Ketchup (Catsup?) Time
It's been a while since I've updated. Much has happened in my life since the last update.
My last update was two days before I headed out for a job interview, probably the most important event in my unemployed life to that point.
Things got a little weird after that.
Actually, they got a lot weird.
Let's start with that afternoon: I headed out after making that post to the hairdresser to get my hair done for my upcoming trip to Wichita, KS (which was where that company was headquartered). If you live in the MD/DC/VA area, you'll remember 02/12/2008 as the date of the worst ice storm this region had seen in years. The rain started while I was getting my hair colored to hide the big skunk white streak that was glowing on the top of my head. All the while I was getting my hair done, the folks at Alexander's of Annapolis were coming in from the parking lot, saying, "Wow, it's nasty out there. Be careful when you step outside--it's icing up really fast." Indeed, on the drive home, I was really noticing how icy overpasses were. Still, I grew up in Indiana and learned to drive on ice and snow; as long as the roads are kept up properly, it's not that bad.
Coming across Rt. 32 West at around 1545, as I crested the slight hill of the overpass over MD 170, I noticed a cop ahead of me working an accident scene on my side of the highway just across the overpass. I slowed down as I came across the bridge.
The next thing I knew, my back end was swerving. And sliding. And spinning. And weaving. And I realized at that moment I had zero control over my car, and the SUV in the lane next to me had a similar lack of control.
They say, in the moments before you die/are seriously injured/etc., you see your entire life flash before your eyes. Not me. I saw instead a 180-degree panorama: To my right was the SUV, who was sliding toward me as I was sliding toward him. To my left was the guardrail. In that fraction of a second, my mind realized three things:
In that fraction of a second of thought, I remember distinctly flicking the steering wheel to the left.
I slammed into the guardrail at a 45-degree angle a blink of an eye later. My airbag did not deploy. The top of my head slammed the "A" post (the part of the frame where the driver's door and the windshield meet). My car bounced along the guardrail for a few feet, and my jaw impacted the driver's window next. I came to a stop about two bounces later.
Fortunately, the cop working the accident was standing on the opposite side of the guardrail, so the only person my car hurt was me. But I knew I'd been hurt. I didn't black out, but I spent the next few minutes staring through a strange grey fog. The cop, after determining I'd been hurt, called for an ambulance and then urged me to move my car forward a few feet (because, as he explained, I was the second person who'd hit that guardrail in exactly that same spot since he'd started working the accident 15 minutes ago), then told me to get out of the car (see above reason). I did both. The policeman helped me out of my car and over the guardrail to sit in his waiting patrol car; it was probably not more than a minute or so later that I heard #screech# #crash# #crunch#, and I looked up to see a larger car skid out crossing the bridge, try to slam on the brakes, crash into the exact spot on the guardrail I'd hit, and then crunch into my back end. If I'd stayed in the car, I'd likely be dead, or at the very least hurt far more seriously.
The ambulance arrived momentarily, and I insisted I needed to go to the hospital (I was still seeing grey). The medics took me after seeing my blood pressure looking very low from shock, though when I arrived at Baltimore Washington Med Center @ North Arundel my BP had stabilized. We heard from the charge nurse at the ambulance entrance that there were 19 MVA victims inbound for North Arundel. By the time I got through Triage about 30 minutes later, that number had jumped to nearly 30 inbound. Because the hospital was rapidly running out of space in its ER, patients were being placed on gurneys or in wheelchairs or even on cots in the hallways, temporary dividers and masking tape "bay numbers" marking positions for patients needing treatment. Because I'd been early in arriving, I got an actual gurney in slot #6 in the first hallway, and was able to get some sleep while waiting for the doctors to get around to assess their patients. (No lie, it looked like something out of M*A*S*H.) Two hours after my arrival, the paramedics who delivered me stopped off briefly to check on me, saying that they had to rush back out because there were now 57 calls for ambulance assistance in AA County but only 35 ambulances in total.
As bad as all of that sounds, I was actually very fortunate. Though I'd hit my head pretty hard, there was no evidence of a concussion or signs of brain bleeds or skull fractures. My jaw also made it intact. My CFS and FM were now combining to give me heavy muscle spasms on my left side, though, so I was in serious pain for quite a while until the nurse gave me 2mg Dilaudid to cut the pain. Around midnight, the doctor sent me home w/ pain killer prescriptions, a 3-day low dose Fentanyl patch to cut the muscle soreness over the next few days, and instructions to spend the next day resting but to otherwise enjoy my trip to Wichita.
A few days later, I found out my beautiful bright red 2007 Pontiac G6, the car I bought to celebrate my growing independence from my ex in September 2007, was totaled by the accident. The body shop made the initial call to total it when they found $12K worth of damage after removing only the outer paneling off to inspect the frame; the tech who was working on my car said of the frame damage, "I've got to be honest with you--I wouldn't want this car back. The frame on the driver's side is just toast. And that's not even the worst damage--the heart of the electrical system, including the battery mounts, were sheared off when that part of the frame got trashed, which means you're also looking at major electrical system repair." A day later, the State Farm Total Loss Team agreed to total the car once they saw that the frame on the driver's side was pretty much irreparable and the battery and wiring mounts were also damaged beyond repair. Not the thing I wanted to hear when I knew I hadn't gotten the job in Wichita and was rapidly running out of settlement money from AOL.
Still, though, it could have been far worse. I seriously could be dead right now. I could still be in the hospital. I could have had a less-than-honorable insurance adjuster refusing to total my car so that I'd be forced to drive an unsafe car.
Instead, I'm safe at home, uninjured by the accident, getting effective medical treatment for the first time for my illness (Ankylosing Spondylitis, or AS for short--yep, it's another auto-immune disease) from a competent specialist (long but good story, best told later), and being thankful to be alive. Praise God.
Still, though, maybe we could have gotten all of this across to me without hitting my head, wrecking my car, etc., eh, God?
Maybe?
Nah, probably not.
My last update was two days before I headed out for a job interview, probably the most important event in my unemployed life to that point.
Things got a little weird after that.
Actually, they got a lot weird.
Let's start with that afternoon: I headed out after making that post to the hairdresser to get my hair done for my upcoming trip to Wichita, KS (which was where that company was headquartered). If you live in the MD/DC/VA area, you'll remember 02/12/2008 as the date of the worst ice storm this region had seen in years. The rain started while I was getting my hair colored to hide the big skunk white streak that was glowing on the top of my head. All the while I was getting my hair done, the folks at Alexander's of Annapolis were coming in from the parking lot, saying, "Wow, it's nasty out there. Be careful when you step outside--it's icing up really fast." Indeed, on the drive home, I was really noticing how icy overpasses were. Still, I grew up in Indiana and learned to drive on ice and snow; as long as the roads are kept up properly, it's not that bad.
Coming across Rt. 32 West at around 1545, as I crested the slight hill of the overpass over MD 170, I noticed a cop ahead of me working an accident scene on my side of the highway just across the overpass. I slowed down as I came across the bridge.
The next thing I knew, my back end was swerving. And sliding. And spinning. And weaving. And I realized at that moment I had zero control over my car, and the SUV in the lane next to me had a similar lack of control.
They say, in the moments before you die/are seriously injured/etc., you see your entire life flash before your eyes. Not me. I saw instead a 180-degree panorama: To my right was the SUV, who was sliding toward me as I was sliding toward him. To my left was the guardrail. In that fraction of a second, my mind realized three things:
- I was going to hit something; there was no way out of it.
- If I hit the SUV, I'd probably be dead because the SUV is a lot bigger than I am.
- If I hit the guardrail, I might actually live through it.
In that fraction of a second of thought, I remember distinctly flicking the steering wheel to the left.
I slammed into the guardrail at a 45-degree angle a blink of an eye later. My airbag did not deploy. The top of my head slammed the "A" post (the part of the frame where the driver's door and the windshield meet). My car bounced along the guardrail for a few feet, and my jaw impacted the driver's window next. I came to a stop about two bounces later.
Fortunately, the cop working the accident was standing on the opposite side of the guardrail, so the only person my car hurt was me. But I knew I'd been hurt. I didn't black out, but I spent the next few minutes staring through a strange grey fog. The cop, after determining I'd been hurt, called for an ambulance and then urged me to move my car forward a few feet (because, as he explained, I was the second person who'd hit that guardrail in exactly that same spot since he'd started working the accident 15 minutes ago), then told me to get out of the car (see above reason). I did both. The policeman helped me out of my car and over the guardrail to sit in his waiting patrol car; it was probably not more than a minute or so later that I heard #screech# #crash# #crunch#, and I looked up to see a larger car skid out crossing the bridge, try to slam on the brakes, crash into the exact spot on the guardrail I'd hit, and then crunch into my back end. If I'd stayed in the car, I'd likely be dead, or at the very least hurt far more seriously.
The ambulance arrived momentarily, and I insisted I needed to go to the hospital (I was still seeing grey). The medics took me after seeing my blood pressure looking very low from shock, though when I arrived at Baltimore Washington Med Center @ North Arundel my BP had stabilized. We heard from the charge nurse at the ambulance entrance that there were 19 MVA victims inbound for North Arundel. By the time I got through Triage about 30 minutes later, that number had jumped to nearly 30 inbound. Because the hospital was rapidly running out of space in its ER, patients were being placed on gurneys or in wheelchairs or even on cots in the hallways, temporary dividers and masking tape "bay numbers" marking positions for patients needing treatment. Because I'd been early in arriving, I got an actual gurney in slot #6 in the first hallway, and was able to get some sleep while waiting for the doctors to get around to assess their patients. (No lie, it looked like something out of M*A*S*H.) Two hours after my arrival, the paramedics who delivered me stopped off briefly to check on me, saying that they had to rush back out because there were now 57 calls for ambulance assistance in AA County but only 35 ambulances in total.
As bad as all of that sounds, I was actually very fortunate. Though I'd hit my head pretty hard, there was no evidence of a concussion or signs of brain bleeds or skull fractures. My jaw also made it intact. My CFS and FM were now combining to give me heavy muscle spasms on my left side, though, so I was in serious pain for quite a while until the nurse gave me 2mg Dilaudid to cut the pain. Around midnight, the doctor sent me home w/ pain killer prescriptions, a 3-day low dose Fentanyl patch to cut the muscle soreness over the next few days, and instructions to spend the next day resting but to otherwise enjoy my trip to Wichita.
A few days later, I found out my beautiful bright red 2007 Pontiac G6, the car I bought to celebrate my growing independence from my ex in September 2007, was totaled by the accident. The body shop made the initial call to total it when they found $12K worth of damage after removing only the outer paneling off to inspect the frame; the tech who was working on my car said of the frame damage, "I've got to be honest with you--I wouldn't want this car back. The frame on the driver's side is just toast. And that's not even the worst damage--the heart of the electrical system, including the battery mounts, were sheared off when that part of the frame got trashed, which means you're also looking at major electrical system repair." A day later, the State Farm Total Loss Team agreed to total the car once they saw that the frame on the driver's side was pretty much irreparable and the battery and wiring mounts were also damaged beyond repair. Not the thing I wanted to hear when I knew I hadn't gotten the job in Wichita and was rapidly running out of settlement money from AOL.
Still, though, it could have been far worse. I seriously could be dead right now. I could still be in the hospital. I could have had a less-than-honorable insurance adjuster refusing to total my car so that I'd be forced to drive an unsafe car.
Instead, I'm safe at home, uninjured by the accident, getting effective medical treatment for the first time for my illness (Ankylosing Spondylitis, or AS for short--yep, it's another auto-immune disease) from a competent specialist (long but good story, best told later), and being thankful to be alive. Praise God.
Still, though, maybe we could have gotten all of this across to me without hitting my head, wrecking my car, etc., eh, God?
Maybe?
Nah, probably not.