The last couple of months have been crazy. I've been back and forth between Kansas City, Salt Lake City, Las Vegas, Mexico, the Grand Canyon, and more, working and enjoying the sights. My brother was robbed of $500 in Mexico and had a gun pulled on him, I left and reentered the U.S. without a passport, and many bizarre shenanigans took place.
Oh yeah, and I broke three bones in a car crash.
I was working in Denver for my brother's moving business when it happened. My two coworkers and I had just finished loading a truck up in the mountains and were on our way home after a long day of work. Heavy snow had just begun to fall, and the roads were misleadingly slick. I was sitting in the back seat of the car on our way to get paid, and the three of us were making jokes and feeling happy to be done for the day. All of the sudden, I heard a stream of expletives from our driver as we lost all control of the vehicle. We had hit a patch of ice going around a curve and lost traction. Despite turning the wheel and pumping the brakes, we slid off the road and crashed head on into a large telephone pole.
My face slammed into the seat in front of me, breaking my nose. Smoke was billowing up from the front of the car and my head was in searing pain. My ears rang and everything was a blur for several seconds. As if from miles away, I heard a muffled voice scream for me to get out of the vehicle. It felt totally surreal.
The car was on an incline and I had to pull myself up out of the wreckage. I grabbed the door frame, shards of broken glass powdering my clothes, and pulled with what little strength I had left after lifting heavy furniture for several hours. My left hand screamed in agony as I let go of the door and crumpled into the backseat. Gritting my teeth, I pushed with my legs and found that my right ankle was stricken with a sharp, burning pain. Avoiding the use of my bad hand and ankle, I managed to pull myself out onto the frozen ground.
Countless vehicles soon lined the mountain road. Police cars, an ambulance, the fire department...It seems like the whole town came out. Not wanting to deal with the cost of an ambulance, I denied emergency transportation and figured I'd tough out the pain until my brother came to pick me up. That worked well enough until the adrenaline began to fade. My head pain, which had finally begun to settle, quickly went from throbbing discomfort to relentlessly pounding agony. Seemingly out of nowhere, I broke down and began to sob uncontrollably. Hot tears formed tributaries down my face and burned in contrast to the frigid air. I couldn't keep my breathing steady and barely managed to stifle the sound of my sobs. Despite the fact that what happened was an unpredictable accident, the driver felt a crushing sense of guilt. Seeing my pain would only add to that, so I put myself out of sight as pain escalated.
Finally, my brother arrived and took me to the emergency room. It turns out that I fractured my nose, right ankle, and left hand, in addition to taking a hard hit to the head. I was put in a knee-high boot and hand cast reaching halfway to my elbow. A stranger at a gas station later remarked, "You look like Hell."
That was exactly a month ago, today. I've since got the boot off and had a more proper cast placed on my arm. The bad news is that my left thumb is completely locked in the cast. The good news is that I still have total access to four fingers, allowing me to type easily and (frustratingly) play piano. Also in the good news category is the fact that the vehicle had crashed into that pole. If not for that, we would have gone careening over a hill and been in much worse shape. Oh yes, and I was the only one with anything broken.
So now I'm back home, watching copious amounts of Netflix, recovering, and writing music. The hospital bills and paperwork are giving me a bit of a headache, but there is a possibility that the insurance company will provide decent compensation for all this. I'll hopefully have the cast off in a week, at which point I can begin working again.
That has been the last couple of months for me. Hopefully I'll whip out some funky new compositions in the near future and increase my presence hear on Newgrounds. I've missed you guys and am happy to be back.
tl;dr: I got in a nasty car accident but will be okay. :)
