Two years since I was injured driving home from work and ending up in the hospital for seven months. Hit by a third party driving the other direction who crossed the centreline and drove into me.
I read through the accident and medical reports. They say I was conscious and talking to first responders as they were cutting me out of the car. I remember none of that. I remember driving on a clear day, bare dry roads, and then nothing but blackness. Next I remember talking to paramedics in an ambulance on a stretcher as they asked me for an emergency contact. I told them to check my phone. They said they could not find my phone and again asked me for an emergency contact. I said who memorizes phone numbers anymore? Then I said right after if they could drive on a smoother road as this one was really bumpy. Everything then went dark.
I came to in a hospital bed in the ICU in the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Edmonton. I could not speak as I had tubes in my nose and mouth. I found out I underwent emergency procedures, my left arm was in a cast due to a broken wrist, stitches in my left elbow, rods running down my legs with screws going into my legs to hold together shattered femurs and a broken tibia. There were fractured ribs and a fractured L5 vertebra. I could feel the blood in my hair where glass cut my scalp. There were still a few pieces of glass in my hair. Both of my feet were purple from the impact. Friends only found me because I had not shown up at home and they called around to hospitals thinking the worst. Days later I would undergo an eight hour operation to properly put my legs back together.
It was not until days later that I found out what happened. I do not remember any medical staff really telling me anything until well after the last operation. This is the second time I was almost killed in a car accident. July 16, 1994 I was driving south down Highway 795 south of Calmar, Alberta when a pickup truck drove through a stop sign eastbound on Glen Park Road and broadsided the car I was in almost slicing it in half. I was really shook up but nothing was broken. There damn well better not be someone trying to kill me off with a vehicle a third time.
There has been progress. Slow and painful progress. No one tells you about the pain you will face. That may be a good thing. If I knew beforehand I am not sure I could have faced it.
I will not mark the anniversary next year at this time. This event has ruled my life for too long and I am doing my best to move on enough to bury it. You can largely overcome a lot of things in life if you keep chipping away at it. I am gaining more strength in my legs and my legs are getting more used to supporting my full body weight. It will take a long time.
Today I will out for a drive somewhere enjoying being alive.
You are winning this epic battle by sheer perseverance and fortitude, and are an example to us all.
ReplyDeleteDebra said it well. You are amazing and I hope you know that and that it gives you courage to go on and keep improving.
ReplyDeleteYou're alive & that is impressive! You're out taking long drives again and that is more than impressive!
ReplyDeleteHang in there.
This is one of the things I admire about you: throwing that mental baggage away and getting on with it. You gotta be so mentally strong to do that - never mind surviving a trip through a literal meat grinder.
ReplyDeleteBut I’m still going to smoke your arse in the motorcycle races this spring. Expect no mercy.
😊👍
We are glad you are alive too.
ReplyDeleteYour comments show your mental strength and resilience. I know that's easy for me to say, but things can only get better.
ReplyDeleteMore power to you. I wish you the best. I was in a wreck about 50 years ago. I was not injured as severely as you, thank God, but your description of your memories parallels my experience. I remember nothing of the accident. I remember getting out of my car via the passenger side as my door was smashed. i remember asking the folks in the car I hit (yes, accident my fault) if they were OK. I remember a police officer handing me a clipboard with a report to sign. I don't remember any interaction with the officer before he handed me the board, but everything on the form was filled in. I remember someone coming up to me while I was sitting on the curb and asking if I needed help. I remember a cab ride home and the driver letting me letting me short him 50 cents because I didn't have the full fare. I remember calling my parents telling them I had been in a wreck so I couldn't make it home for Thanksgiving. I remember washing my face and sitting down in my living room. After what felt like just an instant, there was a knock on the door, and it was my parents. They had driven 2 hours to get to me, and I thought I had just sat down. It was days before I stopped having blanks. I never went to a doctor or anything, so I guess I was lucky.
ReplyDeleteIt is odd what we do and do not remember from that kind of event.
DeleteI was involved in an accident as a pedestrian. Had the "bullet vehicle" been a truck I would have been killed.
DeleteI think that in times of mortal stress, our brain shuts off all functions not involved in immediate survival.
People who have been involved in situations where they have been shot at almost universally state that they heard nothing, that they could not tell you anything outside of a 2m wide tube that extended between them and the shooter. They also felt little pain while the zhite was going down. That came later.
My first memory after being hit was "This isn't going well" as I looked at the puddle of blood on the pavement that was flowing from my face. My second memory was that I was silently ripping out "Hail Mary's" like an over-revving Stihl Chainsaw (I am Catholic).
I started crawling toward the side of the road and felt/heard the bones grate as they aligned. "Not good".
I was blessed in the fact that my compound fracture severed the nerves that sends pain signals to my brain.
A trauma as severe as you had (far worse than mine) is so far outside of the normal that all expectations are off the table.
Right on. Get out there and cherish every second.
ReplyDeleteI had a motorcycle wreck in 1974. I don't remember the day before the wreck and was blank till about 3 weeks later when I woke up in the hospital in traction. I was awake during the three weeks and interacted with people as if I was normal but I do not remember any of that. I figure my sub conscious was running things in my absence.
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