Surviving death
It would be a wise, educated guess to assume that someone almost died.
That would be me.
I’ve kept my calm through mocking and joking about my experience because to actually break down and work through what has happened would be more difficult.
There is a moment of confusion after you wake up for the first time, assuming that you can actually remember waking up for the first time post experience. Laying in a hospital bed, going in and out of awareness and consciousness from injuries, mental trauma, medication, and overall exhaustion. Every time you wake up feels like the first and last time you’ll wake up.
A regular day where the last things I remember were sitting in the coffee shop that I work at and reading Clean Code. Those are the only things I remember from that day.
Around mid day, while parked, my parked vehicle was stuck by a high speed moving vehicle. With myself in the driver seat. From witnesses on the scene, the vehicle seemed to be going around 50mph. Supposedly, I had removed my seat belt moments prior to this event, ultimately preventing me from being crushed in my own vehicle(by no means a glamorous vehicle).
A fuzzy week later, I remember waking up(for what I feels like the first time) and picking chunks of glass out of my hair. Cuts still fresh on my face, head, and neck. Beneath my appearance, double digits of fractured bones, nearly half of my blood replaced, lacerated organs, and a couple surgeries(from start to finish of my healing).
On initial inspection of myself, was just immense pain. I could hardly move. If I was able to move, it was only based on the aid of whoever was in hospital room helping me do so. I was couldn’t walk due to what I would assume was damage done to my leg in the accident. I had developed a hematoma in my left thigh, which is essentially a large, bulging bruise protruding from the muscle, making the muscle damaged barely usable until mostly healed. Thought of course it could have also been from the massive shock my skeleton experienced.
I fractured 3 of my ribs, my lower 6 vertebrae including my tailbone, and my pelvis in 3 different places. I received a epidural for my spleen laceration, ribs, and bruised lung. Sat beneath them, both my kidneys were heavily lacerated with my liver also receiving minor damage.
If you’ve kept up, a head count just in case.
- 3 rib fractures
- 6+ vertebrae fractures
- 3 pelvis fractures
- Grade 4 lacerations on my spleen
- Grade 4 lacerations on both of my kidneys
- A grade 2 laceration on my liver
- A hematoma in my left thigh
- A bruised left lung
- A concussion
And lastly
- 3 pints of blood transfused(4 in total because of complications)
It is an incredibly strange feeling to wake up one day and not know where you are, how you got there, why there are so many IVs connected to you, who the people in the room are, and why you can’t leave.
Equally astounding is the senses you feel and don’t feel. You become to know yourself more than you ever had before while also never having felt so numb to your senses and feelings, whether it be your brain trying to rationalize what happened or the amount of medication that’s been injected into you while you lay there unconscious.
If you are able to stay awake, you have a lot of time to think. To try and remember what happened(In my case, I still haven’t been able to remember exactly what happened that day). There is a lot of time to be sad, happy, and especially angry. If you’re the type to believe in a general sense of luck, you’d likely be feeling very unlucky in these moments. If you are naturally positive, maybe you’d realize how lucky you are to still be alive.
My outlook on life has changed a lot since that day. Good things still happen, bad things still happen, and either way I work through whatever it is.
I’m grateful to go on living, knowing that my life almost met a tragic end in a parking lot that was the last thing but a beautiful sight.
Many of us live with an immortality complex that makes us feel like we are going to live forever and that bad things couldn’t possibly happen to us at a great scale. Then, at random, something happens and a part of how we live our lives is stripped away from us, never to return.
If you survived, you’ve still got some fight left in you.
Now is not the time to think negatively.
Remind yourself of all of things you want to do. All the sights you want to see, the food you want to eat, the feelings you want to feel, the smells you want to smell, the things you want to create, the causes you want to support. Remember your loved ones, your friends, even the people you’ve only seen once in your life.
Injuries can heal, but the mental trauma takes much longer to diagnose and heal.
The more people you have around you to keep yourself out of your own head, the better. Even if it’s just the company of one other person, the benefit is irreplaceable.
It’s been just over a year now since my accident and even with my injuries being healed, the thought of my accident and what I experienced runs through my mind daily.
Even though it might be hard now, it was more difficult just months ago. It gets easier, remind yourself of that. With whatever you’re are dealing with, it gets easier.
I hope that with sharing my difficult experience it has helped you view anything you’re going through with more acceptance. We may not be able to change what has happened but we can overcome it and defy the odds. The only bragging rights the matter to us.
Leave a comment and reach out if you feel yourself in a downward slope or if you just want someone to talk to. The world is a big place, there are a lot of us who want to help.
