Glad to be here

20 years ago (Oct.12th) I earned a two-week vacation at this lovely hospital in the beautiful rural college town of Bowling Green, Ohio. Of all the auto accidents I've been in, this was by far the worst. My spleen met his match, as did my appendix, portions of my intestines and one of my ribs towards my back. In addition to my own injuries, my sister (2 years younger) sustained a compound fracture to her left femur that required the insertion of an 18" pin from her hip down through the femur bone. This was to remain for one year. She also had several lacerations above her eye.

My first 7 days after surgery were filled with the fog of morphine, several catheters(I pray that no one I know ever has to get one of these inserted while awake, I.Vs in both wrists, a couple of blood transfusions and a spectacular tube that travelled from my stomach, up my gullet, out of my nose and into a blender looking pump whose purpose in life was to suck the acid and bile from my stomach at regular intervals. This became incredibly uncomfortable after 6-7 days when my nose and throat became raw from the contact. Why would I need this? Due to my intestinal injuries, I could not eat for a whole week (ice chips only)...even so, the stomach continues to produce its toxic mix of lava, which by the way, looks like split-pea soup. If this is not removed, you will puke every hour or so. Not particularly pleasant when you've just been gutted like a deer. I have a 12 inch scar from my sternum to below my belly-button to prove it...not to mention a bunch of scar tissue that bothers me occaisionally...I also need to get a vaccine every five years to protect me from a certain pneumonia that would usually be defeated by the spleen.

It was a very scary experience for me, my sister and of course my folks, who had to helplessly sit and watch their two kids go through hell.

I had never been back there. I just sort of moved on with my life. But as the 20th anniversary approached, I started thinking that I might like to visit the place. My intention was to head over there on the actual day but a nasty case of bronchitis prevented me from going. So I rescheduled and went there last Tuesday:a dreary, grim, windy and rainy fall day.

When I first got to town, I was really second-guessing myself. It seemed like a morose, maudlin, unecessary waste of time, money and gas. Wasn't it enough to just think back on the moment and move on? But when I drove past the hospital, it really seemed like yesterday when I was getting(slowly) into my Uncle Gary's Lincoln Towne car(it was easier than climbing into my Dad's pick-up truck and well, my mother's car was mangled to holy hell, sitting in a junkyard contemplating its next life as a...toaster?...set of steak knives?...sink?). Incidentally, I was listening to NPRs Terry Gross interviewing the late Freddie Fender..."I'll be there, before the next...teardrop falls". I'm pretty sure that now I will always think of Wood County Hospital every time I hear that song. Go Pavlov!

The next stop was the actual spot of the accident. This occurred at the intersection of Rt.6 and Bowling Green Rd. I had to cross traffic from Bowling Green Rd. left onto Rt. 6. Traffic on this road travels from about 55 mph to 75mph. Here's a pic:




















I seem to remember looking left, looking right and then going...forgot to look left again. This was probably due to the fact that I was either:

a.)eating fast food
b.)telling a story
c.)fixing my hair in the mirror
d.)cueing up a kick-ass guitar solo by Matthias Jabs of the Scorpions on my tape player
e.)all of the above

We were very lucky that we didn't get hit by a semi-that would have done us all in...instead, the card we drew was a little Chevy Chevette going around 60mph. I was ticketed for failure to yield by a cop in the emergency room, while lying in a fetal position in excrutiating pain, puking blood, and getting all of my clothes cut away from my body in front of about a dozen people. As I had only just started college, I did know my social security number by heart when the cop asked me for it...

When I got to the spot, I pulled over so I could get a good look. I got out of the car and walked around a bit and took a few pics. Some of the area had been clear-cut and was now being farmed but other than that, it was exactly the way I remembered. At this point, I was really glad to have made the trip. It was a very odd sensation. A little bit of fear, nostalgia, and gratitude all mixed together. This was a place where I came really close to dying. I have often thought about that day and how in that moment of violence, I neither felt nor remembered anything. It always seemed like a comforting thought that in that brief instance of death (or near death) that there is no pain or suffering. As I got back in my car, I started thinking about all of the things I have done and seen since, the people I've met, the music I've made, the things I've learned, the hair I've lost; I couldn't help feeling like the luckiest person in the world.