MammaRift0516
I was 15.5 when I found myself crushed in a truck with my best friend, boyfriend and her boyfriend, one sunny spring afternoon. The day began as many spring breaks do. I was a freshman in high school. The sun was high in the nearly cloudless sky. The air was clean and full of pollen and birds, any remaining snow had all melted the day before.
It was the first day of spring break, my first year of high school. The air was crisp, my friend laughter filled the room as we sat and talked. It was decided for us to go run an errand. My best friends boyfriend had his truck. I was not privy to the fact that prior to coming to my house to pick me up, the driver was getting high. As we went down the dirt country road, in the days when houses were far apart and landfilled the spaces, he sped up. A stop sign came into focus at the near intersection. The driver didn't acknowledge the impending stop sign or the vehicle aligned with us, coming from the south as we headed west. As the recognition set in of the impending doom, we all began to yell at the driver. He was catatonic. He rushed the stop sign with no intention of stopping. The vehicle aligned with us in matched speed, carried a man who probably kissed his wife goodbye intending for the day, yet this moment, this decision was definitive. That kiss would be the last. The impact was life-altering as the impact ended with an explosion of metal, glass, and blood then both trucks went airborne. Everything broke in metal and bone. Blackness came and sat upon me taking its time in contemplating whether I could have my next breath. The other truck exploded as it met the ground becoming a final resting spot for its owner. We landed on the side of the truck after being thrown about the cabin, our young bodies not restrained in the old pickup with no seatbelts. The windshield carried the impression of my face in the star-shaped cracks that how impregnated it, my blood drips from the shard. My face was broken. The engine slid back into the cabin creating a tomb for half of my body, which laid upon my best friend who was trapped below me.
I felt the compressions. I felt panic. I didn't know this person. What is that smell? Is that a helicopter I hear? It can't be. What happened? As I woke, the smell of fire and fuel was apparent. I couldn't see as a redness enveloped my vision. Hands upon me trying to move me off another body induced a pain which my young brain had never dealt with before thus panic encroached. I felt the breath escape my lungs, denied re-entry as that blackness swept my brain, shutting down my body once again. Oh, the pain! Any movement invited that pain as I felt bone collide with bone, scraping as the broken bits tried to move lacking anatomical connectedness. I was laying on part of my best friend, who was trying to move my weight from her broken body. She stopped once her brain registered my screams. As her brain comprehended there was a body on top of hers, her pain overwhelmed, she realized we were encased in the steel of the truck. Blackness captivated my brain again. My world shut down. My pelvis crushed, bladder ruptured, collar bone broken, skull fractured my bones were no match for the steel of the truck and inertia of the collision.
After I learned to walk again after I had grown into a woman, I was told I would never have children; my pelvis wouldn't withstand it. I have two sons, born of C- section. When my youngest was around 2.5 years old and I was about 29, my back spoke to me again. My haunting of that spring day came to fruition as the poltergeist reach out to me again and exacted another revenge. I coughed, sneezed and rolled over in bed when I felt a pop. I had blown a disc in my back. I had to undergo surgery on my spine twice. the first surgery failed and I contracted a severe infection MRSA. I was so sick that I don't remember most of this process just having a central line and a home health nurse who came to give me IV antibiotics three times a day. This infection required a cocktail of medications to conquer. My young children assisted cleaning my central line tip so that should I die they would feel they helped mama try to get better. The doctor directed my husband to conduct this task. After nearly two years, my body was weak, fat and dilapidated. I had to learn to walk again for the second time in my short lifetime. I began training with a personal trainer and started college in a wheelchair. I graduated from college and began to work as I strengthened my back and body. Not aware of the insidious degenerative process taking place in my spine, another poltergeist of that spring day. a haunting I can not expunge from my life. Each patient I lifted, each task I completed pitted me against time and the poltergeist. As my professional world grew, my self-care declined leading to my not going to the gym. The weight I had asserted control over returned.
I had always been fluffy but this situation put me at a huge disadvantage to being fluffy, my spine destabilizing for the rest of my life. Currently, I have had two back surgeries and a pelvis external fixator plus a multitude of other surgeries which fixed the broken organs during the car accident. Recently, I was hurt at work by a 400 lb patient which further destabilized my back. I need to lose weight and keep it off as a stability factor for my back or I will end up back in the wheelchair. RNY was my tool to allow me to maintain weight loss since I can not perform the high-level exercise to induce it.