(copy-pasted from my livejournal; this was originally written at 6 am the day after the accident, and was the first thing I wrote anywhere after the accident happened. Once again: The language has been sanitized a bit to maintain compliance with AdSense; other than that, nothing has been changed, including the typos.)
well, I finally found out what morphine felt like. I don't care for it
at all, and I don't see why anyone would ambrace a buzz like that.
Why
John Henry, you're saying, I thought you'd already been through the
whole experimental thing! What the f**k's wrong with your head, man?!
Well, you see, it's like this:
But for a couple of lucky breaks, I'd be dead right now.
Yesterday
morning I dropped Amber off at school (and thank God I had!) and headed
to the office. For those of you who live in this area, I was heading
south on 15 uner the 85 overpass. About 1/3 miles in front of me wasw a
red grand am.
The red grand am stopped because some F*****G
A*****E in a semi-truck pulled off the ramp in front of them, but I
didn't see the GA stop, I thought it just slowed down.
I turned
to look at the truck (which had turned in my direction) because I'd
never seen one like it before - didn't recognize the company name or
anything, so I was kinda curious about it.
I turned my head back to face forward and found myself less than 5 feet off the GA's back bumper.
At about 60 mph.
I didn't even have time to hit the brake.
I
ass-ended the Grand Am. My head plowed into the windshield and my chest
hit the steering wheel so hard that it bent nearly in half, but I
didn't kknow that at the time, all I knew is that I was hurt, and hurt
bad.
I tried to open my car door and it wouldn't go because the
fenders had been pushed back, so I pushed harder and wrenched it open.
I suspect that when I go see the car, I'll be amazed that I was able to
do this. Adrenaline and all.
Anyway, I got out of the car and
wakled around it to the rear and started heading for the car that I had
hit. I suspect that I was getting ready to kick the shit out of the
ignorant asshole who had decided to park in the middle of a F*****G
INTERSTATE HIGHWAY, but I also knew I was hurt. There were already a
couple of people there out of their cars and I screamed to them "Call
9-11, I'm hurt, I think I'm hurt bad, call 9-11."
At that point
I noticed that I was losing what seemed like rivers of blood and
collapsed on the street, bleeding badly from a nasty gash on my
forehead and from my nose and mouth. Dark, thick blood, and lots of it.
I also managed to lacerate my elbos and knees quite badly when I went
down.
Fortunately there were a few people going through who had
some sort of medical training and they kept talking to me while waiting
for the ambulance to arrive.
the ambulance got there and they
took vitals and all that stuff. I was laying on my right sinde on the
ground with my right arm under my head and extended.
It was right about this pooint that some stupid c**ksucker RAN A GODD***ED GURNEY OVER MY FINGERS.
At
which point I sat up and said "Look, I appreciate that y'all need to
work to survive, but I think I'm already hurt badly enough without you
adding to it, thank you."
That's pretty much my last lucid
memory on-scene. They loaded me up and ran me to the local horspital. I
remember wondering what the hell was taking so long, it seemed like it
took forever to get there, and I was thinking damn, I could have driven
myself here faster than this.
Apparently I was in worse shape
than I thought; the first thing they did was hit me with 4cc's of
morphine. Now those of you who aren't terribly familiar with medicine
probably aren't aware of this, but when the docs break out the opiates,
you can pretty well figure you're f**ked up bad.
So they had me
on a backboard of course, and I was finally, about an hour after I got
there (or so it seemed, time is really weird today) able tocall my dad
and let him know what was up.
Luckily, my dad didn't bother
getting my mom and Amber and bringing them. I wouldn't have wanted them
to see me like that. My mom probably would have had a damn heart attack.
It
didn't really strike me until later how the doctors and nurses were
acting, but the fact is this: I think they weren't expecting me to make
it when they brought me in. Frankly, although I didn't realize it at
the time and it still hasn't really sunk in and personalized, I am
quite fortunate. Based on the description Amber gave me of the car, and
the things the docs were saying, there's no good reason that I'm not
dead right now.
The sttering column, as I said, is apparently
almost folded in half, and the dashboard was pushed back so hard that
they had to leave the car key in the ignition and just take the rest of
them. The driver's seat is apparently twisted about 30 degrees
counter-clockwise. There are chunks of hair and blood in the
windshield. The back seat of the car also was pushed forward due to the
pile of crap in the hatch (this is a 1993 festiva, by the way - not
what you'd call a personal armored assault vehicle). I'll get some
photos of it and post them.
Anyway, I got xrayed and prodded and
poked and anohter 4ccs of morphine and they tried a bit to clean me up,
although I've still got bits of glass in my left hand and my need and
elbows.
I got incredibly lucky today.
So yeah. I told
you about my face - I had to get 4 stitches in my top lip, and I have a
hairline fracture in my right cheekbone just bove my jaw. My knees and
elbows are killng me - and so is MY F**KING FINGER THAT THE A****LE EMT
RAN OVER WITH THE GURNEY, THANKS A****LE! - from crawling through
broken class on asphalt. I'm not sure why - if it was muscle strain or
from hitting the steering wheel - but the right sode of my chest is in
tremendous pain. Of course I have the obligatory steabelt bruise (and
it saved my life, I have no question about that), but that doesn't uhrt
nearly as bad as my chest on the right, my face, or MY G******ED
MMIDDLE FINGER ON MY RIGHT HAND. DID I MENTION THAT THE STUPID F**KING
EMT RAN OVER MY D**N FINGER WITH THE GURNEY?
But I can bitch all
I want to, the professional consensus is flat out: I should not have
lived through this, and I sure as hell shouldn't have got out of it
with what are really, in piste of being very painful, minor injuries.
Granted, I look like crap - my upper lip looks like a 2-pound chunk of
liver - and I feel like crap, with my face, chest, knees, elbows, and
MY F**KING FINGER all hurting like hell...
...but all in all, I
got off real, real light on this one. The doctor told me straight up
that if I'd hit just a little differently I'd likely not be out of the
hospital for months, enless it was on a trip to the morgue. As it is,
it's quite painful to breathe or cough, my nose and hair are filled
with dried blood, I've got glass sticking out of me in places I didn't
even know I had. I got a small scrip for percodan and flexaril, which
is ahy I'm up now, they wore off and Ihad to get up and take more.
Every
part of my body is in intense pain...but I'm still alive, and judging
by what the ER docs said about my condition and what Amber told me
about the condition of the car, that's nothing short of a miracle, and
it's one that I am deeply grateful for. I'm not ready to check out just
yet. As it is, I'm gonna be sore as hell for a couple of weeks, but by
all accounts, it could and should be a whole lot worse.
I'm not one to invoke dieties, but today I thank God (as Iunderstand her) for the fact that I'm alive to feel this bad.
(Edited to add this, from a response on my journal, just because it's hilarious and I'd actually forgotten about it until I read the entry to repost it here: "Oh, don't let me fool you. I didn't keep my
composure at all. The accident was about 22 hours before I made this
post. I was screamin and hollerin pretty good for a little bit there
(esp. when the a**hole EMT RAN OVER MY FINGER WITH THE GURNEY!), and of
course once they got me on morphine I had all kinds of things to say,
although I think most of them went over the doc's head. I remember
saying something like "So I guess you're telling me that my GQ cover
shoot is going to be postponed?" And then when they were stitching my
lips up I asked the doc to stitch them at different tensions so that I
could whistle in chords.")