Monday 27 June 2011

The accident

I'M BACCCCKKKK!!!!!! As you can see I'm very excited by this!

I begged my darling hubby to put up a post explaining my absence, just so you didn't think I'd fallen off the face of the earth.

For the past 3 weeks I've been bed ridden with horrendous neck spasms, several times a day! The pain is so intense, so severe and absolutely exhausting.

The most annoying, unfair, unjust thing about all of this, is it was all caused by a car accident in September last year. I was on my way to work, I'm a school teacher and it was the last day of term, my to do list was rather large, I was going to go the freeway to get there just that bit quicker to finish all my work!

This is rather hard but therapeutic to write.....

I was in the right hand lane, doing the exact speed limit 80km, when and I'll explain it to you as it happens in my flashback, I saw a car, and the drivers face, his face, come hurtling toward me from the left hand lane, coming on a 45 degree angle, I remember screaming, then he hit me. The air bags went off, they let off a smoke, I couldn't see anything and I was hurtled a couple of hundred metres up the road on the wrong side into oncoming traffic. The other driver, a green p plate driver, did not once come and see if I was okay, as the witness attended to me, while we waited for the ambulance.

But that is now a memory, a painful and heartbreaking one but a memory. It's the physical and psychological affects of the accident that I have to live with every day. I have permanent spinal injuries in my neck, back, a cyst in my spinal cord and quite extensive damage to my hip that has required surgery, oh and PTSD.  And now these hideous, horrible spasms, which are all a side affect of the neck injuries.

Everyday I thank god that I'm so lucky that I wasn't killed, that I'm not in a wheelchair. I'm so grateful that it wasn't so much worse!.

I haven't been back at work since the accident, we got married in December a few months after the accident. In whats meant to be a magical time, my husband has had to shower me, to hold my hand while I cry uncontrollably in pain, to wash my hair, to cook for me, to clean, to do so many things for me, which just don't seem fair. We were meant to be having a baby but the doctors won't even let us try at the moment because of the risk of potential surgery that my injuries pose! This is gut wrenching stuff!!

I have to have my mum come and stay with me when my husband is away for work because I'm just not well enough to be at home alone.

I wasn't going to write about this at all. But I'm writing about it in the hope, just a small hope that someone might read this, or pass it on to someone else and a young inexperienced p plate driver might just slow down next time they get in the car to drive, might pay that bit more attention. Because in a split second your actions can change someone else's or your own life forever.

Please slow down and drive with care. Although my injuries are permanent and have affected so many aspects of my life, I'm one of the lucky ones, I'm alive and I know so many people who have been killed or injured more severely then me by young inexperienced drivers.

I would like to thank from the bottom of my heart my friends and family who have been there for me through the ups and downs of this crazy time, who've driven me around to appointments, who've cooked us food, who've cleaned, who've ironed thousands of shirts, who've listened, who've cried with me. You know who you are, thank you.

This is the one and only post I will write about the accident and I wrote about it just on the hope that it might, slow someone down and save someone else from going through what we have.

Because of the spasms, which are on average 2-3+ a day, I won't be writing daily at the moment. But writing is my saviour, whilst lying in bed in a doped up state I have been thinking of many posts I can write about.

So the one thing that I want you to take from this is please slow down and drive with care. Although my injuries are permanent and have affected so many aspects of my life, I'm one of the luck ones, I'm alive and I will heal to some extent and I know so many people who have been killed or injured more severely then me by young inexperienced drivers.

I ask you to forward this on to as many people as you can, the more people read this the more people will be safer on the road and hopefully the less people will have to suffer.

xxxxxxxxxxxxx