The Day I Died-Sort Of

Note: I’ve written about this in varying degrees elsewhere on this blog, but this is the first time I’ve had the pictures. Seeing them reminds me of quite a few details that I may have mentioned before so, if you’re bored of the subject, you’ll want to find another post. If not, read on.

Everybody tells me I should take more “selfies”. I hate the way I look in pictures, but apparently my friends think people would like them. So here goes. Gotta give the people what they want, right?

Newnan Times-Herald, front page

Close-up of the Saturn

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’m the one in the ambulance.

Actually, maybe not. I might still be on the ground because the helicopter hadn’t gotten there yet. Or maybe I’m still in the car. It doesn’t look like they’d cut the roof off yet.

I don’t know. I don’t remember, just like I don’t remember the first two weeks in the hospital,

The next few paragraphs come from accounts of what I’ve been told by several people, some of whom I’ve never met.

 

I was pulling out of my subdivision on the way to a new job when I got hit T-bone style by a Ford F150. My Saturn (left) was smashed like a soda can around me, the two sides less than 14″ from each other. For a frame of reference, that’s slightly larger than a child’s rocking chair. Hey, I *did* always want to be thinner…

The paramedics tried to get me out of the car through the side but ended up having to cut a hole in the roof because of how tightly I was packed in.

The front of the F150 was smashed in, the engine block broken. The other driver had no injuries.  I guess that’s standard for a truck that can tow a hippopotamus. No, I’m not kidding.

I don’t envy my husband the task of calling my family and telling them I’d been in a horrible accident. It’s not like there’s any *good* way to say, “Hi , Mr. (shortbread cookie), this is S. I’m just calling to let you know that your daughter got into a wreck and is being held together by screws and tape. Call me back.” Lovely.

I was rushed to the hospital. When I had surgery a couple of days later, the doctors put two metal pins in my hip to hold it together along with a filter to keep my legs from swelling. I was in intensive care for a little over a week before I was moved to the rehab wing where I woke up.  For some reason nobody knows, some extra bone began to grow in the hip socket while my pelvis was mending itself and growing in around the screws. I ended up having to have my hip replaced seven years later (long story), but for that time I had a limp because the bone made my left hip set up nearly 3/4 of an inch higher than the right. I still have the limp, albeit not as severely.

According to my sister, my friends and everyone who was there, I was quite a difficult patient. I would wake up randomly and start pulling out all my tubes and lines because I thought my husband had taken me somewhere to get tortured. I would ramble incoherently, throw things and call people every name in the book. Apparently I had *quite* the swear vocabulary. Too bad I don’t remember it: In my line of work, I’m sure I could put it to good use.

I also begged my dad to let me die because I was in so much pain. Thank God he didn’t.

Here’s what I do remember:

I remember using a bedpan and ripping out my catheter.

I remember my throat and chest really hurt. My sister said this was because I ripped my chest tube out, which I didn’t even realize was possible.

I remember my cousin said that I told everyone that I saw my late mother in heaven and she told me to get back down to earth-that it wasn’t my time yet. I don’t remember it, nor do my husband and sister. Knowing her, though, I can *completely* see that. Totally.

I remember waking up in the hospital and learning that I’d been there for about two weeks now and would probably need about two more weeks of rehab before I could even *think* about going home.

It turned out that both my father and my sister had been there for several weeks now, both helping my husband with stuff around the house (I swear, sometimes I think he’d starve if I didn’t cook for him) and checking in on me. My dad lives in North Carolina and my sister in Virginia-both over 8 hours away. They were both freaked out to hell…my dad said that I kept begging him to let me die because I was in so much pain (again, I don’t remember this).

At least two of my therapists were cute. I’m grasping at straws here.

When I got home, my friends had set up a bed for me using an old mattress and one of their old headboards on a frame of rails and books in our dining room. My beautiful dining room…I think it’s sweet how every day I’d wake up to see Missy, our tabby, at the end of my bed. It was almost as though she were making sure I didn’t go away again. Who says cats don’t have feelings.

What’s also funny (well, not ‘ha ha’ so much as weird)…People talk a lot of crap about Saturns, but I was told by more than one person who would know-doctors, insurance adjusters, my dad-that if I hadn’t been in a well-made car I’d be dead. Full stop.  My dad’s a mechanic who has worked on cars my whole life, so I believe it. Another friend told me that an angel must have been in the front seat with me, which I fully believe. It’s like I’ve told other people-I believed in God before but, if I hadn’t then, I do now.

There you have it-

At least I made the front page, right? 🙂 I’ve got to find *something* positive out of it.

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(cue violin solo)

*I* might not have died that day, but you know what did?

-The chance at having a regular sex life.  At least, for a long time. The accident left me unable to, ahem, assume most positions. The ones I *could* get into didn’t work for my husband. That’s not to say I hadn’t done anything before but a) not all of it was consensual; and b) the things we did had the understanding that it could only go *so* far because the full expression of sex and love was reserved for marriage. I’m still a Christian…I still believe that.

I don’t know that we would have been all that “active”, but I do know that I didn’t get to learn all the things about how to please a man or what things we enjoyed most that pretty much every other married couple got to do. I can, um, please myself and please a man in some ways, but I still have a lot to learn. There’s a side of myself I might want to explore, but only with the right person.

I thought that having my hip replaced would help, but nope. After several, um, unsuccessful attempts at sex I went to a gynecologist convinced that I had some sort of disorder that caused me to “clench up” or something like that. It turns out that my lady parts *themselves* are normal, but they’re pushed to the right.  Seeing as I was hit on the left side…hmm, I wonder what that could be from. 🙄

Many years later, I *still* have no clue. I’m even more in-the-dark about this than I was when I was a teenager and hadn’t had any experience to speak of. I’m now [redacted] years older and don’t have the drive I thought I would so I guess it’s more a matter of my brain matching up to my body. I know that sex isn’t everything and we had a great relationship in every other way…he’s my best friend, which is what my parents had and what I’ve always wanted for myself.

Now that I’m a widow, I despair of finding another man who will accept and work with me. I’m more than willing to learn, but will anyone teach me? I don’t know.

I suppose I could have tried harder-other people do-, so maybe I have no one to blame but myself. Some people have (unkindly) suggested it was really my husband’s fault and wondered if it would be different with anyone else,. My answer to that is a firm NO because even if I were with someone else it’s still *my* drive that’s low, *my* experience that’s nonexistent and *my* parts that don’t f*cking work.

-On a related note, my childbearing years were drastically cut short. I was 35 when I got my hip fixed. Now, I am well aware that women have children late all the time-in fact, one of my good friends from college is only a few months younger than me and she just had her second child. Even so, it will be that much harder since we never really got into a “groove” to where we wanted to try. I know our financial issues and my bipolar complicate things-and it’s all up to God anyway-but I would have at least liked to have been able to try or even *think* about it seriously.

But now I can’t. All because of a Stupid. F*cking. Wreck. I know I should be grateful to be alive-and I am-, but I’ve spent a lot of time in pissed-off, self-pity mode because I’ve come to a time in my life where most of the people I’m around are either my age and have kids or-like a coworker who I’ve sort of “crushed on”-they’re so much younger and have all of these experiences ahead of them. And by the time they *do* get to my age they’ll be a lot further along than I am right now. I know it’s not a race, but I still feel like there are a lot of things I’ve missed out on. I don’t know that I would have done them anyway, but now I’ll *definitely* never know.

My friend said she hoped I didn’t think my best years were behind me. There are times I wonder. It’s like all this time and all these possibilities have been taken from me…I don’t know who would be doing the “taking” because I can’t see a good God actively doing something to hurt me, but they’re not there and it wasn’t because I let them go. Perhaps I should have tried harder to make things happen (or had more faith in God that they would), but there you have it. I believe God can/have/will make something good come out of this. I kind of wish He didn’t have to, though. I’m sure there’s a reason for it all. There *has* to be-