Accident 2/21/09

If you read this below today is March 13, 2009 and I am doing well now. My head is still bruised and my neck is still sore. However I am back giving talks at schools and libraries. My seat belt and air bag saved my life. Always WEAR YOUR SEAT BELT!!!!!

Saturday February 21st s on my way to Watsonville Public Library. I was on the fast lane on freeway 101 in Gilroy with my speed control set on at 65 miles an hour. I felt my steering wheel move a little and as I grabbed on to it tight to correct it. Instantly I saw the concrete center of the freeway wall coming toward me so fast it was as if it slapped the side of my car. I do not know why, a blow out in my tire or something I ran over. (I have new tires on my car.) As the car started rolling over the windshield and some of the other windows were cracking all over in little prices, and then I saw white, not knowing at the time it was my airbag. (I did have my seat belt on.) I remember thinking, “I am going to die today!” Then as the car landed right side up as it was getting ready for another roll I saw all the glass flying toward me and it seemed as the next instant the books and things in the car were floating in the car. It hit right side up hard again. As the car was starting to roll again I thought, “I do not feel any pain and I do not think anything entered my body yet so maybe I will live! Maybe!” I told myself “Hold on!” I could not see out of the windows and I came to a stop, landed on the ground right side up.
Right away a lot of people were around my car trying to pull the doors open. A lady said, “I’m a nurse, are you hurt? Or where are you hurt?”
A man yelled to pull me out of the broken window because the car was going to blow up! But the nurse shouted, “No! Don’t move him!”
I was sitting there rubbing my neck because it hurt so much. A man on the other side of the car yelled out that there was no gas leaking. On both sides of the car there were three or four men rocking the car trying to open the doors but they could not get them open.
I asked one of the men if I had hurt anyone else. He said I did hit another car but no one in that car was hurt. Then it seemed as if it was one minute that the fire trucks and the Highway Patrol arrived. The cop said he had called the midivack (Helicopter) but right then an ambulance pulled up so he canceled it.
I asked the Highway Patrol to make sure if any of the people in the other car were hurt? He said, “No, there was no other car. Don’t worry, no one else is hurt.
The firemen were on the other side of the car working. The back door opened. One of the firemen crawled in and got behind me. He put something around my throat as if he was going to strangle me. He said, “Don’t move!” He was putting something on me so I would not move my neck in case it was broken.
Another fireman pulled my hat from somewhere and shoved it against my face. I remembered wondering, “What in the heck is he doing.” I did not know but they were using the jaws-of-life to cut my door open.” As soon as it was open they put something on my whole back and tied me onto it so I would not move. They laid me out head first and pulled me slowly on a gurney.
I was on the way to the hospital. It was funny because they were talking on the radio to the hospital telling them what happened and where I was injured. Then the guy in the back with me asked, “OK, I am going to ask you something important!”
I looked at him and answered, “OK?”
“Do you know where you are?”
I answered, “Yeah, I’m in an ambulance.”
Then he said, “OK, the next question is really important!”
“OK”
“Is your head lopsided?”
I asked, “What?”
“Is your head lopsided?”
I said, “No!”
He then told the guy sitting on the passenger seat to tell the hospital on the radio that I also had a head injury!
Well, at the hospital first they took an x-ray and put an IV in. They gave me pain morphine, a few injections. Then they took a CT scan of my whole body to look at my spine and for any bleeding inside.
It all checked out OK. Then x-rayed my spine. By the late evening they said they were not going to let me go home because they were not sure of how I was and my head looked very large. The doctor kept me over night and said that the next day they had to take a MRI incase something started happening inside over night. I tried to talk the doctor into letting me go home that night because I just do not like being over night in the hospital, (My worse nightmare!) However, he said he could not let me go home because if I went home and died then there was going to be a big problem for him!
The next day the hospital did the MRI and blood tests. Everything was fine so finally I was able to come home.
Even though they tired to clean all the glass off of me, even vacuuming me I still had a lot of glass all over under my clothes. Glass was still stuck in me. I had to get in the shower as soon as I arrived home. When I stepped into the bathroom to take a shower I could not believe how I looked! I was all cut up with small bleeds all over and then my HEAD! It looked like the movie, “The Cone Heads!” The movie were aliens who came from other planets, that’s how I looked, my head was so big!
After the shower Flora had to pluck out the little glass all over.
I could hardly move my body the next morning, I am so sore. Even the first night my hands were so swollen that I could not close my hands. I guess it was from holding the steering wheel so tight. Today my swollen head went down a little but it is still large and lopsided. It looks funny.
I am very sad that I lost my car but everyone else is glad that I am still alive and could move my limbs!
I am being asked a lot, “How many lives do you have?”