This is the full story of my wreck. Eventually i plan on getting through the home, surgury, and where i am today. so hopfully it will be a good story in the end. o, and here are the pictures: http://members.cox.net/randomtask73/accident.htm
April 23, 2004
April 23, a day of agony for me, and my 325is. The story begins after I had left “Battle of the Bands” at my school. I then drove my date home and proceeded to drive myself home. Fortunately and unfortunately it was a very nice night out that night and I said to myself “Damn, its nice out. I’m gona go for a drive.” So as I was driving up Roselawn, instead of taking a right on my road, I decided to follow Roselawn up to Mt. Chestnut. I drove over the mountain and then dropped onto 221. Heading home on 221, I decided to take the shortcut to the back of my neighborhood, Poage Valley Road. There is no speed limit on Poage Valley Road and it’s not that treacherous of a road although there generally is a fair amount of gravel on the road. Because there is no speed limit on the road I normally travel down it between 40-60mph, and that night was no different. It was about 11:40pm and I was driving down the road at somewhere between 50-60mph. I approached the part of the road where there is a slight dip and a gradual corner. The next part of the story is a blur but from what I can remember, I remember seeing flash of something white over to my right. I’m assuming it was a cat or small dog. Either way, I decided to dodge the animal rather than just cream it. My thinking at the time was “F- that, I’m not screwing up my valence.” Knowing what I know now, no animal that jumps out in front of me is going to survive. Anyway, after seeing the animal jump out in front of me, I hit the brakes slightly and swerved to dodge it. Unfortunately, my front driver side wheel was sitting in a patch of gravel and locked up. As soon as that wheel slid out of the gravel, it caught the pavement and grabbed, tossing the car. I remember fighting for a spit second trying to recover, unfortunately, at that point all was lost. Next thing I remember after that was seeing grass in front of me and tree’s flying by on either side. I remember being bounced around and being absolutely petrified. In next memory segment I remember seeing three trees in front of me and approaching rapidly. That is all I remember from before the impact.
I had impacted the tree on the driver’s side front. I hit going somewhere around 50-60mph. The tree punished the driver’s side front of the car and it missed anything of any structural importance. It missed the frame by less than an inch and didn’t even touch the motor. The tree pushed through everything, including the strut, and stopped touching the dashboard. Because it had traveled so far up, it made living space in the drivers seat minimal. Ill get back to my point of view now that you have an idea of the situation.
I woke up in a daze. In extreme pain and feeling like I was caught in a bad dream… a very bad dream. In my daze I tried to figure out where I was, and what had happened. Thankfully there was a man who had heard the accident and rushed from his house to see what had happened. He descended the slope down to the car, yelling to me, asking if I was ok. I don’t know how I responded. He then called 911, and asked for my name and phone #. Thankfully in the confusion I was able to re-iterate those pieces of information. He then called my house and told my mother what had happened, then he handed me the phone to talk to her. I vaguely remember what I said, but my mom has told me that all I was saying was “I’m sorry mom, I’m so sorry.” Then I said, “Mom, I wasn’t drinking or doing drugs or anything, I don’t even remember what happened.” Everything within 2 minutes of the accident was very unclear, but I could remember things from earlier in the night. During the phone conversations I was busy figuring what kind of shape I was in. I looked around; all I saw was blood and demolished car pieces. I tried to move, and that wasn’t happening. I looked down to my legs; I saw my left leg, completely thrashed and bloody, sticking out the window of the door that had been ripped off its hinges. I looked to my right leg, noticing blood splattered on my pants and splashed on the dashboard and steering column, I became very scared. I couldn’t move my right leg, as it was trapped between the seat and the steering column. I noticed the concave look to my knee and that got me very worried me. I was in an unreal amount of pain, and I couldn’t feel anything below my knee on my right leg. I still wasn’t completely sure what had happened, then it hit me, “O my god, was anyone else in the car?” I looked around, and thankfully there wasn’t. I was still trying to assess my situation and I look myself up and down, spitting up blood and trying to block out some of the pain. Dazed and confused, the next 10 or so minutes were a blur. Finally the emergency services arrived. At about the same time the emergency crew arrived my mom did also. She told me afterwards that the crew wouldn’t allow her down to the car. She said, “I wanted to go help so bad but they wouldn’t let me down. Standing up at the top of the hill… seeing you strugleing in that mangled car and hearing your scream. It was the most painful hour of my life.” I remember seeing trucks pull up, and then almost instantly there was someone in the car with me. Her job was to talk to me, keep me calm, and keep me talking. She had me say her name, and talk about things just to keep me awake. Even though she had me say her name at least 20 times, to this day, I can’t remember it. She told me she couldn’t give me any painkillers because I had head trauma, but she did give me an oxygen mask. The oxygen mask did little good because it kept filling up with blood from my mouth and nose. Soon after she told me they were going to cut the roof off, and a large blanket was tossed over me. Next thing I knew I herd them busting out all my windows, and for a split second I thought “O no, not my car.” Then it really hit me, this car is done for. They broke out all the glass and cut the roof of very quickly. Next they cut the drivers side door off. They kept re-assuring me that they were gona get me out.
First thing they had to do to get me free was to lift the steering column off of my knee. They placed the Jaws of Life in position to lift. They lifted the column off my knee, and I saw the concave shape return to a more convex shape. Then they took the pressure off of the Jaws to move to another area. That caused one of the most painful moments of the night. The column then fell back onto my knee. I screamed in pain. I couldn’t contain myself any longer. Very quickly they re-lifted it off my knee and placed wedges in place.
Next thing they had to do was unwrap the brake pedal from my leg. I remember sitting up a bit so I could look down and see if my leg was still there. Unfortunately I looked to soon and I still couldn’t see down to my foot because of the mangled mess in the way. Although, I was able to see my right Birkenstock smashed underneath something on the floor, which scared me very much to see my shoe without my foot in it. To get my leg out they were going to have to cut the brake pedal out, and in order to do that they were going to have to stick the cutters into my calf a little bit so they could get the grip they needed to cut. That was the most relieving pain I have ever felt in my whole life, because I was able to feel it. Before that I was worried I had lost, lost feeling in my leg, or my biggest fear, paralysis.
After they cut the brake pedal out, the rest of the time, up until when they pulled me out were a large blur. I assume that the pain had just gathered to a point that my body just shut down because it couldn’t take it anymore, which happened one more time later in the night.
So after they got my leg completely free they slipped a backboard behind me and slid a neck brace on me. Four or five people lifted me out of the drivers seat and onto the board. As soon as I was lifted, a very large amount of blood rushed to my right leg, causing a large amount of pain, although, it was very, very nice to know that I could still feel my leg.
They loaded me into an ambulance at around 1am, cut all of my clothes off and hooked me up to an IV of antibacterial fluid. Bouncing around in the ambulance was not a fun part of the evening, but it felt extremely good to know I was in safe hands now. One of the rescue people in the ambulance with me did many procedures to find out what kind of shape I was in, one of which was for me to move my toes, and thank god I was able to.
We got to the hospital within ten minutes of being loaded into the ambulance. Because I’m a taller person at 6”2’, my heals hung out over the edge of the board I was on, and when they unloaded me, both heals smacked the edge of the ambulance’s bumper, making the experience that much better.
Once I finally got to the ER, they first rushed me to another room for an MRI to make sure everything internally was ok. After a 10 minute MRI, I was rushed back to ER room #1. I was told that I could have painkillers after the MIR results came back. I asked, “How long until the results?” expecting to hear 10-15 minutes. They replied with, “An hour to an hour and half.” Once I herd that I knew I wasn’t in the clear yet. While I was there, they attempted to clean me up and get my stabilized. There were many nurses and doctors working feverishly. The doctor, who I met afterwards, was working to clean up my left leg’s lacerations. He had nurses hold up the flaps of skin while he poured 3 large bottles of some sort of disinfectant into the wounds. This was a very painful event, and it turned the operating room’s floor into a wading pool of disinfectant and my blood. After the doctor, whose name I found later to be Dr. Bear, finished cleaning my left leg, he moved to the right and evaluated it. While he was trying to figure out how bad and what to do with my right leg, a nurse was stitching up all the slices on my left. I then asked for some water because I was extremely thirsty and I was having trouble breathing because I had blood coated in my mouth and throat. I was told I couldn’t have any water because they still weren’t sure if they were going to have to operate and I couldn’t have any excess fluids in me if that were the case. So to help my breathing one of the nurses scraped the caked blood from the top of my mouth.
At this point I got a brief moment of elation when I saw my family come into the room. My mother had been with me ever since we got into the ER and I had been clenching her hand the whole time, but now my father and brother entered the room. My father re-assured me that I was going to be ok before I could say a thing. My brother then asked as he was looking me up and down, “Are you ok?” and before I could answer he feinted. My dad caught him before he hit the floor and carried him out of the room accompanied by a nurse who saw it happen. When I saw that happen, it made me feel terrible. I never expected to see that, because it wouldn’t have happened unless I looked absolutely terrible, and because I never wanted to make anyone in my family feel that afraid for me.
Moaning and fighting the pain as the sewed my left leg back together, I heard Dr. Bear say that my right leg was swelling worse than he wanted to see. He told me that he was going to have to drain my knee. He said it would hurt but I approved, and he proceeded. Gritting my teeth, he took a very large shot, inserted into the top of my knee, and began to suck all of the blood out. He repeated that 2 to more times. Then he said to me, “This is going to hurt worse than anything you have felt before, but I have to do it for your own good.” At that point I felt like it couldn’t be any worse than everything else I had felt that night, so I said, “Do it.” He then took the largest of needles and powered it under my kneecap and siphoned the blood from underneath. And he was right; it was the most painful thing I have ever felt in my entire life.
That was the second time that night where my body had “Shut down”. There was at least 10 minutes between the time that needle left my leg and the time I was moved to a second room, although, I don’t remember any of it. In my mind I had passed out, but my mom said I was still conscious. Once in the second room, they were done working on me and they were just waiting for the MRI results. Still lacking painkillers and water I was very uncomfortable. Then to my dismay, a police officer entered the room and wanted my side of the story. I told him the honest truth about what had happened. He then said a few things to my mom, said thank you, and left. Finally, the MRI results came back, and they immediately brought me a large IV of morphine and some water. I took a few sips of water as the hooked up the morphine. When that drug hit my veins, it felt like lightning. It burned badly, and within about 20 seconds of having it injected, my vision got blurry and spotted, and my hearing started to echo. Next thing I know, I was seeing ceiling lights passing above me as I was being pushed down a hall, then I faded out again.
I had finally made it to the room I was going to stay the night in. I regained consciousness briefly, and I checked the clock. It read 3:30am. So after almost 4 hours of hell, I had reached a resting place.
April 23, 2004
April 23, a day of agony for me, and my 325is. The story begins after I had left “Battle of the Bands” at my school. I then drove my date home and proceeded to drive myself home. Fortunately and unfortunately it was a very nice night out that night and I said to myself “Damn, its nice out. I’m gona go for a drive.” So as I was driving up Roselawn, instead of taking a right on my road, I decided to follow Roselawn up to Mt. Chestnut. I drove over the mountain and then dropped onto 221. Heading home on 221, I decided to take the shortcut to the back of my neighborhood, Poage Valley Road. There is no speed limit on Poage Valley Road and it’s not that treacherous of a road although there generally is a fair amount of gravel on the road. Because there is no speed limit on the road I normally travel down it between 40-60mph, and that night was no different. It was about 11:40pm and I was driving down the road at somewhere between 50-60mph. I approached the part of the road where there is a slight dip and a gradual corner. The next part of the story is a blur but from what I can remember, I remember seeing flash of something white over to my right. I’m assuming it was a cat or small dog. Either way, I decided to dodge the animal rather than just cream it. My thinking at the time was “F- that, I’m not screwing up my valence.” Knowing what I know now, no animal that jumps out in front of me is going to survive. Anyway, after seeing the animal jump out in front of me, I hit the brakes slightly and swerved to dodge it. Unfortunately, my front driver side wheel was sitting in a patch of gravel and locked up. As soon as that wheel slid out of the gravel, it caught the pavement and grabbed, tossing the car. I remember fighting for a spit second trying to recover, unfortunately, at that point all was lost. Next thing I remember after that was seeing grass in front of me and tree’s flying by on either side. I remember being bounced around and being absolutely petrified. In next memory segment I remember seeing three trees in front of me and approaching rapidly. That is all I remember from before the impact.
I had impacted the tree on the driver’s side front. I hit going somewhere around 50-60mph. The tree punished the driver’s side front of the car and it missed anything of any structural importance. It missed the frame by less than an inch and didn’t even touch the motor. The tree pushed through everything, including the strut, and stopped touching the dashboard. Because it had traveled so far up, it made living space in the drivers seat minimal. Ill get back to my point of view now that you have an idea of the situation.
I woke up in a daze. In extreme pain and feeling like I was caught in a bad dream… a very bad dream. In my daze I tried to figure out where I was, and what had happened. Thankfully there was a man who had heard the accident and rushed from his house to see what had happened. He descended the slope down to the car, yelling to me, asking if I was ok. I don’t know how I responded. He then called 911, and asked for my name and phone #. Thankfully in the confusion I was able to re-iterate those pieces of information. He then called my house and told my mother what had happened, then he handed me the phone to talk to her. I vaguely remember what I said, but my mom has told me that all I was saying was “I’m sorry mom, I’m so sorry.” Then I said, “Mom, I wasn’t drinking or doing drugs or anything, I don’t even remember what happened.” Everything within 2 minutes of the accident was very unclear, but I could remember things from earlier in the night. During the phone conversations I was busy figuring what kind of shape I was in. I looked around; all I saw was blood and demolished car pieces. I tried to move, and that wasn’t happening. I looked down to my legs; I saw my left leg, completely thrashed and bloody, sticking out the window of the door that had been ripped off its hinges. I looked to my right leg, noticing blood splattered on my pants and splashed on the dashboard and steering column, I became very scared. I couldn’t move my right leg, as it was trapped between the seat and the steering column. I noticed the concave look to my knee and that got me very worried me. I was in an unreal amount of pain, and I couldn’t feel anything below my knee on my right leg. I still wasn’t completely sure what had happened, then it hit me, “O my god, was anyone else in the car?” I looked around, and thankfully there wasn’t. I was still trying to assess my situation and I look myself up and down, spitting up blood and trying to block out some of the pain. Dazed and confused, the next 10 or so minutes were a blur. Finally the emergency services arrived. At about the same time the emergency crew arrived my mom did also. She told me afterwards that the crew wouldn’t allow her down to the car. She said, “I wanted to go help so bad but they wouldn’t let me down. Standing up at the top of the hill… seeing you strugleing in that mangled car and hearing your scream. It was the most painful hour of my life.” I remember seeing trucks pull up, and then almost instantly there was someone in the car with me. Her job was to talk to me, keep me calm, and keep me talking. She had me say her name, and talk about things just to keep me awake. Even though she had me say her name at least 20 times, to this day, I can’t remember it. She told me she couldn’t give me any painkillers because I had head trauma, but she did give me an oxygen mask. The oxygen mask did little good because it kept filling up with blood from my mouth and nose. Soon after she told me they were going to cut the roof off, and a large blanket was tossed over me. Next thing I knew I herd them busting out all my windows, and for a split second I thought “O no, not my car.” Then it really hit me, this car is done for. They broke out all the glass and cut the roof of very quickly. Next they cut the drivers side door off. They kept re-assuring me that they were gona get me out.
First thing they had to do to get me free was to lift the steering column off of my knee. They placed the Jaws of Life in position to lift. They lifted the column off my knee, and I saw the concave shape return to a more convex shape. Then they took the pressure off of the Jaws to move to another area. That caused one of the most painful moments of the night. The column then fell back onto my knee. I screamed in pain. I couldn’t contain myself any longer. Very quickly they re-lifted it off my knee and placed wedges in place.
Next thing they had to do was unwrap the brake pedal from my leg. I remember sitting up a bit so I could look down and see if my leg was still there. Unfortunately I looked to soon and I still couldn’t see down to my foot because of the mangled mess in the way. Although, I was able to see my right Birkenstock smashed underneath something on the floor, which scared me very much to see my shoe without my foot in it. To get my leg out they were going to have to cut the brake pedal out, and in order to do that they were going to have to stick the cutters into my calf a little bit so they could get the grip they needed to cut. That was the most relieving pain I have ever felt in my whole life, because I was able to feel it. Before that I was worried I had lost, lost feeling in my leg, or my biggest fear, paralysis.
After they cut the brake pedal out, the rest of the time, up until when they pulled me out were a large blur. I assume that the pain had just gathered to a point that my body just shut down because it couldn’t take it anymore, which happened one more time later in the night.
So after they got my leg completely free they slipped a backboard behind me and slid a neck brace on me. Four or five people lifted me out of the drivers seat and onto the board. As soon as I was lifted, a very large amount of blood rushed to my right leg, causing a large amount of pain, although, it was very, very nice to know that I could still feel my leg.
They loaded me into an ambulance at around 1am, cut all of my clothes off and hooked me up to an IV of antibacterial fluid. Bouncing around in the ambulance was not a fun part of the evening, but it felt extremely good to know I was in safe hands now. One of the rescue people in the ambulance with me did many procedures to find out what kind of shape I was in, one of which was for me to move my toes, and thank god I was able to.
We got to the hospital within ten minutes of being loaded into the ambulance. Because I’m a taller person at 6”2’, my heals hung out over the edge of the board I was on, and when they unloaded me, both heals smacked the edge of the ambulance’s bumper, making the experience that much better.
Once I finally got to the ER, they first rushed me to another room for an MRI to make sure everything internally was ok. After a 10 minute MRI, I was rushed back to ER room #1. I was told that I could have painkillers after the MIR results came back. I asked, “How long until the results?” expecting to hear 10-15 minutes. They replied with, “An hour to an hour and half.” Once I herd that I knew I wasn’t in the clear yet. While I was there, they attempted to clean me up and get my stabilized. There were many nurses and doctors working feverishly. The doctor, who I met afterwards, was working to clean up my left leg’s lacerations. He had nurses hold up the flaps of skin while he poured 3 large bottles of some sort of disinfectant into the wounds. This was a very painful event, and it turned the operating room’s floor into a wading pool of disinfectant and my blood. After the doctor, whose name I found later to be Dr. Bear, finished cleaning my left leg, he moved to the right and evaluated it. While he was trying to figure out how bad and what to do with my right leg, a nurse was stitching up all the slices on my left. I then asked for some water because I was extremely thirsty and I was having trouble breathing because I had blood coated in my mouth and throat. I was told I couldn’t have any water because they still weren’t sure if they were going to have to operate and I couldn’t have any excess fluids in me if that were the case. So to help my breathing one of the nurses scraped the caked blood from the top of my mouth.
At this point I got a brief moment of elation when I saw my family come into the room. My mother had been with me ever since we got into the ER and I had been clenching her hand the whole time, but now my father and brother entered the room. My father re-assured me that I was going to be ok before I could say a thing. My brother then asked as he was looking me up and down, “Are you ok?” and before I could answer he feinted. My dad caught him before he hit the floor and carried him out of the room accompanied by a nurse who saw it happen. When I saw that happen, it made me feel terrible. I never expected to see that, because it wouldn’t have happened unless I looked absolutely terrible, and because I never wanted to make anyone in my family feel that afraid for me.
Moaning and fighting the pain as the sewed my left leg back together, I heard Dr. Bear say that my right leg was swelling worse than he wanted to see. He told me that he was going to have to drain my knee. He said it would hurt but I approved, and he proceeded. Gritting my teeth, he took a very large shot, inserted into the top of my knee, and began to suck all of the blood out. He repeated that 2 to more times. Then he said to me, “This is going to hurt worse than anything you have felt before, but I have to do it for your own good.” At that point I felt like it couldn’t be any worse than everything else I had felt that night, so I said, “Do it.” He then took the largest of needles and powered it under my kneecap and siphoned the blood from underneath. And he was right; it was the most painful thing I have ever felt in my entire life.
That was the second time that night where my body had “Shut down”. There was at least 10 minutes between the time that needle left my leg and the time I was moved to a second room, although, I don’t remember any of it. In my mind I had passed out, but my mom said I was still conscious. Once in the second room, they were done working on me and they were just waiting for the MRI results. Still lacking painkillers and water I was very uncomfortable. Then to my dismay, a police officer entered the room and wanted my side of the story. I told him the honest truth about what had happened. He then said a few things to my mom, said thank you, and left. Finally, the MRI results came back, and they immediately brought me a large IV of morphine and some water. I took a few sips of water as the hooked up the morphine. When that drug hit my veins, it felt like lightning. It burned badly, and within about 20 seconds of having it injected, my vision got blurry and spotted, and my hearing started to echo. Next thing I know, I was seeing ceiling lights passing above me as I was being pushed down a hall, then I faded out again.
I had finally made it to the room I was going to stay the night in. I regained consciousness briefly, and I checked the clock. It read 3:30am. So after almost 4 hours of hell, I had reached a resting place.
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