My bonus decade.

Seatbelts: lifesaving and fashionable!

This morning, there was an accident along my usual route to work, so I had to take a detour. That detour took me through the intersection where, 11 years ago today, my life very nearly ended. Around 4:30 in the afternoon on December 30, 1999, I was heading home from a winter-break job (I was a college junior at the time), and I did something my father had made me promise not to do. Dad is a mechanic and tow truck driver, so he knows very well where accidents happen, and he had told me that the on-ramp to Rt. 50 from Rowe Blvd. is a particularly dangerous intersection. Most days, I took his advice and took a longer route home. On this day, though, I guess I was in a hurry to start the holiday weekend.

I remember waiting through a couple of red lights to get onto the on-ramp. I remember that the Meat Loaf song "I would do anything for love (but I won't do that)" was on the radio, and I was laughing about it. I remember being one of the first people in line to get a green light and start driving up onto the ramp, and I also remember seeing a car approaching the red light in the other direction pretty quickly. After that, the next thing I remember is somebody outside the door of my car asking me for an emergency number, dialing the service station where my parents both work, and holding up the phone so I could talk to my Dad. The next couple hours are a blur. I remember laying on the ground outside my car, talking to both my parents when they arrived, riding in an ambulance, and then riding in another ambulance and hearing that I was headed to Shock Trauma in Baltimore. At that point, I was sure I was going to die (when you hear "Shock Trauma" on the news, its never good), and I thought I needed to confess to my mother every bad thing I had ever done that she didn't know about. Thankfully, an oxygen mask prevented me from acting on that idea!

Over the course of the next few days, I learned what had happened. The driver I had seen approaching the red light had not seen the light at all and gone straight through it without slowing down (the speed limit on that road is 45 and he was going at least that fast). The angle of the on-ramp had caused us to collide head-on, and sent my car spinning at least 100 feet down the road. (Miraculously, I didn't hit anything else!) The other driver had an airbag and walked away from the scene. I was in a much older car without an airbag, so I got hurt pretty badly. I had a broken nose, a major cut on my eyelid (it was almost cut in half), a concussion, bruises and burns to my chest from the seatbelt, and a banged-up kneecap. I was lucky that I was in a big, old sedan because the impact totally crushed the front of my car but stopped just short of the dashboard. If I had not been wearing a seatbelt, I definitely would have been thrown from the car and killed (wear your seatbelts, people!).

I was sent to Shock Trauma because I was so disoriented that the doctors at the local hospital thought I might have a brain injury. I spent a little over 12 hours there, getting examined and stiched up. The latter was not fun at all, but I couldn't complain because the people on either side of me each had multiple gun shot wounds. I went home early the morning of the 31st, and spent the next three weeks going back to Baltimore every other day for follow-ups and surgery to fix my nose and eyelid. (Also not fun. To this day, I am baffled by people who have elective facial surgery.)

I had to stay on the couch pretty much all day during this time, so my brother brought over one of the original Game Boys (ca. 1989) to keep me busy. It had exactly two games, which I played 8-10 hours a day. By two weeks in, I was so good at Tetris that my games could easily stretch to a couple hours and I often stopped just because I was bored. (In case you were wondering, the highest level on the old Tetris is 30. Beyond that, the blocks can't go any faster, but you can make lines forever.)

I was horror-struck at the idea of not graduating on time, so I actually returned to college in Pennsylvania when the new semester began. This was a horrible idea; I had a terrible semester where I got depressed and really sick. Knowing what I know now about trauma, I can't believe I went back so soon, but at the time my parents would have had to lock me in my room to keep me home.   

Eleven years later, my body is almost totally healed. Thanks to an amazing surgeon and the plasticity of facial skin, I only have a small scar left on my eyelid (I can see it, but most people can't). My nose looks fine, but my sinuses are a little wacky. Fortunately, there are good medicines for that these days. I still have some trouble with the knee that got injured, but nothing that prevents me from doing what I want to do (like running marathons). As far as I know, I have no lasting damage from the concussion, though my memories from the accident have never come back. The seatbelt burns and bruises were shockingly painful, but they healed after a few weeks.

Mentally and emotionally, there are definitely some lasting effects, both positive and negative. Fortunately, I never developed a phobia about driving, but I have a very high awareness of the risks involved. I am not one of those people who gets in the car and doesn't think about the possibility of an accident; I think about it every time. For the most part, though, I think that's a good thing. For a couple years after the accident, I could not watch TV shows or movies that took place in ERs because it reminded me too much of being in Shock Trauma. That went away eventually, but I still hate reading or seeing anything involving a car accident- those darn "safe happens" commercials Volkswagon used to run totally gave me nightmares. I also dislike the portion of my counseling classes where we talk about the effects of trauma. Its a very important subject, and a particular interest of mine, but it always brings up difficult emotions and memories. I am still remarkably good at Tetris.

More than anything, I'm really happy to still be here. 2000-2010 feels like a "bonus decade": 10 years I very easily could have missed. There's not enough time or space to list everything I would have missed in those 10 (or 11, really) years, but here are some big ones: graduating from college, having my first real job working with kids, being a Sunday School teacher, having some writing published, giving my grandmother's eulogy, buying my house, going to/graduating from Yale, seeing my siblings get married, preaching at my niece's baptism, becoming a counselor, running a marathon. Most importantly, I would never had met many of my great friends or two of my nieces and nephews. The nieces and nephews alone make for a great decade!

I am also infinitely grateful that Meat Loaf was not the last music I ever heard.

So, buckle up, watch for red lights, listen to your Dad, and be thankful for the time you have because you never know what might happen. I'm looking forward to the next bonus decade!