone differently....

Just to preface- Everything is ok. But it almost wasn't.
We went to Katie's house this weekend to celebrate the Shrimp Festival and Katie's graduation. Saturday morning we all get up and are getting ready. I'm getting dressed when all of a sudden, I hear my husband downstairs wailing in pain. He is screaming. I ran down the stairs, fully expecting to see a bone protruding his skin somewhere, and there he is. Laying on the ground at the bottom of the stairs, still wailing in pain, holding his back. My first thought..."Oh shit. He just broke his back."
Patrick (Katie's fiance) was down there as soon as I was and was asking Wes if he was ok and if we needed to call an ambulance. The second I heard him say the word "Ambulance" I screamed for Katie. For several reasons. 1) Katie is a nurse, She will know what to do 2) Katie is my rock. My husband just fell down the stairs, and I need her to keep me calm so that I can be calm for him.

She comes running down and immediately, the mood gets a little lighter. She tells him to wiggle his toes, wiggle his fingers, nod his head. She wanted to make sure he wasn't paralyzed. Patrick kept telling him to get up if he could. Katie was saying (in a very calm, quite voice I might add) for him to just stay right where he was until he felt it was ok to move. We all sat there, over him, for about 10 minutes. Then he started moving around a little. He finally started breathing easy enough to tell us what happened.
They have carpeted stairs and he was wearing socks. He went down them too quickly. His foot came out for underneath him, and he landed on one of the stairs, right on his back. He said that it felt like his back cracked in 2, and he couldn't breathe.
For the rest of the day, we made him take it easy. Katie gave him some anti- inflammatory meds, and we wouldn't let him do any heavy lifting (we were taking coolers and chairs with us to the shrimp fest) and he had to rest as much as possible. It's still sore, and very tender, but he's feeling a bit better.
Thank god.
Saturday could have been spent in the ER, with my husband having a broken back.