April 18th changed my life forever
Hello all. This is my first time on the network to share my story. I have read quite a few others’ stories, and therefore would like to add a disclaimer that I in no way intend anything in this to cause further hurt to anyone else here. Most of the stories that I have read are from people who have been hit themselves in a motor vehicle accident….this one will be a little different. Also, sorry for the long read ;-)…I don’t know how to make anything short. April 18th started as a pretty exciting day on the farm. I had just received my brother-in-law and his wife a week or so before, whom I love dearly. They needed to start anew again, and my wife and I desperately needed help on the farm for some pretty huge projects that would have taken us alone very long times to complete. We had just rented a mini excavator to dig trenches to lay new water lines to our indoor grow facility and out to a couple of spots in our field to supply water for animals and some small greenhouses we had just purchased. The goal of all of which was to be able to start making profits from our own land to sustain our family, create jobs for some family members, and most importantly, keep me from having to drive 3+ hours every day for work, plus anywhere from 9-12+ hours of work to bring me home where I could spend more time with my wife, son, and family making an honest living. Not that it’s important, but I have a really good job up in the city working for a Department of Defense agency as a contractor that pays the bills, but not much more right now being a young single income family with a mortgage, car payments, etc. I really fell in love with the job to begin with because it was a way I could serve my country and help to support our war fighters, however I saw how much it was taking away from my family and my ability to be a good father and knew I needed to make a change. We had been working pretty much all day. I had the last beer left in the fridge left over from the weekend before to cool down from working in the attic. We had just gotten done with the trenches and set a new spigot in the field and had to reclaim an older one we had and re-fit it with newer connections to place another spigot, which I had asked my brother-in-law to do before heading up to the attic. My father-in-law had shown up for the evening and was going to spend a night with us and have a BBQ. My wife had gotten the grill started (or so I thought…it was actually already done because I spent the last hour in the attic running a new CAT 5 cable for connection to our facility), and I had asked my brother-in-law, who was sitting on the back porch with his Dad, if he had put the new fittings on the other water spigot, so we could have that finished up for the day and enjoy the rest of our evening. I don’t know how, but somehow in his own way he took that as a jab at him and got all hurt about it, made a comment back to me that doesn’t need shared, and went inside. Now don’t get me wrong, my brother-in-law has some medical conditions with his own challenges and can often times act childish and take everything personally, but we all know this and deal. The way I remember it, I didn’t think too much of it, asked my father-in-law what I said wrong, which he didn’t know, and figured he just needed time to cool off. Just before, my father-in-law had asked us if we wanted some of the beer he brought (Bud Light), which none of us liked, and figured I’d go out to the store just a few miles down the road and get a pack of something the rest of us did like, since we were out. I made it to the store just fine, remembering being a little pissed making my way up to the line, but a child with her grandparents put a smile on my face instead. Paid for my items and left. I remember making it out of the store parking lot, across the 4-lane highway, turning left to head back home, making it to maybe 3rd gear just a few hundred feet from turning and that’s it. Lights out. I wake up in an unfamiliar hospital, not knowing where I was or when or what had happened, apparently in ICU with more hoses and tubes going in and out of me than I could count, something weird looking covering the entire middle half of my stomach, casts on my entire lower body, and so much more, but what caught my eyes were weird looking giant black plastic knobs all over my legs. Knowing me, all I remember is seeing those big knobs, saying to myself, “Oh, wonder what those do?”, and started unscrewing them. I don’t remember, but they tell me I had completely unscrewed 3 of them and was working on a 4th when someone caught me. Apparently this is a big offense in the hospital, and garners a few days of being tied down, which when I woke back up a few days later, completely understood…but just sayin, maybe you should have someone watching the patient when they’re coming out of a medical coma, especially if their name is mine ;-). It was a few weeks later from when the accident occurred, which no one in the hospital knew anything about. Over the next few months I had learned that I had really done a number on myself. I had a TBI, impacted EVERY internal organ, heart failure, liver failure, kidney failure, so on and so forth, crushed my left side ribs which popped my lung apparently (which I had no feeling of it at all…and I had suffered some separated ribs in high school wrestling before, so knew something wasn’t right from the start), ripped my intestines from sacrum and other places, tearing them in 3 spots and had several feet of both small and large removed, which left me with a colostomy bag hanging out of my left side of my stomach that I still have 8 months latter but hopefully will be reversed with my next surgery on Dec. 18th. That one’s sad for me, as my step-father that I grew up calling Dad died Dec 20th a few years back after being released back home to Missouri from a VA hospital in Memphis, TN with a perforated bowl that turned him septic, and every colostomy surgery they tried ended up with the intestine dying until there was no more left. I had broken bones from my clavicle down to my feet, not just fracturing or breaking my legs, but splintering them sending sharp ends out of my skin and two that severed off about 4 inches of my femoral artery in my right leg, which was the worst. I can’t really remember everything that had been broken or damaged, as there were a couple of 4 inch binders completely full for my medical record there, and was constantly being surrounded by teams of doctors in training every morning to come talk about what current conditions of me were I guess, but reminded me soo much of Greys Anatomy, which I actually thought was pretty cool that people were learning something off me to help others. There was no reason for me to be alive. I should have bleed out and died on the county road by my house before the paramedics even showed up. Somehow, I didn’t. The same applies to every time I coded in the hospital and was brought back. I wasn’t ready to go. I’ve never really been religious, but more spiritual I guess, but after hearing what just some of my medical issues were, I immediately believed that God had sent an Angel to me to make sure I didn’t meet my maker just yet. My time was not done. I know others have death stories of seeing the light at the end of the tunnel and having all these flashbacks of everything that’s happened in their life….none of that happened to me. Of all those times having to be brought back, I never really had any of that. There was only one time, where I was bleeding out internally in the hospital, and still being conscious on my way to surgery where they intubated me while still awake (all I remember is them telling me to just try and swallow, and all I wanted to do was yell at them “you try to swallow this” but couldn’t) that I do remember seeing my wife and son standing beside me and smiling, not saying a word. That was it….every other time there were no flashbacks or pictures of loved ones or memories going by. It was the most peaceful feeling in the world. I didn’t care what was going on or what was happening to me. It just felt like whatever is going to happen is going to happen and I didn’t have one care in the world. That part makes me sad as well. I figured it’d be different. I figured there would be an extreme “fight” going on inside me when those times came, but it never happened that way. My only saving grace for all of this was apparently that I had damaged soo much and whatever is going on with my brain is not processing all the pain that I knew I should have experienced, and still should be. With that in mind, I figured my healing process would go pretty well, even though the doctors never even thought I would have survived at all. Apparently they told my wife to make arrangements for me in the first few days and carried on to the first few weeks, and were shocked when I kept fighting. I guess about a half dozen times or so I bleed out or whatever happened that I coded and they had to bring me back. I think they said I had enough blood to replace my entire body worth more than 4 times, which is something I don’t completely understand, as I’m O+, and from what I’ve been told and have read, should only have O group blood, but saw many other types while in the hospital, like AB being hung for me….that’s a mystery to me. When they couldn’t get blood flow back to my right leg after a couple of weeks, they told her they needed to chop it off up in the thigh, and I’m glad she fought for that, as I have some limited us of it today. My last Ortho appointments, the surgeon was in tears after seeing me and my new scans. I was still very upset that this had happened to me, and months later there was still no accident report from the State, or so my wife had told me. No one could tell me what happened with any of it or if anyone else was even involved. I was honestly figuring that I had gotten hit by a semi or something from how massive the injuries were and was hounding my wife to get in touch with the state investigator with what had happened because I wanted to sue whomever did this to me. It wasn’t until sometime in June, when for one of the first times I was able to talk to my 10-year-old son, who was spending time with his grandmother and friends up in Kansas that he let slip something my brother-in-law’s wife had told him, which she never should have and didn’t know what she was talking about. He dropped the biggest bomb on me I’ve ever had in my life. He had asked me if I was having a hard time dealing with killing a family! I had no clue what he was talking about and asked him to explain. He said he was told that I was drunk and killed a family on the county road by our house. I told him that I didn’t know anything about that, but would have to talk with Mom, but that was for a different time. I finished out the rest of the call as best I could, told him I loved him and said our goodbyes. I immediately phone my wife to ask her about this. I completely understand and place no fault or blame on her for keeping this from me while I was trying to recover in the hospital for so long. Even though the accident occurred on the county road leading to our house, because there was a fatality involved the state investigators step in. She told me that I had been traveling down the county road about a mile after the turn off to our county street and had hit another vehicle with two young girls and their father who did not make it, but had not been drunk. This was not the only thing that had been kept from me while in the hospital. One of my best friends growing up, who was dealing with a Stage IV metastatic lung cancer diagnoses in January this year had passed. One of the nights that I had bleed out and coded and had another open exploratory surgery to fix another arterial bleed we both went to sleep that night, but only I woke up the next day. I was heartbroken and distressed and I don’t know what else after hearing all of this. About a month later after fighting for weeks with the doctors and case agents for the long term acute care facility they transferred me to to be able to go home and let me heal the rest of the way with my family since I had not been able to see anyone with all the COVID stuff this year, I finally made my way home right before the 4th of July. I think it was August when the state’s homicide investigator came to my house to get my statement for the case. I had soo many questions. I guess the little black box in my car said I was going over 120mph right before the accident, combined with their 50+ mph speed. I obviously had been a lot more upset with the ordeal with my brother-in-law before leaving than I thought. My wife had told me she had came out and tried to talk to me to cool down and come back inside for the BBQ, and she thinks I just felt like I was on my last straw with doing soo much for everyone else and not having anyone to back my side and was just soo hurt and left, obviously to go a few more miles down the road to this water hole we know of and maybe cool off there with some beer. There was no doubt in my mind at that point that I had killed someone, and was responsible for their death, and there was nothing I could do to take it back. I never would have intentionally done something like this to hurt another person, it’s not who I am, but never the less it did happen, and no matter what actually had occurred, since I still have no memory of anything for several miles before, there was no doubt I was responsible for what had happened. As far as everyone else is concerned, it was just a really horrific accident, but an accident none the less. I just don’t feel that way. We haven’t heard anything back from the state investigator, which he said they likely wouldn’t do anything with me since I was bed-bound with soo much medical, was nowhere even close to being drunk, and had no memory of the accident, but they technically have 3 years to prosecute. I have caused soo much hurt and damage to soo many people, my family and theirs, and the two small towns nearby, and those two little girls that I think about constantly. Everyone tells me to look for the good in everything, know that it was an accident, and there’s no need to live with the tremendous guilt I feel, etc. That’s the type of person I was before all this before all of this. The last several years since having a family, I have grown much as a person I thought and learned to let a lot slide right off your back, because there’s soo much more to life and it’s too short to be soo worried and caught up with all the negative. I’ve always told everyone a piece of advice that I lived by, “There’s two basic reactions to things we deal with in life: get mad about it, or laugh. One has the possibility of helping, the other results in no help, and likely pain…..which do you want to choose?”. I’ve always believed that “That which does not kill us, makes us stronger”. I don’t feel this way anymore. I think whomever said that got it wrong. I don’t think it makes us stronger. I think it just makes us harder. I’ve heard some stories my brother-in-law told me, maybe trying to cheer me up, that the people that were out hunting and heard the collision and found us on the county road and called for the life flight, being a nurse, told him that I had tried to get out of the car and run to the other vehicle to check on them, but had collapsed, obviously not having any legs to literally stand on. I’m not really sure how to end this….it is like 5 pages long now, but there’s soo much more to all this and how I am currently, I just don’t know how to express, nor could probably fit everything in here either. I’m not sure what happens now, I have too many problems to be able to expect anything as far as getting back to work to get off this ½ pay disability income. I have no idea how this healing process will go. For soo long, I’ve wanted to go visit the other family and talk to the wife, and be able to see the young girls and know how they are recovering from the injuries I caused them. I don’t know if I just want to be a punching bag for them, an escape to yell at and place all their anger and frustration, or what. It’s not the right words, but have been told basically I don’t have the “right” to go see them, and why would they want to see me. I’m starting to understand some of that, and slightly agree, but the hurt is too much. I don’t know how I can be whole again not being a part of something that I affected so greatly?
