Looks ugly, doesn’t it?
That’s my hip as of a little over a month ago.
Me and my truck had a little come to Jesus moment with a telephone pole. Head on, with no seatbelt. I was about 400 yards from home, probably not even that.
I don’t remember a whole lot about it. I vaguely remember being in the ambulance on a board with a neck collar on.
Next thing I know, I’m in the hospital. Tubes, EKG leads, bags of stuff going into me. It was a sight for sure.
I wont get into the details of how the accident happened. I’ll talk about that later, mostly because it is a post or ten in and of itself. For now I’ll just tell you about the results.
I hit the pole in the dead center of my truck, going at full speed (around 35) for that street. Like I said, I didn’t have a seatbelt on.
The full list of damage goes like so: 6th and 7th rib on my right side broken, severe bruising of the chest and sternum (I actually bent the steering wheel with my chest) with serious concern that I might have damaged my heart (it didn’t), broke the windshield with my head and somehow or another my hard headed ass didn’t get a concussion, the aforementioned elbow and arm damage that caused the Cubital Tunnel Syndrome, and the delicious icing on the cake, my knee went into the dashboard and pushed my femur back, damaging the acetabulum. For those non-medical of you, the acetabulum is the socket that the ball of your femur moves around in.
After 4 days in the hospital unable to leave the bed, feeling like my right leg wasn’t even attached anymore (the 4 day stay is yet another story – yeah, I can milk this accident for a while), I went into surgery and came out with what you see above. Yes, that’s my x-ray. Five screws and a plate, then five more days in the hospital recovering from the surgery.
I’ve got pics of my truck and I actually have the dashcam footage of the wreck, none of which, other than the one I am about to show you, will ever appear online as long as my mother is alive.
Those of you that I know may get to see the pics in private messages, if I am asked, but they won’t appear here. As for the one (ok, really two) I’ll show you here, here they are:
As for the dashcam footage, I don’t know. I’ve shown it to my brother and that’s about it. I can’t watch it again. It’s . . . I don’t know the right word . . . powerful? At least to me anyway. I don’t remember any of it and to see it in the cold, honest way that the camera has, I almost felt the impact as I watched it and I immediately started bawling my eyes out.
I’m home now.
Like REALLY fuckin’ home.
Can’t put any weight on that leg for a minimum of three months, so I’m stuck in the house. Can’t work unless I manage to find a job I can do from home and I look for it every day. Can’t go back to the old job (I was a Security Officer – I’ll get ya’ll caught up on my general life later) because I can’t be standing up for that long even after I do recover.
I’m gonna be THAT fuckin’ guy – “Yep. It’s gonna rain later today”
It took about three weeks before I could cough, sneeze or laugh without excruciating pain because of the damage to my chest.
Now, I am stuck at home either on my couch or in my bed. I’ve got 2 different kinds of walkers, a wheelchair for those rare, extended outings, and a cane to get me out the front door to my chair out there so I can smoke.
I don’t know where it goes from here.
Like, I really don’t.
There’s other issues that need to be dealt with as well and those of you that are return readers from Opticynicism probably have a pretty good idea of what those are. Depression is one of them and this really didn’t help.
Or maybe it did because things are happening now to help get that under control which were not happening before.
For now, I’m healing the hip and from what I can tell, the tingly and numb fingers are just gonna be a thing I have to live with forever. Physical and Occupational Therapy come to my house to do that, thank whatever deity you believe in. Follow up doctors appointments are easy to get a ride to as long as it’s a VA appointment thanks to the Veteran’s Transportation Service. They pick me up in my wheelchair, take me to my appointments and then take me back home after. Any appointments not at the VA, I have to rely on the kindness of the people I know.
I ran out of Lyft money quite a while back.
I’ve got a long road ahead of me and quite frankly, it scares the living hell out of me. If anyone knows or has any jobs I can do from home, by all means give me a shout.
I’ve heard people tell me before that when they’ve had an experience like this, one where the only reason they’re alive is that certain variables within the incident fell into just exactly the right spot to keep them alive, that they see things a little bit differently.
I don’t know that I see things differently right now because it is all very surreal and my brain is still trying to come to terms with it all, but it has definitely shown me that some things have to change and that I’ve got to start doing it now.
Starting to write again is just one small part of that bigger plan to get things together.
I know, this one has been a serious post and there will be more of them, but for my own sanity and if I’m going to get anywhere, I do need the best medicine, laughter.
I’ll bring back the funny. I promise.
This isn’t like Opticynicism. There will be no donation links or Amazon ads or any of that bullshit.
This will just be me talking to any of you willing to listen, and if nobody is listening, then it’s just me emptying out the dark corners of my head to make room for some good stuff to get in there.
I have missed this.
And ya’ll.
And making two words be a paragraph.
That much hasn’t changed. Format rules be damned. I’m just going to write the way I talk.
It’s just going to be me.
It’s good to be back..
