In this blog, my primary topics are recovery, storytelling, and my experience with TBI. However, when I perform “Who Am I, Again?”, I’m often asked, "What actually happened in the accident?" My initial reaction response is that this isn’t important - while every case of TBI is different and caused for different reasons, many of the recovery experiences are the same, and its the recovery, not the accident, that this project is focused on. Also, I don’t remember - I was in a coma.
But I also recognize why people are curious - you want to know where a journey starts from, and so, with that in mind, this is the story of what happened as its been related to me:
It was November 4th, 1999 - I was a 17 year old high school senior and basking in all the arrogance that entails. In the evening, I had gotten into a spat with my mother over - I’m not sure about what, but it probably had to do with some work I didn’t want to do. My sister, however, was attending a class wide sleepover party at her middle school - a small Quaker school that was about a 20 minute drive outside of town. I wanted out of the house and away from my parents so I argued that I should take her to the school, and was allowed to be the chauffeur.
As a new driver, anytime I got behind the wheel I was excited. On the way to the school, we took some back country roads through the hills of Pennsylvania - much more exciting than the regular state highway. Knowing my temperament, then and today, I was probably driving just a little above the speed limit - not to save time but to show my mastery of the roads - yet we made it to the school without a problem.
At the school, I do remember seeing my former French teacher - the teacher chaperoning the event - and I remember feeling good and very adult. No longer was I one of the kids in her class but now I was the adult driving one of her students. It was exciting to be achieving this new independence. We spoke about my university plans, her life in college, how I was already feeling checked out of school (senior-i-tis), and I remember watching her waving goodbye as I pulled out onto the country road in my parent’s maroon red 1986 Volvo sedan, honking my own farewell.
I mention that scene in my performance piece, and that truly is my last memory. What happened is that on the drive back, on the same country, hilly roads, I passed a car going the opposite direction. He has said it didn’t seem like I was going fast, but I expect I was pushing the speed limit just a little. Immediately after he passed, I lost control of my vehicle and crashed into a telephone pole. No-one knows why I actually lost control, but as time has passed several possibilities as to what happened have been proposed - it may have been a deer jumping into the road that caused me to swerve, I may have been adjusting the stereo and lost track of the road for a second, or any one of a thousand other possibilities. The story I tell myself, though I have no proof of this, is that I was a little too far on the right side of the road - hugging the right curb - and going a little too fast. When the man passed me, being a new driver I pulled just a little more to the right, my wheel slipped off the side of the road, I lost control and careened into the telephone pole. Whatever the reason, the man who had just passed saw my accident in his rearview mirror and, because this was before cell phones were in their current prominence, he found a nearby farmhouse with the lights on where he called 911 emergency services.
That evening had been a quiet evening in terms of emergencies, and the nearby rescue team was able to immediately dispatch a Life-Flight helicopter to my location. Interestingly, our family auto mechanic and friend was volunteering on the emergency squad that night, so he recognized the car and immediately knew who was inside. This rescue team extracted me from the vehicle and flew me to Geisinger Hospital Emergency room where my journey through recovery began.
As I think about this story, I am constantly amazed at the events that all happened in just the right manner so that I could have the best possible chances for recovery. I’ve been told that I must have been really lucky that night, but then I remind whoever tells me this that I was in an accident that put me into a coma, give an laugh, and we move on. Whatever the truth is, that’s the best I know of how my accident occurred, but like I’ve said, this is only the beginning of a story, and the rest is a lot more interesting.
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