Car Accident

That's right. Today I was in my first car accident and it was bad. I didn't like it one bit. I was driving down Fruitdale Ave, on my way to take Sammy to occupational therapy. I was going approximately 35 miles per hour, when all of a sudden, out of a side apartment driveway, someone pulls out in front of me. I've had other close calls. This will be close, but I'll stop. I slammed on my breaks, but he was too close. I'm gonna hit him. My tires screeched against the pavement and I skidded a short distance. We're going to hit; I'm not slowing down; This could be bad. We hit. Oh Sammy. Sammy screamed and started to cry. Oh Sammy Sammy Sammy. My front of my car was now crushed into the driver's side door and he was pinned in. His eyes were closed. Please please please be ok. I found my phone to call 911 but noticed other people were already calling. "It's ok Sammy. It's ok." Please be ok. I got out of the car and went to get her from her carseat. What about neck injury. Should I leave her in? Take her out? Screw it. I grabbed Sammy. She stopped crying almost immediately. I was shaking pretty uncontrollably. The man opened his eyes and got on the phone. He's ok. I called to cancel Sammy's OT appointment and then called Marcus. That's when I kind of lost it. But I pulled it back together.


Today was one of the scariest experiences I've had. Our airbags didn't deploy, not sure why because the other guy's bag did, so my chest took all the impact. I'm pretty sore. Feel pretty bad right now. I took Sammy to the hospital just to get looked at. They did a chest x-ray on me, and it checked out fine. We're safe.

Car accidents are funny situations. Lee stated it well when he said they are, luckily, only scary in retrospect. They happen so quickly, that you can't really be too scared until it's over. All day, I've had little pieces of what I felt and thought come back to me. It's amazing how fast our minds will think of things. In a split second, I went from thinking I was going to be able to stop to realizing that I couldn't, to imagining me and Samantha very seriously injured in the hospital...then...impact. It's crazy. And every time I think about Sammy being in the back seat when it happened, I get a little emotional. It could have been so much worse, and really, luckily it wasn't.

The police said it was a pretty cut and dry case: It was the other guy's fault. It's nice to know that we won't need to worry about paying for the car, a new car seat for Sammy, and our insurance will pay for all our medical...but that doesn't make anything better.

The other guy is fine. He had some neck and wrist pain. He went in the ambulance, but they think he's just fine. And this leads to my 3rd crazy thing about accidents: It's a big deal -- a car accident that totals your car (at least that's what the police officers were saying to us), but I didn't say one word to that man. I tried to, but I was moved out of the way so they could get to him, traffic was coming, I was moved to the side of the road by someone who lived there (they were worried about Sammy in the middle of the road with me)...next thing I know, the guy's gone. And his insurance (thank you sir for having insurance even though you don't have a license) and our insurance just work things out. It's nice, but it's so impersonal, and on some level, that makes me really sad.

Anyway...Happy Monday to all. Hope yours was a little better.