9 - The big move!

"..who are the individuals with the handle on the most gossip?"

In my time in the Trauma ward, I had conversed with many nurses,surgeons and teams of doctors but in a hospital who are the individuals with the handle on the most gossip? The healthcare assistants, the clerks and, most of all, the cleaners!

The move to the new hospital was rapidly approaching. It had been designed and built, supposedly, with healthcare of patients in mind. Keep that statement in the forefront of your mind while reading this part.

It turns out that the agreement to move into the 'new' hospital had been advanced because the construction company the trust was leasing the hospital from wanted to begin the monthly mortgage payments from a specified date and the trust was not going to pay for an empty hospital. The decision was made to move in! The date was set, the plans were made, all that was left was to transport the patients and the countdown had begun.

"The lifts originally installed were not big enough.."

While gathering my 'intelligence' of gossip from various sources, I was told:
1 - The A&E department had become flooded during completion due to faulty pipework
2 - The lifts originally installed were not big enough to accommodate hospital beds and needed to be completely ripped out
3 - Considering that a hospital generally can deal with patients of all disabilities, me now being one of them, the corridor doors did not operate on any sort of electrical access and, consequently, as the doors were so big and heavy, wheelchair users had to wait for someone more able to open the doors for them to move about the hospital.
4 - The wards had been turned from Nightingale wards to many rooms based around a network of 'ward corridors' increasing the walking time between rooms. This resulted in the placement of different, numerous ward stations, cupboards and sluice rooms at far ends of the stretches of corridors.

The big move day arrived! What was left of the dressings, machines and equipment were bundled up and set aside for transport. My bed, being number 19 by the door, was the first to be taken over. My medical drip bags were secured, my notes were placed at my feet and an assigned nurse tagged along with the porters as I was taken down to the the main hall.

My name having been checked off the list, I was taken outside to my own ambulance and bounced along the potholed main road to the new hospital. Being whisked to the 4th floor, and having a side room to myself (number 6), I was 'installed'. Owing to the hasty occupation, many rooms had not been finished, mine for example had no TV to begin with, and believe me, when you're in my position being unable to adequately hold a book and turn pages, a TV is a godsend! I mean, I'm not a fan of TV normally, of the opinion that programme schedulers can't get five channels watchable, let alone 30 channels for digital!

".. (at) £9 for 5 days, it is easy to clock up a large debt."

Although, TV in some hospitals, like this one, can also be a real financial millstone as well as a necessity to alleviate the repetitive boredom. To ellaborate, this hospital had invested in individual bedside televisions on the moveable arm (similar to the above) that could access all of the digital channels and have Internet as well. While this was a good investment, in order to watch the TV patients had to pay extortionate amounts of money to 'buy' time to watch it. Small cards were dispensed from automated machines, like mobile phone top up cards, and a relative (if you were bed bound) could go and purchase anything from 24 hours to 5 days worth. The problem was, when you have to go into a hospital environment, especially in an emergency, the last thing you reach for is your wallet! And if your income had dropped to 'Sick Pay' levels as mine had, purchasing TV Time was a difficult necessity. At £2 for 24 hours and £9 for 5 days, it is easy to clock up a large debt.

My room was quaint, however, with an ensuite bathroom for one (not that I could use it) and the normal hospital routine resumed ... with the exception that now it would take longer to get a nurse to attend and longer to get dressings.

"The overall 'fitness' of the hospital was called into question many times"

The overall 'fitness' of the hospital was called into question many times. My conversations with nurses revealed a general dislike to the new arrangement and the safety of staff was uppermost in their minds, having heard a story that a doctor had broken his arm in one of the lifts that dropped four floors and he ended up in the very A&E department of the hospital he worked for.

Whilst in this new room that was to be my home for many months, my injuries took a turn for the worst.

8 - Humour is a good healer

"Humour is a good healer"

I can't begin to tell you how true this statement is. Before I can fully explain this, I need to touch on what situation I was in before I was put through this living hell that had been laid at my door.

With a piece of chicken!

Sports were never my favourite but I was always a reasonably active individual. Some early mornings before work I went for a run down the road, in the summer it was a run after work. Weekends and after work, I lifted weights. Not for the purpose of building excessive muscle, just merely as a means to keeping in trim. My wife and I went for bike rides in the countryside occasionally, or walks around historic sites. Ironically, as my car collision hapened on the Monday evening, I had been on television the Friday before the weekend. The business I worked for had achieved recognition for taking on customers after the original company had gone into insolvency, so local television news had descended on our place of work and I was one of those filmed for the production. Pride before a fall? That Monday morning I remember getting congratulatory comments from colleagues for my 5 minutes of fame. My job itself was in an area I really enjoyed doing, having worked at it for so long in my career, so overall, my life was going reasonably well.

" ..shed a tear some nights as I went through what I could only describe as depressive thoughts.."

That was all put on dramatic hold. Without sounding 'un-manly', I would shed a tear some nights as I went through what I could only describe as depressive thoughts and overwhelming grief at the life I had led compared to the one I was forced into now by a careless, unthinking imbecile. At this moment in my recovery, I would lie awake at night and look at the photos my wife had selotaped to my bedside to keep familiar visions fresh in my mind: pictures of our wedding the year before, images of our reception and our cat that used to sleep on me every night. I can't say I wasn't racked with anger that drove me onward, feelings of intense rage that fuelled my aggression further. I began to realise that my placid nature pre-collision had been repressed somewhat.

Before, I was one of those 'laid back' individuals. It used to take a great deal to annoy me, situations that perpetuated for days, weeks, months before I would get motivated enough to act. Now? My approach to life had been altered considerably. I had evolved a short temper, an amplified sarcasm and synical nature that I drew upon for almost every situation. The phsychological impact for me had shaped a new attitude, applied a new stress that had developed a negative outlook in my approach to life. Being limited to only thoughts without speech for so long, the pain of my injuries and the aggression, all had changed my behaviour.

Since the physios had managed to get me upright, it had shattered my belief that my life would be nothing short of a horizontal stasis, going from 'active to inactive' in one failing swoop. They had given me something to strive for, to re-instate, a hopeful aim to shoot for. Somehow, through that one event, my original querky humour returned to the fore. And it was lucky it did, I needed it for one of the night shifts!

".. I immediately raised the alarm.."

The usual nurse changeover happened at 7:00pm. During the course of the day I would be shuffling in bed to alleviate pressure, and, as a consequence, I had slipped down the bed a little with my feet pointing south-west and my head north-east. The senior nurse-in-charge (Helen) had noted my awkward angle and mentioned that I was to be moved later once everyone had been attended to (catheter bags emptied, moved in the bed, urine bottles replenished). The team began to finish up the round and lights began to go out in the ward without having attended to my positional issue. I immediately raised the alarm and pressed the call button.

Developing the back story slightly, wards would have student nurses from many different countries performing shifts to gain experience. Training on the ward gave them the relevent skills they needed that a classroom didn't give them. Unfortunately, as a result, there were language issues between patient and nurse.

So, having pressed the call button for assistance to help move me to a more comfortable position, a nurse arrived. She was a nice, young, petite nurse from India but I could instantly see we were going to have communication issues.

"..a psychopathic grin smeared on her face.."

"Can I help you?", she asked inquisitively.
"Thank you, I'm due to be moved."
A perplexed look met my eyes, confusing silence drifting to me from the bed curtain.
"Sorry?" She exclaimed.
"I'm due ... to be moved?" I pressed.
After a few passing seconds, a visage of distress descended on her face as she repeated what she thought she heard, "You want your toes removed?"
Instantly, I had nightmarish visions of her reaching into her uniform, a psychopathic grin smeared on her face and, extracting a pair of garden secateurs from their resting place, she starts clipping the toes from my feet!
"NO! No! I'm due to be moved! ... In the bed!"
She turned, took a pace to the curtain and spun on her heel, "What shall I do?"
I let out a laugh and remarked, "Fetch Helen!"

It was moments like this that will stay in my memory. Laughing about such events kept me focussed, driven to succeed and resume some normal life again no matter how distant it appeared to me.

The Trauma Ward I was on wasn't the last place I would reside in this hospital for a new building had just been built and was rapidly approaching occupancy. I had the distinct honour of being one of the first patients to be taken to the new wards and, speaking with many people, that might have not been a great idea!!!

7 - The difficulty of the most simplest of tasks

"..many emotional ups and downs.."

The trauma ward I was sent to in late May had many emotional ups and downs, not that the whole experience thus far had been a nightmare rollercoaster with no exit. For it was here, in this ward, that I worked with the physios to achieve a task that most people experience everyday, a task that has been taken for granted since time immomorial, one which I shall detail shortly.

It was also the ward where, as a patient of our health department, I witnessed some of the major problems that affect our primary healthcare system. Having seen them from the inside, other patients out there in the big wild world will know what I'm talking about and I'll touch on those as I go.

"..quite a common theme.."

So, a new ward and a new set of nurses to explain my injuries to. This was quite a common theme that ran through my hospital stay; despite having a set of notes that was thicker than a railway sleeper, I still found that I was orating my injury list on an almost monthly basis. So much so that it had become ingrained in my mind, almost becoming a chore repeating every break, every fracture, every scar that my body possessed. Still, it made sure I got to know all the new nurses and healthcare assistants in the ward, knew their movements and shift patterns and developed many friendships in the initial days following my transfer.

So, to the title of this post "The difficulty of the most simplest of tasks". By the very nature of my personal horrific injuries, my mobility had been restricted to avoid further unwilling damage to my limbs. This meant, that since that black day in April 2010, I had been relatively supine for over a month. In that time, my equilibrium had been completely wiped out, along with my musculature, which meant that I experienced waves of sickening dizziness and nausea during periods when my head was raised on the bed.

Also included in the vagueness of this post title is the easy task of washing. This was clearly an impossible act for me, not being able to stand nor raise my arms since the collision. To combat this difficulty, every morning at 8:30am after all other patients had been 'attended to', having been left until last, I was set upon by teams of nurses to accomplish this one menial task. I had one nurse per limb and one to wash me. Turning me in the bed each morning for the ritualistic wash and sheet change, I was consistently subjected to bouts of extreme agony that racked my body to the tune of jaw clenching grimaces.

".. interspersed with operations on my arm.."

Again, day rolled into day and the physio's worked tirelessly, picking up where the previous team left off and managing to get me some movement in my only good arm. These were interspersed with operations on my arm to build in metal which uncomfortably had cables running across my elbow and into my forearm. Resting my elbow on even a matress was uncomfortable. 

Not to mention the ultimate late evening experience that will not be cherished; having a catheter re-inserted after it came out. It was akin to pushing a straw into one of those juice drink cartons, only considerably more physically awkward.

Now to the crowning glory of trauma physio achievement. On one particular day, when the monotonous daily activities were grinding my psyche into the ground and continuing to dig, one of the physio's in charge of my care (Ruth) suggested getting me into a seated position. This was no easy task. The use of slide sheets, two physios and two healthcare assistants were required to manoeuvre me on the bed with my head to the side, aiming to drag me backwards on the bedsheet into a wheelchair for my first experience of sitting up.

The successful result!

In one sweeping move, I was pulled backwards and into the chair. It was one of the best days ever! I may have only managed to remain vertical for half an hour but it was a giant step for me. Eventually, after a quick whirlwind tour of the ward and a wave of dizziness, pushed eloquently by my wife, I was eased back into the bed.

".. I could now see some glimmer of light at the end of a terribly long, dark tunnel."

My attitude, post wheelchair event,was increasingly improving. Suddenly, although I still suffered regular bouts of grief for my previous active life, I could now see some glimmer of light at the end of a terribly long, dark tunnel. This gave me something to strive for, some handhold on a flat cliff that seemed impossible of scaling. And I hung onto it with all my might, with whatever inner strength I could muster, I kept that vision of myself getting back to some semblance of normality prominent in my thoughts. From then, I tried to see the humour in situations to lighten my spirits and, as if answer to my unspoken requests, one such even presented itself.

6 - Physiotherapists? Affectionately known as Physio-terrorists!

"The team at this particular hospital were great."

The team at this particular hospital were great. It was their job, as I was bed-ridden, to begin to move my right leg and my right arm with some kind of motion so that my tendons did not shorten and cause me further difficulties. Not having moved from being in an induced coma for a more than normal period combined with my body's overall swelling reaction to the impact trauma, I can honestly say that every movement at this stage was painful.

Taking you back to the preceeding moments before impact, the head on collision that was coming at me was the result of a driver not paying attention to the road whilst suspected of engaging on his mobile phone. As neither vehicle, mine nor the larger heavier van that was careering toward me on my side of the road, were speeding however, the combined impact of our two vehicles totalled a collision speed of at least 100mph.

Try to picture the impending emotions that would wash over you in the moments before the split second that takes you and your car headlong into a wall at 100mph, the rapidly approaching object filling your windscreen faster than a bolt of lightning streaking across the grey sky. I can visualise those safety tests on TV from the 1980s; a slow motion film of a limp crash test dummy in a car, hitting a solid wall and its limbs flailing about as the camera captures all the glass shattering, body lurching, metal crunching action that developed in the field of view. Little did I know when I saw those as a child, so many years ago, that I would unwittingly go through something so near fatally similar at the behest of a senseless, wreckless driver.

".. hitting every surface amid a shower of sharp diamond shards.."

As a consequence of that severe, motion stopping moment when my limbs were like that yellow and black striped doll hitting every surface amid a shower of sharp diamond shards of windscreen shrapnel, my body slowly protected itself by inflating subdermally. This had taken weeks to reduce to a point that I could begin movement at my joints.

The phrase that springs to mind, and is very pertinent, is, "Use it or lose it". How very true that phrase is. Owing to my inactivity during immediate recovery from the 16 operations across a month, my muscles were consumed by my own body and my tendons had shortened in all areas; my legs, my arms and even my fingers and wrists! The physios were there though; slowly, daily, religiously moving the limbs they could, a painful inch at a time.

The physios that really took me to the next level, however, were the ones I met in the next ward move when I was de-camped from the Liver Unit, to the Civilian Trauma Ward in the main hospital. These were the trauma specialists and gave me my first taste of a normal situation in so many months of physical stasis.

5 - The story continues

The Critical Care department, for me, was quite a blur. My lasting memories, as I came around from the induced coma I had been placed in for a month and a half, are semi lucid fantasyscapes that, although I know are based in reality, feel as real to me as a dream does upon waking from a long nights sleep and going through the hazy recall process.

"..I came to visual terms with my physical predicament."

Overall, as I was being transported from the Critical Care area to the High Dependancy Unit, I came to visual terms with my physical predicament. For my right leg; it was in a full leg backslab cast. My left had a an exterior fixator that held my leg in position due to my smashed knee condition, the securing pins drilled into my bones breaching the surface of my skin in a very alien way. The large fixator on my left arm, too, was bulky and set to a right angle to ensure a lack of movement to limit any further damage until further surgery could correct it.

Right leg metal work

Right ankle metal work

Left knee exterior fixator x-ray

Left elbow exterior fixator x-ray

The external doors were opened and the outside light stung my eyes while I was taken by the porters to the ambulance. Critical Care is generally kept at ambient light levels constantly, although there were periods when the room light levels were reduced to keep a nominal body clock system working. Squinting against the light, I was transfered to the HDU.

"I was beginning to realise the severity of my situation"

Now that my conciousness was fully returned, I was beginning to realise the severity of my situation. Many a long evening in that bustling ward, watching the nurses buzz about the room past the end of my bed that had become my immediate world, I held personal counsel, retreating to my thoughts to try and organise my erratic feelings and somehow try to stem the spread of impending anxiety and depression that was threatening to dominate my every waking attention. Sleep for me was somewhat capricious, snatching moments here and there when the tiredness took its hold. 

However, time spent in this ward was shortlived as I was moved, after a week, to the Liver unit and it was here that I first met the team of Physiotherapists.

4 - The delicate internal system

"organ damage can be a real setback"

Of all the injuries I sustained, the one on the list that has taken its toll more than the others have been the internal ones. Bones eventually heal, skin eventually heals, even nerves can heal (all be it at a millimetre a day when the nerve isn't fused to the metalwork they had to build into my elbow - see below image), but organ damage can be a real setback.

Left arm metal holding my elbow together

Injury number 11 on my list was the primary hurdle and one that has caused me the most anguish across the course of my continued rehabilitation. With a torn bowel, in several places, the absorbtion of nutrients, minerals and proteins to keep my body running at a bare minimum was impossible.

"..was noted as being the sickest patient in Critical Care"

For many weeks following, I was noted as being the sickest patient in Critical Care. I was treading the fine line between life and death, light and dark, and a step too far into the dark would have been the end of my time on this planet. The countless problems that ensued (for example air bubbles in my chest cavity that needed escape holes in my upper chest), the many x-rays and CT scans that I went through, all added to the stress of the whole situation that my wife suffered.  Day after day, she was taken into a side room to discuss the latest problematic encounters and days without these talks became few and far between. My head injuries were of initial concern, the professionals not knowing if the impact to my skull had caused sufficient bleeding on my brain to cause damage. The only way of discerning that that terrible scenario hadn't occurred was to wait for me to wake from my coma. That was one of the more discouraging meetings that my wife endured in the 'discussion room' with the senior nurses and doctor.

When I was first admitted following the collision, the first few weeks of my coma I was fed nutritional intravenous feeds. However, the normal x-ray processes to identify initial damage was not adequate enough to detect the tear in my bowel. Subsequently, all the waste products my body was trying to kick out were leaking into my body cavity, all unbeknown to the healthcare professionals.

With all the poisons now coating my internal organs, they had begun to shut down hence my deteriorating palour and my rapidly increasing stomach size. I was dying.

Having spent a day at my side and being told by the doctors that I was too weak to have any further surgery, she was told hesitantly that they had little choice but to rush me to theatre to perform a laparotomy to discern the cause of my failing health before I passed away.

"..time would only tell if I was able to survive."

Again, time would only tell if I was able to survive. My wifes mother had only just returned home from the hospital that evening when she received a call from my wife advising that surgery was inevitable for my survival.  Rushing back, my mother-in-law returned and the long wait for news of the surgery, either way, was anxiously anticipated. At 9:40pm I was taken down, followed swiftly by the crash cart and life support equipment.

The door to the waiting room opened after a gruelling 4 hours and the nurse came in, announcing with a tear in her eye my imminent return to the ward. A phalanx of surgeons with an astonished look came in to the waiting area, sat down and looked at my wife, "He's remarkable, he was stable throughout. Truly remarkable."

The only result that saved me was an ileostomy. The online definition of which, for those unfamiliar, is:

"An ileostomy is a surgical opening constructed by bringing the end or loop of small intestine (the ileum) out onto the surface of the skin. Intestinal waste passes out of the ileostomy and is collected in an external pouching system stuck to the skin. Ileostomies are usually sited above the groin on the right hand side of the abdomen."

However, the location of the tear in my ileum was on the upper left of my abdomen, almost literally on the stomachs exit. Much later, when I was able to eat, consumed food would take 20 minutes to go through my internal system. A time, you'll agree, is not really adequate for my body to absorb much in the way of nutrients at all.

As a consequence of this, I lost dramatic amounts of weight. Prior to the accident I weighed in at just under 14 stone. After the trauma and stay on Critical Care, I lost half my body weight in a matter of weeks. After I had awoken, the count of my surgeries numbered to 16, and prior to any surgery (as most who have undergone any type of operation) the term Nil By Mouth is used which prohibits both food and drink up to a period prior to theatre. So, all those Nil by Mouth scenarios, coupled with my bowel injuries, is it any wonder my weight was reduced to radically low levels.

3 - From collision to conciousness

"The darkness that encased me.."

The darkness that encased me was given a physical reality in the form of the story my wife retold to me while sitting at my bedside.

When the paramedic attended the scene and attended to my initial injuries for stabilisation, unluckily, he must have pressed the 'last number redial' button on my mobile phone in my jacket pocket. You see, I called home at lunchtime that day to discuss the mornings events and have the usual husband and wife conversations that any newly married couple have.

We were married the previous year but, barely nine months later after our wedding, this unimaginable tragedy would dominate our lives.

When the phone rang home, the caller ID display flagged up as my number which confused my wife, with the time showing that I was only 30 minutes from the house. Answering it, rather than hearing my voice, she was subjected to a scream from a lone woman, and a muffled conversation that she could barely comprehend.

"It's made a mess of the car, ain't it?"
"What do you expect, mate, its a soft-top."

"Those single words sent a cold shiver down her spine.."

Those single words sent a cold shiver down her spine for it was then she knew it was no prank call. She called my name at the top of her voice, shouting for anyone to hear her, but to no avail. Dropping the phone and rushing to her car, she heading out on the road she knew that I drove to work on every day.

The problem was, she had only taken that road to my place of work once, a year ago. Distraught at the situation, she unwittingly took the wrong road and went miles out of the way from the actual scene. Stopping at a randon public house for directions, she approached the nearby town that I had already passed through. Calling her brother for help to ring local hospitals, she had continued her search.

Before she had gotten too lost in an area she did not know very well, she made the decision to head for home and try and come up with a plan of action. On her return home, her mother arrived following a call of desperation. Her brother had instead called her mother for assistance.

A police car pulled into the road, looking for our house number. My wife rushed out, grabbing the officer by the jacket, "Where is he!". Taken aback, the officer mumbled, "How did you know?".

"I was in surgery and had been for the last hour and a half"

A decision was made to come to the hospital directly. My wife and my mother-in-law arrived at the Critical Care department. After all the chasing, panic and confusion, it was now 8:30pm. I was in surgery and had been for the last hour and a half. The following time spent in the waiting room was an agonising while waiting for me to come out of theatre and be 'installed' into Critical Care; with breathing machines, blood transfusions, drugs and monitoring devices.

While in the waiting room, she was given the full list of medical injuries and a bag of my torn, bloodied clothes. Tears had flooded at the thought of what had happened. Despite all the emotional rollercoaster that was unfolding before them, the Police had come in asking for a blood sample to check if I had been drinking during the day. Not only would it have been incredibly difficult for me to even reach a pub during the day, my job was one that was prohibitive to the consumption of alcohol, to which my wife knew all too well. To say that there were a few disgruntled words spoken to the officers at this time would be an understatement.

My wife was allowed to reach my bedside at 2:00am in the morning. The sight that had greeted her was distressing. The fracture to my skull was wide open, with 'Frankenstein' stitches across my forehead. A machine was breathing for me, with tubes and cables sticking out of my skin in numerous places across my body.

She slept on the waiting room chairs that night, and for several nights until a room could be found in the nurses accommodation for her. That was our life for many days. That was until my stomach ballooned and my complexion turned a pale shade of grey.

2 - The seemingly endless injury list

".. it would be difficult for anyone to survive when .."

Many would think, medical professionals included, that it would be difficult for anyone to survive when faced with a list of injuries that I was forced to endure. The paramedic that attended the near fatal car collision, with the van that was on the wrong side of the road that I was desperately trying to avoid, commented at the time when I was being cut out of what remained of my vehicle, that I had a 5% chance of survival.

Such a slim glimmer of hope for continuing life faced me on a daily basis from that fateful moment in 2010. Thinking back on it now, I am astounded that I was able to survive at all. One of my orthopaedic trauma surgeon professors stated that with one, just one, of my particular injuries that I sustained, I had a 50% chance of survival without any other trauma. Only 50% reduced to 5%. I like to think of it as a 20 sided dice and your survival depended on it landing on the correct side, every other side results in death. In my case, the dice was rolled and I was incredibly lucky.

"During that life pausing moment, I suffered many traumatic fractures .."

Trying to put everything into a timescale to establish some sort of perspective, the impact (collision) occurred at 17:45pm. During that life pausing moment, I suffered many traumatic fractures, my lungs had collapsed under my fractured sternum and I began to bleed profusely. The ambulance and paramedics arrived on scene at 18:05pm. I have little idea at the time of the ambulance crew arrival but let us assume they attended at the same time.

Cutting me out of my twisted wreck of a car could have conservatively taken anywhere between 5 to 10 minutes. During this time I know that the Air Ambulance was called as it landed in a nearby field. It must now be approximately 18:15pm. Whether or not the paramedic was able to access my ragdoll body during this to help ascertain my immediate life-threatening injuries, stabilise me for transport and stem some of my pooling blood is also a mystery. Transferal via a stretcher to the helicopter would have been somewhere in the region of 2 to 4 minutes including strapping me in to limit excessive motion turbulence.

Transferal to the hospital emergency landing pad from the collision site, direct flight time, would have been in the region of 15 to 20 minutes. I was told that I had, overall, lost 8 pints of blood from the moment of collision to emergency operating theatre which doesn't include the IV transfusions that must have taken place during my transport. So, in all, with life threatening injuries, difficulties with breathing and loss of blood across the course of 45 minutes ... how did I survive?

My apologies if I appear to ramble on, let me resume my story. The following list of trauma that I had to persevere after the van collided with my car did nothing but shock and dismay me:

1) Loss of 8 pints
2) Fractured skull as my head hit the dashboard
3) Hairline fracture to one of my spine vertebrae as I was viciously twisted from the impact
4) Fractured sternum, as I collided with the steering column when I sheared it from its mounting, and;
5) Broken ribs numbers 1, 2 and 7 which resulted in;
6) Collapsed lungs
7) Bruised heart
8) Fractured left collarbone
9) Lacerated spleen
10) Lacerated kidney
11) Torn small intestine in several places
12) Smashed left elbow
13) Left arm radial nerve damage due to impact
14) Broken left femur when the impact wrenched me in my seat
15) Smashed left patella (knee)
16) Fractured right tibula
17) Fractured right fibula in two places
18) Fractured ankle

After I was told the complete list, despite the fact I could not speak, I found it incredulous.

However, I digress. My wife then began to tell me the back story from the collision moment to that point as the drug induced coma I was under for a month and a half had, for that time, blocked my memory. I will try to convey it as best I can.

1 - A waking nightmare

"Miracles do exist"

You may think that a conflicting title for a blog. Whether your conflict is theologically religious or for some other personal reason, I would not presume to guess but for me, I can only speak from my experience. I must say from the beginning that I am not a religious man, my allegiences are very passive, but I have been able to survive a most horrific situation and I would hope that through my narration on my story over many chapter posts that some people experiencing the same as I have would be able to connect with it, draw from it and learn from it. Therefore, I would like to share my story with you, for whoever is interested to listen.

It had started off as an ordinary day.

"I got in my car as usual.."

After the long hour and half drive to work, a drive I used to take day in and day out, there and back, I carried on with my daily activities and prepared for the following days activities. Little did I know, that that evening, this day was going to be so drastically different from all the others that had preceeded it.

The day drew to a close, I got in my car as usual for the steady hour and a half return home.

I never made it.

What was left of my car

At this moment I had little idea of the passage of time. A complete total blackness had enveloped me; without time, without substance, without feeling. There are many stories out there about talking to your relative because they may be able to hear you, or, "I saw a blinding white light and a tunnel and felt I had to walk toward it". That never happened to me. I could neither hear, nor see any ethereal interaction. Coma is like suspended animation, no interaction, no sounds, no dreams. Conciousness becomes dreamlike as the coma receeds but there is little else. My apologies to some that hope that beyond concioussness is a glittery shower of calm, a safe and warm environment that you wouldn't want to return from, and it might be different for others but for me, only from my experience, coma was nothing like the movies.

My next memory was like a distorted dream, a barely lucid vision of a distant relative I hadn't seen in almost a year through in a haze of a pain numbed, drug induced, blur and helpless anxiety and delerium that clouded my thoughts and screamed into my very soul.

I remember at this moment I blacked out again. I had no idea where I was, why I was here and what had placed me into this total nightmare. To make matters even more worse, I was unable to move or speak. Oh, I could blink and move my tongue, but the rest of my body was as unable to move as a rock in a field. The cause of my lack of any kind of vocal sound was due to the invasive tracheotomy. During some moments of incoherent consciousness, this was made all the more disturbing when I could hear that my breathing descended into difficulty with fluid on my lungs that required evacuation by a tube being inserted into my tracheotomy wound and the fluid being 'evacuated' to a laboured cough.

"..imagine the horror you would find yourself in.."

Try to imagine the horror you would find yourself in if you were suddenly unable to move or speak, that your concious being was plagued with inexplicable pain that you had no comprehension of. Imagine the panic that would consume your thoughts when faced with the enormous mental and physical stress of a situation such as this, waking up inexplicably after a month and a half, that is suddenly rendered upon you.

As my waking concioussness began to resolve into a more continuous, memorable progression, my beautiful beloved wife, whom had been at my bedside since the beginning of this terrible ordeal, began to try to communicate with me. Due to my lack of speech, she managed to innovate in this department and produce a 'letter board' for me. The idea being that she would point to a letter in turn and for me to make a visual affirmation of the chosen letter via blinking or a deep breath. 

"Critical Care was my location"

It was at this time, I managed to mentally discern my location as a hospital environment. Not being able to raise my head, the electric bed back was raised up slightly and I was able to take in my surroundings. Critical Care was my location. Intelligence gained from my wife, and the Professor that was overseeing my care, told me that I had been in a severe, near fatal, car accident.

What I heard next would shock me; the overall list of my subsequent injuries.