I figured since I don't have so much trouble typing now I'll type out the whole story...
It's 8am. I wore my hair down the day before and since its so early I just pulled it into a pony tail. I pulled on some white t-shirt and some guy khaki shorts, and my aqua crocs. I have to drive 45 minutes to class in Harriman. I'm on this long country highway stretch between Oak Ridge and Harriman. By now its prolly 8:10. I glance at the road infront of me, only a few hundred feet infront of me I see a grey, maybe black sporty looking car stretched out across my lane. I know its too late, I start screaming, "no no no". But I'm sure Jessica, the girl driving the car, would not hear my "no"s. I drop my croc down on the brake, as hard as I can.
BOOM
The impact shatters my lower leg bones, and I realize this right away with the sharp leg pain and that i can't move my lower leg by myself. My air bag deployed, and now the powder is starting to settle inside of my car and I look out. My car is perfectly stopped in its lane, only the front end is smashed in. Where is Jessica? I look out and I see her car in the grass. My car threw her car into the ditch area. I'm screaming at the top of my lungs. Is it an echo I hear? I stop for a second to breathe, and I continue to hear the screams, its Jessica screaming too. I have trouble breathing due to the air bag dust, so I stop screaming and work on breathing before I have an asthma attack. About 15-30 seconds have passed since the impact at this point.
I know Michael should still be asleep, my Mom is out of town (out of state), so i reach my right hand out to the passenger seat where my purse was. Crap, its gone, its somewhere else. I can't move enough to look for it in the floor, so I cry and try to breathe some more.
A minivan pulled up beside me and asked me if I could get myself out, and I found it hard to say the words, but I did, "No no no, I can't". Eventually the man comes and he starts to help me out, cause all I wanted was to get the fuck out of that car. He has me about half way out, when a blond haired lady, she was motherly, came over. She said not to move me because I might have a neck injury, thats not what I wanted to hear, no. I wanted out. She introduces herself as an RN and gets me to hold my neck still. I hear and see other RNs get out of their cars and come over to try and help. Then I ask how the other girl is and she says shes okay, just a bump on her head, but she is stuck in her car.
I cry for an ambulance, I want out of the car. I want pain meds. At this point I'm holding my leg because if my upper leg rests on the lower leg and foot it HURTS. The RN reassures me I'll get meds soon. First the fire dept., they check on me, and help open the car door of the other car. Next is the police, or highway patrol. The man who asked me about the accident wasn't dressed like a cop. I told him that i was driving she pulled out infront of me to go to oliver springs direction and I slammed on my brakes. He said he could see where I had braked very hard. I told him I was going 55 or 60, even tho the speed limit is 55. Michael later gave me crap about that but I wasn't going to lie.
It was at least 15 minutes before the ambulance arrived after being called. They came checked me out, and put a very uncomfortable neck brace on. Now here came the PAINFUL part, they brought over a back board. It was terrible painful as they pulled me out. Moving my foot at all hurt. They eventually wrapped me up, and put me in the ambulance. There was already another strecher in the ambulance...
Jessica was already in the ambulance, as they slid me in I heard her ask the EMT questions, about who I was, and he told her he didn't know. So I told her my name and she told me hers. She started to talk about her eye hurting as I begged and begged and begged for pain medication for my leg, the EMT assured me he was about to give it to me. Eventually Jessica asked my name again, and told me hers again. She was very disoriented. Eventually we held hands as the ambulance took us to Oak Ridge. I was so glad we were moving but I didn't like moving foot first it was weird.
I entered the hospital, keep in mind they never gave me pain meds because of some protcols or something, I watched the ceiling as they rolled me into my room. Now that they were setting me up with morphine, I started to ask about my calling my dad. They had to thoroughly check me out before they would call my dad. As I lay there, waiting, a man came in the room. He said, "Hey there.." and came up and put his hand on my rail, he has this soft comforting approach. He introduced himself, he was Jessica's dad. He told me Jessica was going to be okay, and I'd be okay, and asked if there was anything he could do to help me. I asked him if he had a cell phone, so we could call my boyfriend. He said sure, and we called Michael. He told Michael he thought I'd be okay and he handed the phone to me, I hear, "Do you want me to come to the hospital?" and I was like ".. YEAH". Its about 8:50 and my Dad and Michael arrive. Dad has called Mom and she is aware of the situation but not sure if she is going to come back yet.
X-ray time! This was a very very unpleasant experience. As I later found out, morphine doesn't help alot with bone pain. I cried all thru my xrays. After we had finished she the tech came up to me and asked me if I wanted to go back to my room now or rest a few minutes before I moved again. I rested a few minutes before I went back to my room.
Back at my room, I texted Kate and Erica to update them, and Erica said she was leaving school. I requested some soup kitchen once I could eat, they had told me not to eat because I might be having surgery. I got more morphine when I was back at the room, and some other pain meds. I started to feel good now. The othropedic surgeon on call came and told me that the operating rooms were mostly full for the day, I could wait without eating for another 3 hours or so and have surgery or I could have it tomorrow. I opted for tomorrow, I was hungry.
Some nurses came into the room and it took like 6-8 of them to splint my leg.. and man it hurt. Michael said they weren't even holding my lower leg, it was just danging by the meat from my upper leg.
I was admitted into the hospital from Monday morning to Thursday night. I had a titanium rod put in my leg, with 2 screws near knee and 2 screws near the ankle. I get to keep these ... forever :)
