Post by melody on Jan 19, 2008 10:45:16 GMT -5
My senior year of high school (2001-2002) I was in a car accident. My friend and I were on our way to school and she rearended someone. I went flying forward, due to the impact, and my seat belt didn't lock...my head spiderwebbed the entire windshield, and my throat hit the dash board. I don't remember very much, just bits and pieces...i remember looking out and seeing that our car was smoking, so i got out, ran over and pulled my friend from the car (she was driving)...she had a bloody nose...anyway...i remember walking over to the ambulances and they were asking for my mom's phone number at work...i don't remember giving it to them though...
The medics were checking me out, and had me laying on the ground with my head strapped down and they told me not to move...well this created a problem because i felt as though i had to spit...i was spitting up blood...and i told them i needed to spit, and the one girl, told me to just roll over onto my stomach...ok, well first of all, how can i just roll over onto my stomach if i'm tied down?...it's not a simple task...anyway, as i'm laying there, i could feel myself starting to slip away...i had never been so cold in my life...i just kept getting colder and colder and colder...i knew i was near death, but i wasn't scared...the only thing i knew to do was pray...so i started to pray silently while everyone else was rushing around to get phone numbers and decide who goes to what hospital, etc....(5 cars and a school bus were involved) (it happened between Mansfield and Shelby) anyway, they finally put me in the ambulance and every medic from mansfield and shelby had piled their coats on top of me to try and get me warm. The EMT that was in my ambulance was asking me all sorts of questions, "what's your name?" "when's your birthday?", etc. I don't remember answering these questions, but apparently i did, and got them right! lol So the q and a session was over i guess, and i was looking out the back window of the ambulance as we were racing down the road, and all of a sudden a peacefullness came over me, and I saw an angel. It was the most beautiful thing i'd ever seen, although to be honest, i can't describe what i saw. Before I knew it, i was in the emergency room waiting...waiting for what?...i don't know...i don't remember...
My pappy was my very best friend in the whole world....when he passed away, i just had a feeling that he wasn't completely gone yet. (that too was a very spiritual experience for me)...anyway, i knew he was hanging around for some reason...
well, as i was laying on the table (apparently getting surgery done), i came up out of my body and could feel each of my hands being held. Jesus and my pappy where holding my hands. Pappy told me he loved me, and Jesus told me it wasn't my time yet, and together they sort of pushed me back into my body....
I remember waking up, and being told i was at OSU hospital...apparently they had life flighted me there after they did a trecheotomy on me in mansfield....i don't remember much of this either...i do remember though, i was freaking out thinking a bunch of students were going to do surgery on me...LOL....yeah, i was pretty drugged up....heck, i looked at the clock and said "wow, it's 52 o clock already?!?!...i need to go to school!!"...hahaha....
so a few days (which i don't remember) go by and it's time for another surgery (apparently, i had so much swelling in my throat that they had to wait for 2 days for it to go down before they could do surgery)....so i'm being wheeled in my bed to the surgery prep room....after seeing a waiting room of about 65 people that had skipped school to come see me)...my momma was there by my side the whole time, and i asked her..."if they're going to do surgery on my throat, how will i breathe?"....i don't remember anything after that...
For the whole first day after the surgery i wasn't allowed to even swollow my own spit...i had never felt such pain in my life...my room was filled with cards, flowers, stuffed animals, etc...and the nurses and even my doctor and his interns said they'd NEVER seen someone have so many visitors....i was starting to feel much better...my friends however, not so much...a few of them got suspended for skipping school too many times to come visit...they didn't care though...
anyway, it was time for me to try and swollow something, so they gave me a popsicle...said to take a bite and let it melt, then swollow...ok, not so much...a tiny tiny little piece of it went down and got stuck in my treach...and guess what?...code red in my room, i had stopped breathing...(i was so used to breathing through the trech that i had forgotten how to breathe from my nose and mouth) so all of that gets settled....slowly but surely day by day, my throat got stronger and i was eating again, not solid foods though, just ice cream and puddings and stuff...
it was just a few days before i was able to come home and my doctor came in and said it's time for me to learn to breathe again...i was scared...but i did it! the trech came out and i had a hole in my throat...it was disgusting...he said that the skin would grow back on it's own, i just had to change the gauses and stuff until it did. then i could come back and get a revision done on the scar to make it smaller...
My doctor was doctor forrest, he's an ears nose and throat specialist...the best in the nation...he's even flown out of the country to do surgeries...while he was in my room one day, he told me that the worst injury he'd ever seen during his whole time of practicing was while he was at a hockey game...one of the players got hit in the throat with the puck, and he did an emergency trecheotomy right there on the ice...and my injury was worse than that...he'd never seen anything as bad as my throat injury...he said with all of the damage i had, by all rights i should have died 2-5 minutes after the accident...and it's literally a miracle i'm alive, because i waited for 2 hours before i had the trech put in...
my injuries: when i hit the dash board, the bone, i forget what the term is for it...i guess my adam's apple...haha (there is a different term for women though)...anyway, it shattered and on the way down it severed every single one of my vocal chords, tore my left vocal flap completely off, and crushed my voice box....they said i had a 50/50 chance i'd ever talk again...
things i found out after i was home....
during my life flight, i was waking up from the trecheotomy, and got a blood clot in my throat and couldn't breathe, so they gave me morphine to put me back under so they could remove it, and guess what?...i'm allergic to morphine...i broke out in hives...
the guy that did my trecheotomy, was also the same doctor that removed my tonsils when i was 4 and let me lose over a pint of blood...
a few weeks after my life was spared and i learned just how strong of a person i am....i learned that the guy that removed my tonsils and later put my trech in, and the pilot that life flighted me both had passed away...it made me cry....those were 2 people that helped save my life, and theirs were taken away...
oh yeah, and the whole first week after i had gotten back to life as usual...i had to go and see a neurologist....and had to get an EEG, i had PCS....post concussional syndrome....from time to time i'd forget who i was or why i was doing what i was doing....but that didn't last very long...
anyway, sorry it was so long, but that's my story....
The medics were checking me out, and had me laying on the ground with my head strapped down and they told me not to move...well this created a problem because i felt as though i had to spit...i was spitting up blood...and i told them i needed to spit, and the one girl, told me to just roll over onto my stomach...ok, well first of all, how can i just roll over onto my stomach if i'm tied down?...it's not a simple task...anyway, as i'm laying there, i could feel myself starting to slip away...i had never been so cold in my life...i just kept getting colder and colder and colder...i knew i was near death, but i wasn't scared...the only thing i knew to do was pray...so i started to pray silently while everyone else was rushing around to get phone numbers and decide who goes to what hospital, etc....(5 cars and a school bus were involved) (it happened between Mansfield and Shelby) anyway, they finally put me in the ambulance and every medic from mansfield and shelby had piled their coats on top of me to try and get me warm. The EMT that was in my ambulance was asking me all sorts of questions, "what's your name?" "when's your birthday?", etc. I don't remember answering these questions, but apparently i did, and got them right! lol So the q and a session was over i guess, and i was looking out the back window of the ambulance as we were racing down the road, and all of a sudden a peacefullness came over me, and I saw an angel. It was the most beautiful thing i'd ever seen, although to be honest, i can't describe what i saw. Before I knew it, i was in the emergency room waiting...waiting for what?...i don't know...i don't remember...
My pappy was my very best friend in the whole world....when he passed away, i just had a feeling that he wasn't completely gone yet. (that too was a very spiritual experience for me)...anyway, i knew he was hanging around for some reason...
well, as i was laying on the table (apparently getting surgery done), i came up out of my body and could feel each of my hands being held. Jesus and my pappy where holding my hands. Pappy told me he loved me, and Jesus told me it wasn't my time yet, and together they sort of pushed me back into my body....
I remember waking up, and being told i was at OSU hospital...apparently they had life flighted me there after they did a trecheotomy on me in mansfield....i don't remember much of this either...i do remember though, i was freaking out thinking a bunch of students were going to do surgery on me...LOL....yeah, i was pretty drugged up....heck, i looked at the clock and said "wow, it's 52 o clock already?!?!...i need to go to school!!"...hahaha....
so a few days (which i don't remember) go by and it's time for another surgery (apparently, i had so much swelling in my throat that they had to wait for 2 days for it to go down before they could do surgery)....so i'm being wheeled in my bed to the surgery prep room....after seeing a waiting room of about 65 people that had skipped school to come see me)...my momma was there by my side the whole time, and i asked her..."if they're going to do surgery on my throat, how will i breathe?"....i don't remember anything after that...
For the whole first day after the surgery i wasn't allowed to even swollow my own spit...i had never felt such pain in my life...my room was filled with cards, flowers, stuffed animals, etc...and the nurses and even my doctor and his interns said they'd NEVER seen someone have so many visitors....i was starting to feel much better...my friends however, not so much...a few of them got suspended for skipping school too many times to come visit...they didn't care though...
anyway, it was time for me to try and swollow something, so they gave me a popsicle...said to take a bite and let it melt, then swollow...ok, not so much...a tiny tiny little piece of it went down and got stuck in my treach...and guess what?...code red in my room, i had stopped breathing...(i was so used to breathing through the trech that i had forgotten how to breathe from my nose and mouth) so all of that gets settled....slowly but surely day by day, my throat got stronger and i was eating again, not solid foods though, just ice cream and puddings and stuff...
it was just a few days before i was able to come home and my doctor came in and said it's time for me to learn to breathe again...i was scared...but i did it! the trech came out and i had a hole in my throat...it was disgusting...he said that the skin would grow back on it's own, i just had to change the gauses and stuff until it did. then i could come back and get a revision done on the scar to make it smaller...
My doctor was doctor forrest, he's an ears nose and throat specialist...the best in the nation...he's even flown out of the country to do surgeries...while he was in my room one day, he told me that the worst injury he'd ever seen during his whole time of practicing was while he was at a hockey game...one of the players got hit in the throat with the puck, and he did an emergency trecheotomy right there on the ice...and my injury was worse than that...he'd never seen anything as bad as my throat injury...he said with all of the damage i had, by all rights i should have died 2-5 minutes after the accident...and it's literally a miracle i'm alive, because i waited for 2 hours before i had the trech put in...
my injuries: when i hit the dash board, the bone, i forget what the term is for it...i guess my adam's apple...haha (there is a different term for women though)...anyway, it shattered and on the way down it severed every single one of my vocal chords, tore my left vocal flap completely off, and crushed my voice box....they said i had a 50/50 chance i'd ever talk again...
things i found out after i was home....
during my life flight, i was waking up from the trecheotomy, and got a blood clot in my throat and couldn't breathe, so they gave me morphine to put me back under so they could remove it, and guess what?...i'm allergic to morphine...i broke out in hives...
the guy that did my trecheotomy, was also the same doctor that removed my tonsils when i was 4 and let me lose over a pint of blood...
a few weeks after my life was spared and i learned just how strong of a person i am....i learned that the guy that removed my tonsils and later put my trech in, and the pilot that life flighted me both had passed away...it made me cry....those were 2 people that helped save my life, and theirs were taken away...
oh yeah, and the whole first week after i had gotten back to life as usual...i had to go and see a neurologist....and had to get an EEG, i had PCS....post concussional syndrome....from time to time i'd forget who i was or why i was doing what i was doing....but that didn't last very long...
anyway, sorry it was so long, but that's my story....