Getting hit by a car: one year on
One of my loose “rules” about my working holiday here in Canada is that I’m not telling anyone about my accident. A lot of the reason I left home was to escape the adversity of surviving my accident; as in, I felt I wouldn’t be able anything without it being in the shadow of the accident. So, even though I absolutely acknowledge that it did happen and it had a profound impact on my life, I’m not readily volunteering the story to people I meet. I’m just not keen on it becoming part of my ongoing dialogue here. However, I can’t let the anniversary pass by uncommented.
Almost exactly year ago (give or take time zone differences) – September 11 – I was excitedly preparing to move houses the next day. Confirming the moving truck, making sure my electricity was going to be connected – you know, standard moving guff. Then I went home and started packing my excess belongings in the car. Of course, that’s when it happened. Technically, right about now (9:49am in Canada, so 11:49pm in Australia) I was entering what would become my two-week coma, which preceded my stint in rehab.
In fact, my rehab centre (Epworth) recently noted the anniversary also and sent a letter asking me to make an appointment for an annual check up along with a questionnaire for me to complete ahead of the appointment to help their studies. My mum had to call them and apologise because I couldn’t make an appointment as I’m now living quite independently in Canada. By all reports, they had a joyous fit and are now desperate for this questionnaire to be completed. (The term “rehab success story” was bandied around, but I don’t know if they said it or just my mum did.) I don’t know what they were expecting – an unemployed slob eating bag after bag of Cheetos while watching Foxtel, perhaps – but apparently moving on and doing something that’s not mediocre is something not oft accomplished with my fellow patients.
It’ll be interesting for me to complete the survey though, because it’ll make me acknowledge areas I’ve made gains. For example: you may remember that I was told not to drink or do drugs for 12 months following the accident. (Did I just hear a “ha” in the audience?!) So in my head, that has been warped to: after 12 months, you’re pretty much back to normal. I’m noticing – or distorting reality in my memory to fit my conclusion or whatever – that my memory has improved. It was pretty bad to begin with, but the “blessing” of the proprietary nature of memory problems is I just don’t remember the worst of it. In actuality, it turned out to be forgetting stupid little things like whether I’ve mentioned something in conversation I’d been meaning to. That seems to have dropped off a lot recently, so I guess it’s an ongoing area of improvement.
I haven’t quite left behind the mental scarring of the accident. I get stupid and persistent worries or thoughts that I attribute to the lingering fear – like, if I’m using an escalator I might think about my foot getting caught between the steps and being ripped off; or at other times I’ll think my spinal cord could be ripped out by something sharp passing behind me. They’re just thoughts that randomly pop in and out of my head and pass just as quickly as they come, but I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be thinking them if I hadn’t been through major trauma.
Besides my minor ongoing quibbles, I’ve done a pretty good job of moving on and forgetting about the accident. Not so much the people around me.
A few weeks ago, I was crossing a road with the lights at a pedestrian crossing, and a skateboarder sorta ran the red sorta crossed, didn’t see and took me out. We both hit the bitumen. I thought it was a funny coincidence, like a dry ‘hey look what happens when I cross roads’, so posted it on my Facebook. To be met with a flurry of people telling me to be careful when crossing the road. These weren’t standard ‘look both ways’ responses; these were ‘you are obviously have severe issues crossing ordinary streets’ messages. In the end, I had to comment and say that all the “concern” was very sweet, but absolutely unwarranted. What I didn’t say is that it was pretty condescending. I don’t have a predisposition to getting hit by things. I got hit by a car, once. Although the outcome was pretty serious, it’s not indicative of any behaviour that results in me colliding with vehicles.
If there were any doubts about not mentioning it to Canadians I met, there wereren’t after that. So after going out for a commemorative drink tonight to mark the fact I didn’t die a year earlier, I’m hoping to put the whole episode to bed and eventually only vaguely recall ‘something’ that happened to me with a car ‘once’, ‘years ago’.
I’ll finally see the sunshine after being in this damn shadow for so long.
Almost exactly year ago (give or take time zone differences) – September 11 – I was excitedly preparing to move houses the next day. Confirming the moving truck, making sure my electricity was going to be connected – you know, standard moving guff. Then I went home and started packing my excess belongings in the car. Of course, that’s when it happened. Technically, right about now (9:49am in Canada, so 11:49pm in Australia) I was entering what would become my two-week coma, which preceded my stint in rehab.
In fact, my rehab centre (Epworth) recently noted the anniversary also and sent a letter asking me to make an appointment for an annual check up along with a questionnaire for me to complete ahead of the appointment to help their studies. My mum had to call them and apologise because I couldn’t make an appointment as I’m now living quite independently in Canada. By all reports, they had a joyous fit and are now desperate for this questionnaire to be completed. (The term “rehab success story” was bandied around, but I don’t know if they said it or just my mum did.) I don’t know what they were expecting – an unemployed slob eating bag after bag of Cheetos while watching Foxtel, perhaps – but apparently moving on and doing something that’s not mediocre is something not oft accomplished with my fellow patients.
It’ll be interesting for me to complete the survey though, because it’ll make me acknowledge areas I’ve made gains. For example: you may remember that I was told not to drink or do drugs for 12 months following the accident. (Did I just hear a “ha” in the audience?!) So in my head, that has been warped to: after 12 months, you’re pretty much back to normal. I’m noticing – or distorting reality in my memory to fit my conclusion or whatever – that my memory has improved. It was pretty bad to begin with, but the “blessing” of the proprietary nature of memory problems is I just don’t remember the worst of it. In actuality, it turned out to be forgetting stupid little things like whether I’ve mentioned something in conversation I’d been meaning to. That seems to have dropped off a lot recently, so I guess it’s an ongoing area of improvement.
I haven’t quite left behind the mental scarring of the accident. I get stupid and persistent worries or thoughts that I attribute to the lingering fear – like, if I’m using an escalator I might think about my foot getting caught between the steps and being ripped off; or at other times I’ll think my spinal cord could be ripped out by something sharp passing behind me. They’re just thoughts that randomly pop in and out of my head and pass just as quickly as they come, but I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be thinking them if I hadn’t been through major trauma.
Besides my minor ongoing quibbles, I’ve done a pretty good job of moving on and forgetting about the accident. Not so much the people around me.
A few weeks ago, I was crossing a road with the lights at a pedestrian crossing, and a skateboarder sorta ran the red sorta crossed, didn’t see and took me out. We both hit the bitumen. I thought it was a funny coincidence, like a dry ‘hey look what happens when I cross roads’, so posted it on my Facebook. To be met with a flurry of people telling me to be careful when crossing the road. These weren’t standard ‘look both ways’ responses; these were ‘you are obviously have severe issues crossing ordinary streets’ messages. In the end, I had to comment and say that all the “concern” was very sweet, but absolutely unwarranted. What I didn’t say is that it was pretty condescending. I don’t have a predisposition to getting hit by things. I got hit by a car, once. Although the outcome was pretty serious, it’s not indicative of any behaviour that results in me colliding with vehicles.
If there were any doubts about not mentioning it to Canadians I met, there wereren’t after that. So after going out for a commemorative drink tonight to mark the fact I didn’t die a year earlier, I’m hoping to put the whole episode to bed and eventually only vaguely recall ‘something’ that happened to me with a car ‘once’, ‘years ago’.
I’ll finally see the sunshine after being in this damn shadow for so long.
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