The Accident...Part IV: Oh My Goodness, That's YOU!

I will admit that I was reeling after I wrote yesterday's post. A few of you have sent me private messages to let me know you felt the same, and I appreciate that. I really do. In fact, let me take a moment to say how much I appreciate all of the messages of support and encouragement that I have received from everyone. You have been amazing...particularly since I really didn't think anyone would find my blabbering the least bit interesting.

But let's get back to the story.

When we last left our hero (I am not a hero, I know, but it just sounds so cool to write it like that...), I was being life-flighted to a trauma center in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Turns out that I had crashed in Santa Rosa. To this day, I am still a bit unsure where that is, though I can tell you from memory that I had passed a sign on the freeway not long before the crash happened which said, "Tucumcari 80-something miles". So apparently its roughly an hour outside of Tucumcari. The only reason I happened to know Tucumcari, apart from its peculiar and rather fun-to-say name, is that I had stayed there in the truck stop overnight on my first trip across country. Small world.

I slipped in and out of consciousness in the Emergency Room once they got me to St. Vincent's Regional Medical Center. I don't remember arriving, but I can recall being X-rayed everywhere, CAT-scanned, and I think I even had an MRI...though I can't be sure of it. I remember authorizing the police officer, a very polite and gentle man, to take my blood so they could rule out any alcohol or drug influences as a cause of the crash (and for you who are wondering: I was clean on both counts). I hazily remember the nice man who gave me my stitches on my face...several of them, in fact.

I don't remember, however, a picture that I took while I was in the ER. I think I might have done it accidentally, but then again, it's hard to do such a thing with an iPhone camera. Either way, I am glad I have it because no one ever took another picture of my face until I was back to normal...and it's a good reminder of what someone looks like after an airbag punches you in the face.

My injuries, as you probably have guessed, were very substantial. Funny enough, I had not broken my left arm, as I had thought while I was trapped in the van. Instead, I had separated my left shoulder, bruised that arm right to the bone, and had a nice clean laceration that was just as deep.

I had severed the tendons in 3 of my fingers on my left hand, which is why I couldn't feel or move them while I was trapped. I suffered a closed-head injury, but no bleeding was found (thankfully). Instead, I was just monitored for signs of damage...which showed up a few weeks later...when talking was easier. As a side note, brain injuries are many times silent and difficult to find, particularly in high-level communicators like myself. I have learned a lot about them since my accident, and the biggest thing I have learned is to accept it. I realize that I may never be the same person I was mentally, and if that's the case...well, I'll be alright.

Finishing off the list...I severely injured both groins, and last but not least, crushed my L4 and L5 vertebrae, along with significantly dislocating the next 6. I could breathe on my own, but I was unable to move from the chest down.

My mother was notified by my girlfriend, the one who's husband was in the crash with me. I cannot imagine the feeling she must have felt. Something along the lines of having all of the wind knocked out of her sounds like it's on the right track. But my mother is an insane force of rational thinking. It has been the one thing that has saved her through all of the horrible experiences she has gone through in her life. So when the news came, she called my brother and got on a plane as soon as she could. The only image I can give you (which is actually insanely accurate) is a scene from the movie Steel Magnolias: the scene where Sally Field is walking into the hospital because her daughter has just slipped into a coma. The scene shows her walking alone, her footsteps very deliberate and quick, and her face frozen in a look of readiness and panic simultaneously.

My brother was in Thailand at the time, and did not get my mother's call until the next day or so. My memory is that he jumped on the next flight to come be with my mother and I. Once my brother arrived, my mother could finally express herself...letting out her sadness, worry, anger, and helplessness...every emotion that seems to overwhelm you during a crisis. And my brother, bless his heart, was able to stand and be strong for her. That is something I can never thank him enough for because even though I didn't mean to cause anyone...particularly my mother...this worry and suffering, I couldn't be the one to give her even an ounce of comfort. But he did...he did that among other noteworthy things.

My mother arrived on the day of my back surgery. I don't really remember the first week of my hospital stay. I was really drugged and moreover I was in such pain that I was either being given something to knock me out, or I was screaming and sobbing. Before and after the surgery, I couldn't move my legs on my own. I could wiggle my toes on my right foot, but my left was completely unresponsive (it remained so for an entire month before it started to show signs of movement).

The day after my back surgery, I had my left-hand fingers (tendons) repaired. This left me in a large cast which was to stay on for a month so that the tendons could heal. After that I was in a splint for another 2-weeks while I underwent intense occupational therapy on my hand. I can tell you, amidst all of these tales of pain and suffering, that the pain I endured while they stretched my tendons that had healed in the cast rivaled everything I felt with my back. Yes...everything. It was indescribable.

My fourth day in the hospital (I think), which was the first day that I had no surgeries scheduled, I can remember a bit. I remember loads of flowers in my room. I remember my mother telling me that I was not to talk on the phone anymore because I was not making sense most of the time. I remember the pain...not because I can remember what the hurt felt like...but because I remember it being so severe and unbearable that I needed (and had) one of those self-dosing IVs where I just needed to push a button, and it would give me the juice (up to every 16-minutes). I also remember screaming for my mother and brother to help move my legs every 5-10 minutes because they would start to hurt and I couldn't do it myself. It was a bad scene.

I have a memory of one night after my surgeries when I was having horrible nightmares and was in an incredible amount of pain. I remember that I was half out of it and was screaming and sobbing, calling for my mother. This CNA came in, one whom I liked in general up until this point, and he told me (verbatim), "Honey, you're making too much noise, so I am going to have to shut your door. You need to quiet down".

My mother was so pissed off when I told her this the next day, I swear I saw fire come out of her ears. My mother is an administrator in a healthcare system, so she is fully aware of what is acceptable care and what isn't (which is nice because I wasn't really able to advocate for myself at that time). The short of it is that we never saw that CNA again...ever. Apparently I wasn't the first person he had treated like that. [sigh] So atrocious.

Anyway, soon after that we started to notice that I was losing the slight mobility I had gained from my initial back surgery. I don't think I need to tell you how scared that made all of us. My doctors whipped me down for a CAT-scan and spinal tap to figure out what was up. Now, I do remember the pain of that day. For starters, they had to roll me over, which hurt like hell with my broken back and the after-effects of its surgical repair. And then there was the spinal tap itself, which anyone who has had one can tell you, is pain that you would wish on no one. And because my luck is nonexistent at times, the first round wasn't successful, so I had to go through it again. Flipping back and forth, another spinal tap, etc. Only this time, the liquid which they shot into my back broke through a blocked area and went down and to the right...towards my hip. I won't ever forget that. I howled like there was no tomorrow.

Before I go on, let me tell you something good about that experience. There was a very kind nurse (actually, there were several very kind nurses who cared for me during my stay) who took me down to the CAT-scan room. She introduced me to the woman who was administering the CAT-scan, who was also incredibly sweet. And when she (the nurse who came with me) asked if I needed anything, I remember asking her if she would stay with me because I was afraid. I am positive she had other things to do, but she took my hand and said, "of course". She stayed with me the entire time. It was people like her that got me through days like that.

After I howled and they found that there was a blockage (I do not know the medical terms well enough to relate them here), I was zipped back to my room and then almost immediately prepped for emergency surgery. The surgeons were going to gently loosen the rod that was placed in my back to realign all of the dislocated vertebrae, as this was the assumed cause for my growing paralysis. 

It worked. I had no other surgeries after that.

Once I was out of the woods, probably the fifth or sixth day or so, my brother went to find my U-Haul and figure out where things stood with my belongings. Another long story short, he took some pictures of the original U-Haul as he found it, and some pictures of the stuff as he unloaded it. I lost almost everything--all my furniture, my computers, dishes, my grill--a tremendous amount of stuff, gone. Then my brother, generously and without request, rented another U-Haul, loaded up everything that he could salvage, and made a plan to drive back to Maine with my things. It was an unbelievable gift considering the amount of money he had already spent because of this accident (hey, flights from Thailand to Santa Fe, NM are not cheap on a day's notice). And though my mother was still frail and feared him leaving her, he assured her it would be OK and left the next day...making the trip in 4 days. The remnants of all of my belongings, whatever he was able to load up into the new U-Haul (i.e. if the box was still intact or if he could chuck it into one of the bins he bought at the local Target), are in my mother's basement. To top it all off, when it was time for me to leave the hospital, he paid for my first-class ticket, along with my mother's, so that I could sit in a more comfortable seat. I figure I have used up all of my Christmas gift money from him until at least 2032.

My mother stayed with me until the 10th day, and then she had to return to work. It was more than emotional for both of us when she left. I had arranged for a dear friend of mine to come and stay with me beginning the day that she left, so that I would not be alone. And interestingly enough, though I was miles and miles away from anyone I knew, and although I spent a total of 6-weeks in the hospital, I was alone for 1 week at the very end. It is still very surreal to me that I was so lucky in that regard.

A day or so before my mother left, one of my favorite CNAs came into the room to help me bathe. She had done this several times, and I was very comfortable with her. As she walked to the bathroom, she abruptly stopped and looked at a picture collage I had received from a friend and hung on the bathroom door. She was doing double takes, looking at me then the picture then at me again. Suddenly she burst out, "Oh my goodness! That's YOU!".

I was totally shocked and my mother just laughed. I couldn't put the pieces together until suddenly I said, "Ohhhh! The swelling in my face has gone down, right?". It all made sense. Of course they wouldn't know what I truly looked like. Boy, was I glad I had taken (accidental or not) that horrible picture of my face in the ER. Just having something to compare my face to as a before and after allowed me to feel better.

I was in the hospital for 2-weeks in total, and then I was transferred to the inpatient rehab...also part of the hospital...just a different section more focused on physical therapy and recovery. I spent 4-weeks there, one of the longest inpatient patients the rehab had housed. I watched many of my fellow "inmates" come and go, and that was hard for me on many levels. But I had great staff to help me through everything, and in the end, I was ready to go after 4 hard weeks of work.

There is so much more that I could tell you all about my recovery in the hospital. I could talk about my friendships that are still strong today with my physical therapists, or I could talk about learning to walk again, or learning to go to the bathroom on my own (hey...it was part of my journey). But in the end, I think I have hit the high points.

I will say this much though. I was not prepared to leave the hospital. You see, when I was in my accident, I was in the process of moving. So to go home for me was to return to LA and my bed and my room...none of which existed any more. And even though I had thought about that many times and had said to myself, "I'm ready"; I was not. It was very difficult to acclimate myself to a new house while trying to acclimate myself to my new self...a person who moves primarily via wheelchair. That process took a few weeks, in all honesty, and I can't say that I didn't yearn for the familiarity of the hospital more than once during that time. I had entered their doors a broken mess, but in my mind, able to walk and do all of the things I (frankly) took for granted. When I left, I left in a wheelchair, and I couldn't even stand for a long period of time.

One day, I stopped in front of the floor-length mirror in my mother's room. I was recalling the incident with the CNA who did the double take and realized it was me in the picture. I realized that I was doing the same thing. I was looking at this image, this person in the mirror, and I was suddenly saying out loud, "Oh my goodness. That's you".

The Accident...Part III: Breathe

We have all heard about people who smash into buildings because they hit the wrong pedal or whatever. To be perfectly honest, I have been really hard on those people in my judgment of their abilities to drive. I mean, you're in your car that you drive all the time...most of the time we're on autopilot anyway while we're driving. We know how it feels to be on the brake instead of the gas or clutch or whatever. A person knows subconsciously how it feels when they put their feet in certain places while driving their car. So how is it possible that someone would inadvertently hit the gas instead of the break?

I don't have an answer to that question. I still actually feel that way to a certain extent because of the reasoning I gave above: the familiarity of your vehicle and the driving on autopilot thing. But I will say this: I have learned what it feels like when it happens, and it's pretty damn scary.

If you've been following along, you'll remember that I had just moved over onto the side of the road to miss whatever silver flash it was that darted in front of us. It was actually quite smooth, all things considered, and there was an exceptionally wide berth as luck would have it. In another life, I would not have given this incident any secondary thought because it did go so smoothly...and safely.

But just as I was about to move back onto the road (I had checked the random traffic around me and all was clear), an unexpected twist in the safety of our position occurred. Apparently I had moved over just as the guard rail split, and I didn't notice. I mean, it's not like I was busy thinking, "hey...where's the guard rail? Shouldn't there be a guard rail?". No. I mean, who does that?

So there I was in my 17' fully-loaded U-Haul van...in the middle of a guardrail split...and unfortunately, and unbeknownst to me, over just a little too far. For all of a sudden, at what seemed to be 100 miles an hour, the guardrail was coming straight for us. And not straight in the middle either. That I might have been able to move around. No. It was coming at me, which in the split second I had to sum things up, meant that if I made a mad dash for the freeway's edge, that guard rail would most certainly impale my passenger like a piece of chicken on a kabob.

I had no choice (assuming I didn't want man-kabob that day) but to head the other way...into the field adjacent to the freeway.

Now, if you have ever been in that part of the country (or in any desert-type of land) you know that its flat. Really flat. So if you were in a predicament like mine, heading over into the field to come to a stop and regroup wasn't a bad option. And as I considered the alternative, it was clearly my only option.

It all would have been fine except for one thing, and you've probably already guessed it: the gas pedal. Yep. I started hammering on what I thought to be the break as we jumped off the freeway altogether and into the field...except it wasn't the break at all. And my brain freaked out trying to understand why we were speeding up instead of stopping...because, after all, I was certain that I was on the break. Certain.

Of course I started screeching at the top of my lungs for my partner to wake up. Something was wrong with the truck...the brakes won't stop...we're going faster instead! Imagine what his face must have looked like, if you can stomach it. I can still see it, plain as day. Pure panic is the only word to describe it. He was immediately screaming at me, "What are you doing?", as I kept screeching about how I couldn't stop and how I didn't know what to do.

I finally glanced down to confirm the position of my feet, and I was horrified to see the brake sitting on the other side of my foot untouched. But I didn't have time to say to myself, "You idiot", or anything stronger. I had no time because even though I was now truly slamming on the brake, there was real danger. We were going really fast in a field in the desert...in the middle of nowhere.

And then I saw it. I saw a huge culvert...one of those metal things that you play in as a kid...one that allows the water to run through underneath your driveway or roads. This one, being where it was, was large enough for cows to go through. This all would have been fine if we weren't travelling at what seemed to be the speed of light and also straight at a huge embankment. So huge, I'm sorry to say, that there was no hope of going around or over. We both knew, a few loooong seconds before it happened, that we were going to hit this thing head on.

For those of you that don't know: earth is like concrete when its compact like that embankment was. The only thing that would have been stronger would have been a rock-cliff. 

I remember turning my wheel to the right just as we hit. After that, it was like being in your dryer on the tumble-dry cycle...and that tumbling went on for a notable amount of time...with dirt being splashed in my hair and face as we continued to crash. I don't know if I remember coming to a stop or if I was just knocked out. I just know that it was suddenly over.

My memory of the experience after the crash is in pieces. My first memory is of me asking myself, "am I dead", followed by, "am I hurt"? I couldn't answer either question at first. It was dark and silent, and I couldn't move, so I wasn't too sure about the answers. But I eventually realized that my left arm was hurt, so I was probably not dead, and that I was severely trapped because I could only move my right lower leg and my right arm.

Then I heard my partner yelling my name. I tried to inhale enough air to yell back, but breathing was ferociously difficult. So I answered as loud as I could, telling him that I was stuck. I also heard other voices. Good Samaritans were already on the scene! Amazing! I knew there were cars on the road at the time; I had seen them. But because I was trapped in the dark, I didn't remember that it had been sunrise and that people probably saw the whole thing happen.

I have no idea to this day who the people were who stopped. I do know that they were among the first people who saved me. And I know if they weren't there to help my friend, he could not have helped me...and that I would have died as a result. I owe them my deepest thanks. Hopefully one day they will come across this post and know I am speaking of them.

I can remember being stuck so tight...my knees above my breasts and pinned to my chest...nothing able to move except my right lower leg and my right arm. My left arm felt like it was broken and my fingers on my left hand wouldn't move. I remember being able to see them (my left arm and fingers) because there was a small tear--for lack of better words--in the metal on the side of the van and a shimmer of light...light which was getting brighter as the desert sun rose...was able to get through. I could just see a peek of the desert floor.

My seat had somehow, after the airbag punched me in the face, slammed me down under the steering wheel (which actually turned out to be up under the steering column into the "innards" of the truck), with my seatbelt still on me. It hurt to breathe...it was so tight and so small a space. I vividly remember thinking that I must manage my breathing because I knew, knew that if I didn’t...if I panicked...I might die. And that realization, my friends, is a tough one to understand and still not panic.

To tell you the truth, I don’t know how I did it (the breathing thing) for as long as I did. Some sort of survival mechanism living inside me took over, one which I cannot remember and certainly haven’t been able to recall to my aid since. Apparently its only available in real life or death situations. Hmmm. Too bad...I can think of many times when I could have used that special resolve/strength/whatever.

Anyway...

As you might have understood from the description above, the van had ended up on its side, the driver's side to be exact. My passenger, just to answer everyone's burning question, broke nothing. He bruised everything: bones, organs, etc., but he did not break or seriously injure anything...physical. Through his aching pain (because bruised bones are pain like the devil, as anyone who's had them will tell you), he was able to climb out and back in and dig me out of the mass of our suitcases and whatnot...since everything that did not go flying out the windows ended up on top of where I was, at the bottom of the pile, under the steering column.

The van had a third seat in the middle...one of those half seats you see in many cars and trucks. I can remember, as we waited for the first police officer to arrive, the Good Samaritan and my driving partner trying with all their might to pull that seat out. We were all thinking that if they could move it, perhaps I would then have room enough to escape. Unfortunately, the seat wouldn't budge, and the weight of the men was only something I could tolerate for a limited time (remember now...the van was on its side, so they had to step on places that were on top of me).

I remember a police officer was finally on the scene and told me that emergency crews were on their way. I remember hearing the emergency crews arrive on scene. I am pretty sure that I did not stay conscious the entire time because there are some gaps in my memory. I remember that the jaws of life was engaged because they could not get me out easily. I also remember one incident when they (the crew members...no idea which ones) were relatively near me outside the van, and they were arguing about which way was best or something...I only remember that they were arguing. And I got so frustrated at that moment that I pulled in as much air as I could tolerate and yelled at them to, "stop arguing near me and help me"! 

I'd like to take this opportunity to say thank you to the emergency crews who saved me. They were exceptional. Yet, a note to all emergency crew members out there: don't argue near those who are trapped. It makes them panic because you appear as though you have no clue what you're doing...and let's face it...you're supposed to be the heroes who save the day. Not people who need time to figure out how to get along.

I remember that they asked me to chuck anything I could out that small hole...the one that was providing me light. This was so that they could get some idea of where I was. I didn't know it at the time, but no one could see me. I was shoved so far up and in such a weird spot. The crews eventually used a saw to rip open the van, listening to me in case they got too close (which happened only once or twice...near my left hand).

I was trapped, in total, for just about 4 hours before being freed. I remember them ripping open the van and a bunch of light pouring in...and a huge, yellow fireman's hat was coming through...a friendly face with it. I do not remember how my extraction all happened exactly, but I remember feeling as though I was at a rock concert because there were so many hands under me. First 4, then 8, then 12. All supporting me and lifting me out of the space that may have been my tomb had things gone differently.

I was in an ambulance for a short stint. I don't remember much. I don't remember seeing my driving partner at that time. I don't remember (though I was told by a trusted source...one that I will talk about later) that when they put me on the flat board, my knees went straight up into the air, as close to my chest as they would go. It took a considerable sedative to relax me enough so that my legs could be strapped down.

One of last things I remember about being on scene is the sound of the helicopter starting up. They brought me over to it and were strapping me in, and I remember, very distinctly, being afraid. And just as the last strap was being tightened and the sedative was really starting to do its job to relax me, the EMT leaned in and said gently, "You're gonna be fine now. Just breathe".

I was out like a light.