Reality Check

Eleven years ago today I was in a horrible car accident. It was an overcast day with no recent snowfall. I was driving on a two lane highway coming home from a girls cabin cookie bake and I hit black ice. A sea of black ice. I tried braking, I tried turning out of it, I tried to get to the ditch. But, I spun and spun and as I was coming to a stop in the middle of the road thinking how lucky I was, I saw the headlights and was T-boned in the driver door by a Suburban towing snow mobiles going 55 MPH. I was hit on every single side of the car, windows blown out, the car was completely totaled. The impact was so hard that the Tupperware containers full of cookies in the backseat exploded.

I woke up to the paramedics yelling to get the jaws of life sounding panicked. I looked at my friend in the passenger seat and asked if we were alive. She nodded and I passed out again. I found out later that they had to bring in a second truck to brace my car because it kept slipping away as they tried to cut us out.

I woke up again in the ambulance. I heard panicked paramedics reporting vitals back to the hospital because my blood pressure was low. I pulled the oxygen mask away and told them my blood pressure was always low and that I was pregnant. Yes, I was 19 weeks pregnant with Claire.

The next time I opened my eyes, I was in the emergency room with a bunch of doctors and nurses running around. A state trooper yelling in my face, asking if it was my purse he was holding. Yelling for a blood alcohol. Asking what my license plate number was. We had just bought the car, just put the plates on. I had no idea. I was scared. I was panicked. I was in horrible pain. The nurse pushed him out of the room and came back and rubbed my face. Shushing me like you do to a child who is hurt and scared. That loving gesture calmed me down. I focused on that woman's face and started breathing.

I was in and out of consciousness. They asked for my next of kin which panicked me more, I thought I was dying or maybe the baby I was carrying was hurt. They assured me that I would be fine and I told them that I needed to call my husband otherwise he would panic. I told them he thought I was going Christmas shopping we had time.

I had to have x-rays and because I couldn't sit up on my own and because I was pregnant, they wrapped me in several protection blankets and two men held me up for the x-rays. I started having difficulty breathing so they had to have a CT scan and they did the same thing as they did with the x-rays. Every time they moved me, I had to have a new bed because of all the glass I was leaving on the bed with each movement. Five beds total at the end of it all.

I refused any pain medication because I was pregnant. Here I was 19 weeks pregnant, hadn't even had caffeine and they wanted to pump me full of drugs. Get a clue I thought. They called my OB on speaker phone and had an OB they had called in and they all convinced me that the baby would be fine with monitoring with pain medication and I NEEDED pain medication because my body would stop protecting me and the baby soon and they had to get help in my body NOW, so I agreed. Morphine drip was put into my IV, just makes the baby sleepy they assured.

I finally called my husband at 3 p.m., the accident happened at 10:30 a.m. The time in the emergency room seemed like minutes because I was awake for only pieces of it. I told him that I was in an accident and the car was in tough shape and I was at the hospital getting checked out but I was fine, to be careful driving up.

I received an ultrasound every hour for the 2 days I was in the hospital. I didn't want to know the sex so it was the standing joke when they came in, "we know, you don't want to know..we're just checking it out".

I ended up with 2 broken ribs, a broken collar bone and my left ear was completely split in half from the impact. They called in an excellent plastic surgeon and thankfully I have no visible scars. My friend had a broken pelvis. Had she been driving like she offered and I received her injuries, Claire would not have made it.

It was a long road to recovery, another 14 hours in the hospital when I returned home. Chiropractic and massage therapy got me through my darker days because I refused to take pain medication at home. Six weeks of no driving because I couldn't turn my head and the pain in my back and neck was horrific for those first weeks.

I think I can say that I was pretty much functioning normally by mid March but it's all quite a blur. Thankfully we have photos of that Christmas my son was 3 because I remember none of it.

What I do know is that accident changed my life. I stopped taking things for granted. I stopped sweating the small stuff. I started appreciating the little things and stopped obsessing about things I couldn't change.

Every year on this day I do a little reality check. Could things be better..perhaps. Is there things I should change..sometimes. Am I thankful to be here to watch two healthy, happy children grow up, always.