December 6th, 2014 John was involved in a terrible car accident. Amazingly he walked away from it with no lasting effects or major injuries. I am incredibly blessed to still have him here by my side raising our 3 beautiful little girls together!
This is how John landed when his car stopped rolling, into oncoming traffic on the opposite side of the freeway. Luckily no one else was involved or hurt!
John had to get 7 or 8 staples in his head.
John's various bruises from the accident. He still has issues with his shoulder.
I was amazed that my husband survived this accident after seeing our car like this!
I couldn't even recognize our poor Honda Civic! I felt sad for our car, I know that may sound silly but that car is the first car that we had together as a married couple. We traveled to our honeymoon in that car, we brought home our babies from the hospital in that car, we commuted to and from work in that car, and many more special memories. It felt like we were missing something from our family.
A tangled mess of twisted metal. I'm relieved that our girls were not in the backseat!
At the tow yard we discovered John's missing and broken glasses. They flew off of his face from the force of the flipping.
There was blood everywhere in the car from John's head wound.
Good thing no one was in the passenger seat!
This is John's account from what happened that day...
Rising from the Wreckage
On Saturday, December 6th 2014 I had gotten up early, around 6am to donate plasma in Taylorsville. I enjoyed going to the plasma center to get the extra cash to help out with Christmas coming up and it’s nice to have for birthdays and any other random expenditures. Before donating plasma it’s important to drink plenty of water and eat something. Before getting on the I-80 E freeway near Lake Point, I stopped at McDonald’s to get a cup of ice water and some breakfast burritos.
After going about 10 miles on the freeway shortly after Saltair in the left lane and at the posted freeway speed of 75 mph, I reached with my right hand to take a sip of water with the straw out of the McDonald’s cup of ice water. While I was in the process of reaching for the cup, my left knee had come up and bumped the steering wheel. Let me mention that I was driving a Honda Civic, which is a smaller car. I’m 6’1 and in general I’m a bigger guy, so occasionally my knee would touch the steering wheel. Immediately after my knee had bumped the steering wheel, it caused my car to do a sharp left off the freeway. As soon as I noticed this was happening I dropped the cup of water and grabbed the steering with my right hand, but by this time going at the 75 mph freeway speed things were all happening so fast. In a domino effect motion after I had grabbed the steering wheel and my car was off-roading from the left lane of the freeway, my car started to roll and roll and roll. It was during the rolling motion, that I was seeing blood spraying everywhere from my head. Items in my car were flying around as well. It was also during the rolling part of it all that I was in a way having my life flash before my eyes. It wasn’t in any chronological order of imagines/memories in my head. From what I recall it was various meaningful events. A few that I remember were my wedding day with Holly, birth of our kids, our home and I also remember thinking of my mom, dad, brother and sister. I also thought about the ripple effect that would happen if I wasn’t part of any of my loved ones lives. It seemed like I was rolling forever, I didn’t know when it was going to stop. I didn’t know if I was going to hit another car during all my rolling or if and when my car stopped if I would be alive.
When my car stopped rolling it was upside down and I wasn’t all there, since I thought my passenger window had broken and that I had climbed out of it. However, in reality it was my driver side window that had shattered and that I had climbed out of. I hurried and climbed out of it thinking that my car was going to explode, you know like you always seem to see in the movies.
Immediately after I had gotten out of my car a witness had ran over to me to see if I was ok. He was an off duty, something in the medical professional. I think EMT, but I can’t remember. He said that he had seen my car roll 8 times, which I was surprised. I mean I really wasn’t trying to keep track of how many times I was rolling during it all. When he went to go move his car I immediately darted back in my car to try to locate my glasses that had flown off my face and my cell phone that was on my passenger seat. I was never able to locate my cell phone and I later at the tow yard discovered my glasses were destroyed. The witness noticed that I had gotten back in my car and he yelled at me and was wondering what I was doing. I told him and he said I need to get out of there. It was at that point that another person, who is a nurse who had just gotten off work. She had me lay down on the ground and checked me out. She was concerned that I might have done something to my spine. While she was during this the paramedics and highway patrolmen showed up. The paramedics were asking me all sorts of questions. They asked me if I knew my name, where I was, what day it was, if I was suicidal, if I was on any medication and who the president was. I told them that we had just had a baby a few weeks ago and that I have a lot to live for. They were concerned if I had a concussion. I had overheard one of the paramedics mention something about a life flight and I told them that I don’t need one and that I could move my legs just fine. I was during the bicycle exercise down on the ground. Instead they put me in a neck brace and on a stretcher bed and took me in an ambulance to the hospital in West Valley. At the time I thought they took me to the hospital in Tooele, since I thought it would be closer. I didn’t realize it until I was in the hospital and the highway patrolman told me that I wasn’t at the Tooele hospital. As I was in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, the paramedic checked my vitals again. He told me that normally when they come to a scene of an accident similar to mine, the person is either in a lot worse condition than I seemed to be or even dead. Several people have told me since all of this that someone was definitely watching over me.
At the hospital I had kept my composure through everything that had taken place so far until I was lying on the hospital bed in various positions getting X-Rays. It was at that point that things were finally sinking in with me and I started to break down and cry. Luckily there was a really nice nurse who comforted me.
The highway patrolman who came to talk with me told me after I told him what happened that by the book/law that everyone involved in an accident should get a ticket, however he told me that since he could tell I had been wearing my seat belt, I didn’t involve any other vehicles in my accident and that I would have a lot to deal with that he would most likely give me a warning instead of a ticket. He said he had to check a few things out first. I was really surprised by it all.
In the end I ended up only have cuts on my fingers from the glass when I crawled out of my car door, bruises on my face/head and knees bruised with scrapped. My ring finger had part of the skin ripped off and part of the finger nail ripped off. I had really bad whiplash from my seat belt on my left shoulder and the left side of my neck. The top left area of my head also ended up getting 7 staples. I also get a tetanus shot.
In all I’m very thankful to be alive and that things were worse for my accident than it was. I’m glad that I had someone watching over me. I’m also blessed to have the people who stopped by on the side of my accident who were in the medical profession to check up on me.
Here he is good as new! I sure love this guy!!!
(And I managed to save his Green Lantern shirt from the blood stains).
No comments:
Post a Comment