A kind of second life

Twenty-four years ago, “now”, I was in a coma.  I had crashed my car and had broken various bones and had one of my broken ribs puncture a lung.  A large gouge out of my left thigh missed the femoral artery, but my head didn’t miss the B pillar of my car nor did the steering wheel miss my face.  Although the Fire/Rescue dept. was stationed nearby and took only minutes to get to the bridge I crashed on, they still had to cut me out of the twisted car and transport me to the hospital.  The bridge, the car, and I were about ten minutes from that hospital on any other day, but the rescue guys got me there quicker and I made it into the Emergency Room before I died.

Sometime between April 23rd and June 8th, I was not aware of any time passing or of any real pain.  “I” did not exist. I had no sense of awareness, no sense of self, As far as I knew, it had been Lights Out, Show’s Over.

I woke up in June, very confused. I recognized the place as a hospital, the third I had been in, but I didn’t know “why”, much less “when” it really was.  The best that I could remember it was April, sometime, and the last thing I really remembered was about a week before the crash. I had lost, near as I figure, forty five days; five weeks in the coma and several days before the night of the wreck.

As a single man with no family, I was a good candidate for “experimental treatment”.  Hyperbaric Therapy had what seem to me to be good results. I was kept in high pressure Oxygen and kept comatose with drugs while my damaged body healed and repaired itself, to the point that when I “woke up”, I did not feel nor remember any great pain anywhere.

The wound on my left thigh was still raw, but healing.  My left ankle was not broken but had been trapped in the twisted metal of my car and was too tender yet to walk on, and I knew I had been through lots more than I could remember, so I decided that I was in the right place and tried to do what they told me to do.  Physical Therapy, Occupational Therapy, Memory Therapy and lots of sleep were my occupations during the next ten days.

On the 60th day of the hospital stay, I was wheeled out to a car and driven the an Adult Foster Care Home to continue my recovery, a place I called home for the rest of the year.

I feel, in a way, that I’m in that half-way state, here, now.  I’ve been meaning the write and haven’t done any till just now.

Things are good – there’s no good reason to feel that it’s not good, now, in this period, but for the last 24 years, this time has been a rudderless drift through the days, between the end of April and the start of June.  I’m 24 now, 24 years since the wreck, and I’m doing well, I think.  From a studio apartment in Public Housing after the wreck for 15 years to a four bedroom/three car garage house on 1/3 an acre that I’ve owned now for four years – things are much improved over most any year in the past.

Still, this time of year has always been a twilight before the dawn kind of period for me.