Thursday night I was in a really bad car accident in New West, about 30 minutes from my house. Michelle was driving my car home from a club because she really loves to drive and doesn't have a car of her own anymore, so she actually drove there and back just because she wanted to. I was in the passenger seat in the front and Carmen was sitting behind the driver in the back. We were driving along, at a normal speed, it was about 12:45 and we were hit by a car that ran a red light. I don't know if the other driver was drunk or what, but I know the police said he was being pressed with "several charges". They could just be charges like "inattentive to the road" and crap like that though, I don't know.

It was definitely the worst accident of any type I've been in and the most injured I've ever been in my life. Apparently we sort of hit the front wheel of his car, then my entire car spun around and the back end hit his car again somehow. My car is a total write off, it was smashed from like every possible angle it could have been, but miraculously none of us have serious injuries. Go Honda. The windows were all smashed but the only one that actually broke through was the back window. Both Michelle and Carmen were unconscious right after it happened but I was awake. It was really scary to be the only one conscious. I immediately started slapping Michelle across the face and lifting up her chin and screaming her name and stuff. Then I looked in the back and Carmen was also unconscious so I did the same to her. They both had blood all over their faces and shirts from cuts on their heads and faces. I had their blood all over my hands and my own shirt. They woke up maybe thirty seconds after it happened so that was really good, neither of them could remember what had happened. Someone had witnessed the entire thing and was on her cell phone right with us, telling 911 what injuries we had. Her and another guy rushed us away from the car on to a piece of grass on the side of the road. I can't remember why, but for some reason I ran back to my car to try to get the keys out of the ignition. I wanted to open my trunk for something, I can't remember why though. Carmen thinks she might have asked me to get her bag from the trunk. I couldn't get the keys out of ignition and the guy pulled me away from the car and told me to get away because it might explode. That made me really scared so I went back to the grass, realizing the trunk was popped open anyway because it was all smashed in, then Michelle asked me to get her cell phone from the front seat. So I went back to the car to grab her cell.

The ambulances took us away pretty fast. I called my parents from my phone right away just as the ambulances were getting there and told them that we were all okay, someone ran a red light and my car was really messed up, and that they were taking us to Columbian in New West. They put Michelle and Carmen on stretchers and wrapped up their heads and everything and started IV's on them, which really freaked them out. They took Michelle in her own ambulance and took me with Carmen. I just sat with the attendants in the ambulance and talked to Carmen the entire time and told her that everything was fine, she just has a cut on her head and that they had to check for internal injuries as a precaution. I mean I was literally explaining to her why they were taking her blood pressure, what an IV does, etcetera. It actually really surprised me how much medical information I know from watching ER, and how totally calm I was. Makes me think I really should be a doctor...

I mean, I was scared but compared to the two of them, I was totally and completely calm. Even right now, I'm in a lot of pain and shaken up and everything, but at the same time...I'm not in shock. I am honestly really proud of myself for the way I handled everything, and my parents are really proud of me too. The second I realized what had happened and that I was the only one awake, I knew exactly what to do, I was trying to open their airways and everything. I called my parents right away and I handled it all so calmly. I was explaining everything to both Carmen and Michelle while we waited in the hopsital for rooms to open up. Carmen told me yesterday, "I don't remember anything about the accident, the first thing I remember is being in the ambulance and hearing your voice", and then Michelle said today, "I was so out of it when we were at the hospital, I kept zoning out but I could hear that you were talking to me and telling me what was going on, and I kept wondering how you knew everything". I was making a point of keeping them alert by saying "Hey Shell?" or "Hey Carm? bla bla bla..." every couple of seconds when it would get quiet. I honestly didn't even think of my own injuries for a second, I was just making sure that they were calm and knew they weren't going to die. I just kept saying, "Seriously, you look totally fine you just have a little cut on your head, that's all...they just have to really make sure and take all the steps to see if you have broken bones, it's part of the routine".

Okay, so the ambulances took us to the hospital where we had to wait for a few minutes. All I could feel was that my chest and right shoulder hurt really, really bad but I didn't know what it was. I knew I wasn't bleeding anywhere, I thought it was just really badly pulled muscles, and I wasn't that far off. I'm really sore all through the right side of my upper body, especially my shoulder joint, but it wasn't until my parents got there and said "Oh yeah, I can see the seatbelt mark" that I looked down on my chest and saw that I had a bright red burn from the seatbelt across my chest and shoulder. It was already starting to bruise around the burn. The seatbelt also bruised and burned a little on my right hip, and my legs are a little banged up. My right knee has a massive bump and bruise on it, where I must have hit the dashbord. My pants on that knee had plastic from the dash melted on them so I'm assuming that's it. My other leg had scrapes and bruises too, I don't know what from. This morning I found another bad bruise on the back of my left arm which is weird, I hadn't seen that one before.

Michelle was injured the most, she has a bad cut on her face and head and will probably need plastic surgery to fix it up after it's healed. Otherwise she's the same as me, sore and has some bruises on her knees, and she has a couple of cracked ribs and sprained fingers. Carmen had a cut on her head and other than that she's just sore. My collarbone is probably cracked and that's why it hurts so bad, but the doctor at the hospital said that there's nothing they can do for the collarbone anyway and that it'd just have to heal on its own. Fuck.

The scariest thing probably of all was something that happened to me when I was still at the hospital. I was being all calm and cheery and trying to make everyone feel better, then the doctor examined me, which was very painful. I had to take off all of my clothes on my own and it hurt so much and took forever to do. I ended up not putting my bra back on because I just couldn't do it. I was discharged around 3 am, but we were hanging around to make sure the other two were okay, plus we didn't know if we'd have to take Michelle home with us because she hadn't called anyone (because her family is really messed up, bla bla bla). It turned out that after she'd been given morphine and was all woozy she'd told the doctors to call her ex-boyfriend for her. He ended up coming down, which I thought was really, really nice of him considering the circumstances between them. So anyway, everyone had a ride home and I could go home, so I went to go say goodbye to them. First I talked to Michelle for a while, then I went to see Carmen down the hall. While I was talking to Carmen, the pain started to get a lot worse and I started to feel really sick. I hadn't felt nauseous at all during the experience yet so I was a little worried. I leaned over the garbage can beside Carmen to throw up and told her I better go because I didn't feel well, so we said goodbye.

Just as I started walking away I felt so, so dizzy and for sure like I was going to puke, but I just kept walking thinking there would be a garbage can right outside the door to puke in, and that I was strong and I'd be fine just keep walking...I opened the door and basically collapsed to the ground by a garbage can. Nurses picked me up and were taking my pulse and yelling directions to each other and I was screaming at them because they had grabbed me by the shoulder. I felt so bad because my parents were really scared. They put me back in a wheelchair and I felt so, so ill, I can't even describe the feeling...it was the worst pain I'd ever felt in my life, and I was slipping in and out of consciousness, I kept fainting over and over, my face was totally white and the nurse kept having to grab me and hurting my shoulder and arm again. I was such a bitch to the nurse because she was trying to take my blood pressure on my right arm but I was screaming at her to get it off of me, so she moved to my left arm. She just kept taking my blood pressure over and over while I was throwing up into this piece of cardboard thing that was so small I don't know how anyone could throw up into it without missing. They wheeled me over to a bed that was empty and told me to lay down, and kept taking my blood pressure. I was asking her to tell me if it was bad but they didn't answer me. I just layed there for a while and felt a lot better almost immediately. The nurse told me a doctor would be coming to to check me again, because the doctor who'd examined me earlier had gone off shift and they needed a new doctor to start a new chart or something. So I waited...and waited...I was freezing cold and kept asking them to bring me more blankets. My parents just waited with me, and I was so tired I wanted to sleep so bad but I couldn't fall asleep because my shoulder hurt so much. Around 6 am, a doctor finally came in and told me that what happened was totally normal after an accident, and that it was probably a combination of the pain, being really tired, seeing my friends cut up, etcetera, and that my blood pressure had been really low and my heart rate was low and I'd been fainting and I just needed to lay down and rest for a bit and take some Tylenol. So I finally got to leave around 6:30, after I'd begged them to get me something stronger and a nurse came back with some T3's for me to take home.

So I got in bed with a pack of ice on my shoulder around 7:30 am and slept only until 11. I watched TV all day yesterday in bed and tried to ice my shoulder all day. I was in so much pain and took a T3 that made me puke less than half an hour later. I felt sooo sick and started to sweat all over, I had to get out of bed to get away from the blankets and get into the bathroom where the ground was cooler and I could sit for a while. I felt better after throwing up though, so instead I took some muscle relaxant pills we had and ate some soup and crackers. I feel totally retarded because I've been spilling soup all down the front of my pajamas, having to eat with my left hand. I've been getting lots of flowers from people and phone calls. Word travelled fast, even Jeff called me from school in Castlegar yesterday (that's like 10 hours away or something). Shannon and Megan visted me today and brought me some yummy tea and pink tulips and a card, and Megan french braided my hair so it's off my face, thank God because it was driving me insane. My supervisor at work somehow found out yesterday and called me, and then I had flowers delivered to me today from the staff at work. I feel so loved.

Today I've felt a tiny bit better, after taking medicine. I put Polysporin all over the seatbelt burn so that hopefully it will heal faster. If not, I'm actually not too worried. If anyone asks in Hawaii, I'll have a cool car accident story to tell. I am so totally going to Hawaii no matter what, even if I can't lift my bags...I'll make Jess carry everything for me! Haha. That's the only thing I'm worried about, my shoulder and muscles still hurting when I go. I have a week and a half to do some recovering so...I've been praying...

That's all I can think about to write right now and I need to take some more medicine. I am so lucky to be alive right now. If I hadn't have been wearing my seatbelt, there's no question that I would have been dead. I would have just flown from the car. I just keep thinking, what if at that moment I'd unbuckled my seatbelt to get a CD or something...what if, what if, what if. I really think that God was on my side, or a guardian angel or something. All three of us escaped severe injuries and the police and doctors couldn't believe it. With the condition our cars were in, they couldn't believe nobody was killed. I think at some point during my babbling in the ambulance to Carmen I was talking to her about God. They had to take off her cross necklace and they handed it to me to carry and I think that's what got me thinking.

So that's the basic details of my adventurous story. I know I'm going to be pretty scared to drive from now on. There's just no way any of us could have prevented this from happening, it's just one of those things you think will never happen to you. The chances of it are so, so slim...I just can't believe it. But I do believe that everything happens for a reason.

On Monday I have a meeting with the insurance people to discuss what kind of settlement they're going to give us, and what I'll get for my car, and then we'll decide if we'd rather go through a lawyer if we think we can get more money. I'm not that angry at the other driver, actually. I don't really feel that it's necessary to sue, even if he totally fucked up and I'm in a lot of pain. I don't think we'd get much from it, he's only 25 and probably doesn't have a whole lot, and I'm sure this entire experience has helped him learn a lesson...but, we'll see. Michelle's mom, the screw up that she is herself, is already freaking out and wanting to sue his ass off, and making my mom feel like shit for not calling her from the hospital...my mom doesn't want to tell her mom that Michelle had given me specific instructions not to call her, so I guess my mom's just trying to stay out of it without getting Michelle in any more trouble. She's already called three times asking my mom if we were drunk because she doesn't believe that we weren't. It's like to her, nothing can ever not be Michelle's fault...so she is making everything more difficult for us, as expected.

Jeff was going through with me all of the good things that have come from this. He said that watching TV all day in bed with people waiting on me was a good thing, and that I get a new car, and it might be better than my last one (which would be very cool, seeing as I was just complaining about my car like two days ago). I guess I can add to my life experience list that I was in a really bad car accident and could have been killed. Crazy.

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