The Accident

January 15, 1999 - I was headed to work. The roads were reportedly icy, so I was being pretty cautious as I got on the highway and checked out conditions. The next thing I remember was thinking that I was going to roll over. I vaguely remember looking up into the back of an ambulance. The next thing I remember was waking up in Baptist Hospital.

What I Think Happened Based on Information Collected From Different People- Right after entering the highway, there are three bridges one right after the other. As I came off one of the bridges, my rear wheels were going faster than my front wheels which hit dry pavement. I think I must have realized that I was going to roll over and tried to get out of the car. The driver of the car behind said we were not going that fast, but just hit the ice wrong. The drivers of the next couple of cars stopped to see how they could help, but were afraid to move me out of the road, so there I laid. Cars stopped and left coats and blankets, which must have been great, because apparently the ambulance dispatch spent a fair amount of time arguing with the two counties I was straddling over whose job it was to come and get me. They finally came and got me and took me to the nearest hospital.

I do not remember being at this hospital. This is probably a good thing, as this was where they put my legs back into the proper alignment. Doctors think that when I came out of the car, I must have landed on my feet, just before everything slid to the ground. Larry said he could hear me screaming for my momma all the way out in the waiting room. He said the x-rays showed my thigh bone over my knee cap over my shin bone. They yanked everything back into place and sent me off to Baptist Hospital in Little Rock. It was too foggy for Med Flight, so I got a second ambulance ride. This would later come back to be an insurance nightmare, as they kept accusing me of a double claim for two ambulance rides in one day.

At Baptist, a surgical team was waiting to reattach all of the blood vessels and veins that had been broken when they realigned my legs. This resulted in the first set of scars, which look sort of like zippers going up the back of my legs. The next operation was a fasciotomy. This is where they sliced two places to relive the swelling. These two scars are supposedly less ugly than scars I would have had if the skin had just torn. I also had a peice of glass removed from my temple. More on this later.

Then What Happened - After three days at Baptist, I got moved to yet another hospital where the orthopedic surgeon had privileges. After a couple of weeks, when the swelling had gone down and I had sufficiently recovered from the vascular surgery, I had the first of two knee reconstructions. One took 12 hours. The other took 14. I would later find out that I was this doctor's research project on two fronts. First, he had pioneered something called the hinged brace. This is an apparatus that allows the knee to bend while holding it immobile from being able to move side to side. I had two. Second, he wanted to see if repairing the existing damage was more cost-effective and/or had fewer effects than a total knee replacement. He used my hamstring muscles (the lovely scars on my thighs that few people have ever seen) to replace the damaged muscles around my knees. I also now know what ACL, MCL, LCL and PCL stand for. All were damaged.

I had to wear these braces for a couple more weeks while healing from surgery. During this time, I was treated to something called controlled passive motion, where a machine bent my legs back and forth for me to keep things flexible. I also got to do all sorts of other funky exercises to keep the rest of me from atrophying as well. I also got OT and developed scary upper arm strength for lack of anything better to do. Lots of interesting stories during the time I spent in the hospital, partly because I was the only person in the rehab unit younger than 50. Once my legs were weight-bearing, I began learning to walk all over again with new muscles that hadn't done much in a while. Also had several more surgeries where they put me under and bent my legs to see how far they could go without me screaming. Long story short (pun intended), the replacement muscles are slightly shorter than the originals, so I have a shorter stride and cannot bend far enough to sit back on my heels anymore.

After nine weeks in the hospital, I got to go home. I spent three hours a day, five days a week in physical therapy at first. My PT was way cool. One of first things I learned after I got moblie again was how to pick myself up off the floor if I fell. The coolest thing I learned was boxing, for cardio, balance and strength. Physical therapy gradually decreased to two days a week, then none.

Unless I had surgery. I went back several times for more random bending. I was hospitalized one more time for a torn ligament. This resulted in the introduction of something called a k-wire, which helped hold everything in place while it healed. This on top of the 17 staples and a screw that were already in place. It looks impressive on film, but doesn't even register at airport security! I have also had one knee scoped since then, and will probably have that done again at some point inthe future. I also had a small tear repaired following a car wreck last year (this time it was the other moron's fault).

There are some interesting aspects to this whole story. One is of course the whole research project thing. I apparently signed some waivers allowing the doctor to take pics of the surgery. I have been featured at conferences in Aspen, New Orleans and Australia, that I know of. Also, I no longer have a sense of smell. The best anyone can figure, however I got the glass in my head, I probably also damaged the olfacotry nerve.

Also, having a handicapped permit can be cool. With a handicap permit, you get away with things like riding the motorized scooter at Sam's Club. They go pretty fast, but the steering sucks. Also, you get good parking and great seats at places like the Beale Street Music Festival. All the other poor saps had to sit on the grass, but I got to sit up on the sound stage. Everyone else had to hike from stage to stage, while I hitched a ride on the beer cart!

Also, I learned that 16 days on morphine are OK, but coming off of it SUCKS!

I can't really say that anything good came out of the whole experience except the usual blah blah blah about learning to appreciate life more and to make more of it while I have it. Also, it is good to be young and have good insurance and a doctor who is a bit of a maverick. And I am grateful that I was the only one injured, that I did not cause harm to anyone else.

Mostly, I am lucky to be alive, luckier still that I can walk, and willing to bear a few scars to remind me.