Wednesday, June 14, 2006

Once Upon a Time I Was In a Car Accident

Chris requested the story to go along with the car accident, so here it is.

Once upon a time we decided to go out dancing with some friends in hollywood on a Wednesday night. We carpooled with a friend (Matt) who was sitting behind me, so I had my seat very close to the dashboard. We left a little after 1am and were almost home by 2am when a guy ran a red light and hit us. I remember Jake saying "Oh sh@$!" and slamming on the brakes. I turned to look at him and put my hands up to brace myself. When the guy hit us, the air bag went off and hit my hands and my face. I didn't even realize it had happened since it was so fast (I didn't even see it), but suddenly my face started to hurt and I licked my lips and it felt enormous and strange. At first I thought my lip had exploded since it felt raw, but I calmed down since people weren't freaking out when they looked at me. My hands also started to hurt and I thought I'd broken at least one of my fingers. The air bad hit so hard that the skin had exploded in a couple of places from the pressure.

Kind of funny, I remember trying not to drip blood on my pants because I liked them a lot and didn't want them ruined. I guess that shows where my priorities lie.

They eventually put a neck brace on me and took me away in an ambulance. They were trying to keep Jake away (he was really pissed about that) but got over to me to say goodbye before I left. He finished finding a way to get Matt home and our car towed to our place (it was totaled), and borrowed a car from a friend who lived nearby and came very quickly to the hospital.

They took forever and left me in the very uncomfortable neck brace. I wasn't very happy because it was hurting so I started to wriggle around a lot to try to get comfortable, so I probably would have aggravated any neck injury anyway.

Finally the doctor came and they took x-rays of my hands (not broken), cleaned me up and sent me home. One really annoying thing was that the nurse came in to clean me up and started washing my face to get the blood off. She kept wiping above my lip while I bore the pain. She finally left the wet guaze, since she wasn't getting the blood off, and asked me to clean it while we waited for the doctor. I told Jake that I'd rather have dried blood on me than go through the pain of having the blood wiped off so I left my face alone. The doctor came in, prescribed meds, and did his thing, then asked the nurse to finish wiping my face. After another minute of wiping she finally let things be. It turns out that they thought it was dried blood where I was scraped on my face. They kept scrubbing at my raw, bloody face. I was quite irritated when I realized that's what had been happening.

We finally got home at about 6am and went to sleep. Jake took the next day off of work. Jake and Matt, who were both in the Thursday morning accident, took their Engineer In Training exam on Saturday and they both passed (only 30% of people pass). Luckily, the accident didn't shake them up too much.

Here's today's picture - looking even better.

7 comments:

Chris Steele said...

Thanks for the insane story. Is that how your jealousy-inspiring Audi came to be? Or did you already have that? Your lip does look much better today.

Pam said...

Yup, that's how I got my Audi. But I lost my poor beetle. I'll see if I can find a picture.

Sarah said...

looking good! and pam, i have a whole new respect for cars with navigation systems (we borrowed one up there and holy cow i WANT one.)

Wendy said...

Good story Pam. But you forgot about the part where the guy said that if Jake had not slammed on the brakes he or others in the car might have been killed. Crazy.

Anonymous said...

I am always the last to know. I didn't know you had surgery! Did you get lip injections too? :)

Anonymous said...

I remember when I went off the cliff in a corvette with my high school boyfriend. I didn't want the paramedics to cut off my jeans (even though they were covered with blood). I remember telling them that I am tall and it is REALLy difficult for me to go jeans shopping...it's even worse than bathing suit shopping.

So, Pam...my priorities are in line with yours :)

Pam said...

Melissa, you are hilarious!