Pain. In the summer of my junior year I was coming home from work with my mom. She was driving. The weather was poor, rain in sheets covering the road, as if to put it to bed. We hydroplaned. We went into oncoming traffic. Luckily my mom regained control of the vehicle so it swam to the right. When it continued we hit the muddy hillside. We spun around. Pop. Pop. Passenger tires gone. I looked down the hill, traction was coming. That will flip us. I looked at my mom. Felt like hours had passed. The knowing that this was coming had finally arrived. We bought this vehicle because the feeling would not go away . Hopefully we both live. We were not fastened in. My mom is sick, what would happen? I looked over at the doom. Just in time to see the gravel road coming closer to my window, we were on the side, my head went through the passenger window into the ground. I hit my head so hard I could no longer see. The world was black. I felt mom leaving the vehicle, the car crushed her. Her scream was clear. The sound of metal rippling, the bones breaking and the glass crushing. I was hitting the roof, bouncing off the interior, once comfortable, now excruciating. I was thinking that if I could only figure out how to stay in the middle. The middle doesn't hurt. The top and the bottom brought bruises. I was out.
They say we rolled 6 times. My mom was thrown 25-30 feet.
The spray of something woke me up. Was it a dream? What happened? Where was I? I quickly regained my senses and popped up from under the dashboard. Slowly, I was stuck. Luckily I could squirm. I looked out what remained a window. I saw my mom walking to me. It tastes like rust.
From there black is all that remains of my memory. I regained that much through flashbacks of recent concussions. I had what they call PTA, post trauma amnesia. 2 years of my life are yet to be recalled. From speaking with my mom, whom never lost consciousness, she said I broke the blood vessels in my face. There are photos of my face taken 6 months after still swollen and black. They called me Patches.
My mom broke 29 bones, neck, ribs, shattered pelvis, compound fractures of the left arm, ruptured spleen, collapsed lung, punctured lung and concussion, resulting in seizures. She got up and walked to the car to find me to make sure I was ok.
I was lucky. Major head trauma with severe brain trauma. Permanent damage. PTSD. PTA. Both shoulders dislocated, hemmoraging liver and kidneys. Bruising of the ribs, Severe bruising to the face, due to blood vessel damage. And if I had not already broken my spine, when I was 14, I would have in the wreck. You could read the stick shift knob on my back.
We were lucky. Surgeries still needed to correct my right shoulder and my mom's left. Migraine issues and permanent memory loss, PTSD, and pain. Pain. Lucky reminders.
Pain.
ReplyDeleteIn the summer of my junior year I was coming home from work with my mom. She was driving. The weather was poor, rain in sheets covering the road, as if to put it to bed. We hydroplaned. We went into oncoming traffic. Luckily my mom regained control of the vehicle so it swam to the right. When it continued we hit the muddy hillside. We spun around. Pop. Pop. Passenger tires gone. I looked down the hill, traction was coming. That will flip us. I looked at my mom. Felt like hours had passed. The knowing that this was coming had finally arrived. We bought this vehicle because the feeling would not go away . Hopefully we both live. We were not fastened in. My mom is sick, what would happen? I looked over at the doom. Just in time to see the gravel road coming closer to my window, we were on the side, my head went through the passenger window into the ground. I hit my head so hard I could no longer see. The world was black. I felt mom leaving the vehicle, the car crushed her. Her scream was clear. The sound of metal rippling, the bones breaking and the glass crushing. I was hitting the roof, bouncing off the interior, once comfortable, now excruciating. I was thinking that if I could only figure out how to stay in the middle. The middle doesn't hurt. The top and the bottom brought bruises. I was out.
They say we rolled 6 times. My mom was thrown 25-30 feet.
The spray of something woke me up. Was it a dream? What happened? Where was I? I quickly regained my senses and popped up from under the dashboard. Slowly, I was stuck. Luckily I could squirm. I looked out what remained a window. I saw my mom walking to me. It tastes like rust.
From there black is all that remains of my memory. I regained that much through flashbacks of recent concussions. I had what they call PTA, post trauma amnesia. 2 years of my life are yet to be recalled. From speaking with my mom, whom never lost consciousness, she said I broke the blood vessels in my face. There are photos of my face taken 6 months after still swollen and black. They called me Patches.
My mom broke 29 bones, neck, ribs, shattered pelvis, compound fractures of the left arm, ruptured spleen, collapsed lung, punctured lung and concussion, resulting in seizures. She got up and walked to the car to find me to make sure I was ok.
I was lucky. Major head trauma with severe brain trauma. Permanent damage. PTSD. PTA. Both shoulders dislocated, hemmoraging liver and kidneys. Bruising of the ribs, Severe bruising to the face, due to blood vessel damage. And if I had not already broken my spine, when I was 14, I would have in the wreck. You could read the stick shift knob on my back.
We were lucky. Surgeries still needed to correct my right shoulder and my mom's left. Migraine issues and permanent memory loss, PTSD, and pain.
Pain. Lucky reminders.