The girl who lived.

"My beloved brethren, have miracles ceased? Behold I say unto you, Nay; neither have angels ceased to minister unto the children of men." Moroni 7:29

I figured I’d give everyone an update on my life these days. I know that all 7 of the inquiring minds that read this are dying to know.

I went to a spine doctor on August 16. I hadn’t seen him before, but he was the one that they called and consulted with while I was in the hospital. He had told them that I would need to wear the neck collar for at least 6-8 weeks, if not more. But when he looked at my x-rays that they’d taken the day before, he said that everything looked perfect. Besides the piece of vertebrae just floating around in there obviously. He said I only had to wear the brace when my neck got tired or sore. So for the next week I wore it a few hours a day; since my neck muscles hadn’t had to support my head for three weeks, they’d gotten lazy. I don’t blame them, it’s a pretty big head. As for the piece of vertebrae…initially I was told that it had cracked but would heal. So I imagined an intact bone with a crack in it that would grow back together. But apparently what they meant was that the vertebrae had cracked off…like completely. And apparently it doesn’t “grow back together” so for the rest of my life I’ll just have this part of my neck just hanging out in there, not connected to anything. Apparently it’s ok though, he said the only problem I will have from it in the future is if I have to get my neck x-rayed again that they will not know that it’s already broken so I need to tell them. It’s still pretty sore sometimes but he said that will go away in a few months. He also taught me that when people have lower neck injuries, sometimes they feel the pain in their shoulder blade area. Interesting, and explains why that area hurts so much sometimes. Haha.

I also asked him if the lumps on my forehead would go away or what was up with that. (They’ve gone down since then, but are still somewhat visible). He looked up my CT scan to make sure that I didn’t have a skull fracture that they missed. When he got it pulled up, he was like, “Whoa! That went clear to your skull! Like there was nothing left on your bone.” I knew that, but seeing the scan was really crazy. I don’t really know how to explain it but I’ll try my best. So it was basically an x-ray of my head from the side. The skull was a white line, then the skin and stuff on top of it was gray. At the part where my head got cut, it was like a crater and all of the gray stuff (which was about a half inch thick all the way around my skull) was completely gone. It was pretty cool and I should have snapped a picture. He was so surprised I showed him the ER pictures on my phone and he said that whoever stitched me up did an awesome job. I’m happy about that.

Anyway, my head is pretty much healed (as in closed) as of last week. There are still some gnarly scars that will take a while still/never really go away.  My head is still pretty tender to the touch, so I just don’t touch it.

We got the accident report from the police station a few weeks ago. I scoured all 8 pages like Hermione reading Hogwarts: A History.
I joke a lot, but something that really hit me, especially as doctors, nurses, and the police said to me over and over, this accident was filled with miracles. One thing I know for sure, I should not be alive right now. 

Looking at the report, there were two three things that amazed me. Ok, let’s be real, there were a lot of things that amazed me, but I’ll only subject you to three.The first one was the response time of the police and the ambulance. I knew that they got there incredibly fast, but on the report it has the time that the call came in, the times they were deployed and the time they arrived. The sheriff was there within 4 minutes of the phone call being made, the ambulance was there in 11. I am truly amazed and grateful that their response time was so quick. Even in a town or city, it’s possible and likely that the response time couldn’t even be that fast. The next one was the damage done to the car. He had to fill out an entire page about each side of the car (I should really just post the page, but it’s in Idaho and I’m in Arizona so you’ll have to try to understand my explanations.) For the damage done to each side, he had to rate it from 0-7, 0 being none and 7 being severely damaged. For the driver’s side, the damage was 1. For the passenger side it was 7. It’s crazy how a car that rolled could be that damaged on just one side. 

The last thing was the page that described the physical injuries. Again, there was a rating scale of 0-7. He also had to describe what happened to each person in the car. For the driver, everything was “0” and it said something like, “No medical attention needed.” Then for me everything was “7’s” and for the written description it was like, “Passenger was treated for severe head and neck injuries. Life flighted via Air Idaho.” It’s just crazy that we were in the same car and the injuries can be so drastically different. Anyway…enough about that. It does not do to dwell on [the past] and forget to live.

So…life these days. Right now I’m in Phoenix with my parents. Celebrating birthmonth. But people keep asking me when I’m getting a job, so I guess I’ll probably start thinking about that soon. I’m probably going to be looking in Logan, Utah or thereabouts. There are probably some adventures waiting there for me. Who knows?!

 

These are the pictures that came with the accident report. At this point I was in the ambulance somewhere.

The driver's side is against the road. The report says we did a 180 and then rolled off the road. If you notice the broken trees in front of the car, my guess is we hit those and then skidded to where the car is here. The car is facing the direction we came from.

This is my side. No wonder I couldn't get the door open.

My scar as of yesterday.