Oh also, when I go home, my tooth will be fixed!!! My last appointment is on the 18th and then I'll be going home on the 21st. So yeah, I won't have a gapped tooth smile anymore.
Also, I wrote this amazing essay for my English class. We had to do a research paper on a topic of our choice. The teacher is amazing, Sandy, I swear I love her. She reminds me of an erect, more stable, non chain smoking Miss Gilray. Like Miss G, she is addicted to her coffee so there is that. But I figured that I would post my essay because it really is the best one that I have ever written and I actually like it. (and see Heather, I am writing essays, even though I normally hate them)
We should be dead, and we know it
I woke up in the parking lot, on the black top. I got up on my elbows and saw the blurry forms of my glasses and cell phone in front of me. They found there way into my left hand, and I sat up. The surrounding cars were dark, blurry, and empty. There was no one in the parking lot or surrounding area.
Something trickled down my neck. My hand moved to my face, and returned covered in blood. Even with this sight, the implications did not register in my mind. I did not panic, in fact I didn’t think much of it. Even though I skidded forward a couple of feet on pavement I couldn’t feel any pain.
I was sitting there for a minute or two when I remembered what happened and who I was with. I turned completely around and saw him laying on the ground. I stood and walked the few feet to His body. Kneeling at His side, the only visible sign that he was alive was His chest slowly moving up and down. He was unconscious.
My cell phone has no minutes on it, so I couldn’t call 911. The thought to reach into His pockets and look for His phone didn’t enter my mind. It wouldn’t have helped anyways because they did not find His phone until after the accident. It had skidded a few feet away from him on impact with the ground. The surrounding area was still deserted, yet all I could do was scream for help. After all I wasn’t going to leave His side. So I
screamed and pleaded for someone to come, as loud as I could. Soon, an older couple came out of the back door to the building closest and walked the distance to us. When the
women took in the scene she went into a state of shock. She sat down on the dark ground about two feet away from us, silent and staring. The man with her said that he was going to go and find help, then ran to the front of the building. The women silently watched us the entire time, never moving from her corner of the concrete.
Soon after the man came back with a security guard in toe. I had known this guard since the beginning of the semester, he works in my dorms but his name still escapes me. The guard informed me that he was trained as an EMT, and continued to position His head on the ground to keep it from being damaged any further. Before he could radio out for help, one of my roommates stumbled upon the scene. She had decided that she had to take a midnight trip to Wal-Mart and just happened to stumble upon us at the right time. She pulled out her cell phone and called 911 for medical help.
While my roommate was on the phone, He started to awaken a bit. Every time He would start to come out of the fog he would try to stand up. Because there was no one else there yet, and the guard had to keep his head held in position, I had to be the one to keep pushing him down. It was now that I felt that one of my teeth had been broken in half, but I still felt no pain because “The adrenalin created by an abrupt blast of stress sends a flood of oxygen-rich red blood cells through your body, boosts your immune system, and signals your brain to start releasing painkilling endorphins” (Tust).
The time that it took for the ambulance and police to arrive is lost on me. I was told afterward that it took about half an hour after the call, but it felt like ten minutes to
me. When the EMTs arrived, they loaded Him onto a stretcher, and loaded him into an ambulance. Next they made me lay down on the ground and put a neck brace on me. Then they put me on a bored which they used to transfer me to the stretcher and loaded me into a separate ambulance.
When the doors were shut I was introduced to my two personal emergency medical technicians. One was a middle aged man, the other a young blonde women. They told me what they were doing at every step so that if I had questions or concerns I could voice them. They told me when they attempted to put the IV in my arm all three times and when they finally achieved there goal. They also inform me when they cut up the legs of my jeans and down my shirt so that they could safely look for injuries that they thought couldn’t wait for the hospital. Luckily there are none. My entire body however is shaking uncontrollably, which happens “if body temperature drops below 90 F” (Hypothermia and…). I asked my technicians and they informed me that even though it was a mild night, that and I was wearing a hoodie, that the stress and adrenalin levels made it possible for hypothermia to set in to my body. “Hypothermia is when the body gets cold and loses heat faster than the body can make it” (Hypothermia and…). They put blankets over me to help get me warmer, but the shaking continued. What kept me going was asking more and more questions throughout the rest of the trip and learning what I could about the many tests and things that they were doing to me.
When we arrived at the hospital, they pulled me from the ambulance and wheeled me into an emergency room. Five or six male doctors massed over me. They took of my blankets and cut and removed what was left of my jeans and shirt. They then continued to
slice and remove my bra and underwear. I was still strapped to the stretcher so there was nothing that I could do about it even if I did have the energy. Thus began the poking and prodding by every doctor there to make sure that there were no more injuries then what could be visibly seen. When they were done with their questions about whether I had any allergies and my medical history, and everyone had done there job as of yet, they left me in the room to do there own work.
I was alone sans one male nurse who had been charged with the job of cleaning the wounds on my face. It was when he was swabbing at the bloody area at my chin that the pain started to kick in. Within ten minutes of when he started, all of the pain hit me like a wave. It was now than I could feel all the scrapes on my chin and lower lip, the skinned knees and elbows and the pain of the exposed nerve in my broken tooth. And on he cleaned, bringing feeling and pain with each movement of the cloth. Soon I was in agony and unable to move because I was still strapped to the stretcher, yet I didn’t fight the straps or moan in pain. I merely focused on ignoring the pain by asking him questions about himself and his job, where se was from and how long he’d been doing his job, while wincing at every movement he made on my face.
When he was done I was left alone in the room for a long time. The time is not something that stuck prominently in my mind because I could never move my body to see a clock. I was still strapped to the stretcher and still had my head in a neck brace, so my movement was limited. When the MRI machine was free, they wheeled me in and placed me on the machines bed for a CT scan. “A computer tomography (CT) scan uses x-rays to make detailed pictures of structures of the body” (Essig). They passed me through it twice
and then a female nurse came to my side. She injected an iodine dye into my IV to “make structures and organs easier to see on the CT pictures.” (Essig). When the dark liquid entered my veins, a metallic taste entered my mouth like someone tossed a buck fifty in pennies in and shut my jaw. Then a warmth began to spread through my body, a wave of warmth that started at my arms to and moved to my legs. At first the warmth was welcoming and nice. Then the temperature began to rise alarmingly fast. It felt as though I was being roasted from the inside. This intense heat lasted for about ten minutes and then began to subside to a dull warmth that was very easy to live with.
Still I’m strapped to the stretcher, unable to move and they leave me in another room to wait. People move around me on there way to other parts of the building. All I could do was lay there and wait for whatever was next. After what felt like a long time a nurse retrieved me for some x-rays. They needed to check my jaw to see how bad the injuries were there, and to see if I had any internal damage in my chest and stomach. Luckily, even through the severity of the accident, I had no internal wounds, just my scraped up face and limbs and missing tooth.
A while after this they took off my neck brace and removed the straps holding me down. After a small fight with the nurses, they then let me slowly get up and move myself into a stationary medical bed. The doctor then entered with a lot of charts and x-rays and told me that I would need some time to recuperate and would have a lot of scars on my face, but that I would be fine. So he discharged me.
I was able to walk out of that hospital, at eight am, with a broken tooth and some minor aches and scrapes. Today I am fully healed with very minor scaring where each of
my scrapes were. My tooth is very close to being fixed, after having two root canals done on the same tooth and am close to getting it capped.
My friend was in the hospital for a week. He has no visible injuries. He was however unconscious for about twenty four hours and was out into a chemical induced coma for six hours. The only injuries that he sustained were a bruised lung, fractured skull and some brain trauma. He is now up and walking, talking, and living like nothing ever happened to him, even though every doctor that saw him told him that he should be fully paralyzed from the impact.
We have both talked about the accident and the events that led to it and the after affects a great deal of times. Both of us have come to our own conclusions about what happened. The most important thing that we agreed on is that we should both be dead.
Something trickled down my neck. My hand moved to my face, and returned covered in blood. Even with this sight, the implications did not register in my mind. I did not panic, in fact I didn’t think much of it. Even though I skidded forward a couple of feet on pavement I couldn’t feel any pain.
I was sitting there for a minute or two when I remembered what happened and who I was with. I turned completely around and saw him laying on the ground. I stood and walked the few feet to His body. Kneeling at His side, the only visible sign that he was alive was His chest slowly moving up and down. He was unconscious.
My cell phone has no minutes on it, so I couldn’t call 911. The thought to reach into His pockets and look for His phone didn’t enter my mind. It wouldn’t have helped anyways because they did not find His phone until after the accident. It had skidded a few feet away from him on impact with the ground. The surrounding area was still deserted, yet all I could do was scream for help. After all I wasn’t going to leave His side. So I
screamed and pleaded for someone to come, as loud as I could. Soon, an older couple came out of the back door to the building closest and walked the distance to us. When the
women took in the scene she went into a state of shock. She sat down on the dark ground about two feet away from us, silent and staring. The man with her said that he was going to go and find help, then ran to the front of the building. The women silently watched us the entire time, never moving from her corner of the concrete.
Soon after the man came back with a security guard in toe. I had known this guard since the beginning of the semester, he works in my dorms but his name still escapes me. The guard informed me that he was trained as an EMT, and continued to position His head on the ground to keep it from being damaged any further. Before he could radio out for help, one of my roommates stumbled upon the scene. She had decided that she had to take a midnight trip to Wal-Mart and just happened to stumble upon us at the right time. She pulled out her cell phone and called 911 for medical help.
While my roommate was on the phone, He started to awaken a bit. Every time He would start to come out of the fog he would try to stand up. Because there was no one else there yet, and the guard had to keep his head held in position, I had to be the one to keep pushing him down. It was now that I felt that one of my teeth had been broken in half, but I still felt no pain because “The adrenalin created by an abrupt blast of stress sends a flood of oxygen-rich red blood cells through your body, boosts your immune system, and signals your brain to start releasing painkilling endorphins” (Tust).
The time that it took for the ambulance and police to arrive is lost on me. I was told afterward that it took about half an hour after the call, but it felt like ten minutes to
me. When the EMTs arrived, they loaded Him onto a stretcher, and loaded him into an ambulance. Next they made me lay down on the ground and put a neck brace on me. Then they put me on a bored which they used to transfer me to the stretcher and loaded me into a separate ambulance.
When the doors were shut I was introduced to my two personal emergency medical technicians. One was a middle aged man, the other a young blonde women. They told me what they were doing at every step so that if I had questions or concerns I could voice them. They told me when they attempted to put the IV in my arm all three times and when they finally achieved there goal. They also inform me when they cut up the legs of my jeans and down my shirt so that they could safely look for injuries that they thought couldn’t wait for the hospital. Luckily there are none. My entire body however is shaking uncontrollably, which happens “if body temperature drops below 90 F” (Hypothermia and…). I asked my technicians and they informed me that even though it was a mild night, that and I was wearing a hoodie, that the stress and adrenalin levels made it possible for hypothermia to set in to my body. “Hypothermia is when the body gets cold and loses heat faster than the body can make it” (Hypothermia and…). They put blankets over me to help get me warmer, but the shaking continued. What kept me going was asking more and more questions throughout the rest of the trip and learning what I could about the many tests and things that they were doing to me.
When we arrived at the hospital, they pulled me from the ambulance and wheeled me into an emergency room. Five or six male doctors massed over me. They took of my blankets and cut and removed what was left of my jeans and shirt. They then continued to
slice and remove my bra and underwear. I was still strapped to the stretcher so there was nothing that I could do about it even if I did have the energy. Thus began the poking and prodding by every doctor there to make sure that there were no more injuries then what could be visibly seen. When they were done with their questions about whether I had any allergies and my medical history, and everyone had done there job as of yet, they left me in the room to do there own work.
I was alone sans one male nurse who had been charged with the job of cleaning the wounds on my face. It was when he was swabbing at the bloody area at my chin that the pain started to kick in. Within ten minutes of when he started, all of the pain hit me like a wave. It was now than I could feel all the scrapes on my chin and lower lip, the skinned knees and elbows and the pain of the exposed nerve in my broken tooth. And on he cleaned, bringing feeling and pain with each movement of the cloth. Soon I was in agony and unable to move because I was still strapped to the stretcher, yet I didn’t fight the straps or moan in pain. I merely focused on ignoring the pain by asking him questions about himself and his job, where se was from and how long he’d been doing his job, while wincing at every movement he made on my face.
When he was done I was left alone in the room for a long time. The time is not something that stuck prominently in my mind because I could never move my body to see a clock. I was still strapped to the stretcher and still had my head in a neck brace, so my movement was limited. When the MRI machine was free, they wheeled me in and placed me on the machines bed for a CT scan. “A computer tomography (CT) scan uses x-rays to make detailed pictures of structures of the body” (Essig). They passed me through it twice
and then a female nurse came to my side. She injected an iodine dye into my IV to “make structures and organs easier to see on the CT pictures.” (Essig). When the dark liquid entered my veins, a metallic taste entered my mouth like someone tossed a buck fifty in pennies in and shut my jaw. Then a warmth began to spread through my body, a wave of warmth that started at my arms to and moved to my legs. At first the warmth was welcoming and nice. Then the temperature began to rise alarmingly fast. It felt as though I was being roasted from the inside. This intense heat lasted for about ten minutes and then began to subside to a dull warmth that was very easy to live with.
Still I’m strapped to the stretcher, unable to move and they leave me in another room to wait. People move around me on there way to other parts of the building. All I could do was lay there and wait for whatever was next. After what felt like a long time a nurse retrieved me for some x-rays. They needed to check my jaw to see how bad the injuries were there, and to see if I had any internal damage in my chest and stomach. Luckily, even through the severity of the accident, I had no internal wounds, just my scraped up face and limbs and missing tooth.
A while after this they took off my neck brace and removed the straps holding me down. After a small fight with the nurses, they then let me slowly get up and move myself into a stationary medical bed. The doctor then entered with a lot of charts and x-rays and told me that I would need some time to recuperate and would have a lot of scars on my face, but that I would be fine. So he discharged me.
I was able to walk out of that hospital, at eight am, with a broken tooth and some minor aches and scrapes. Today I am fully healed with very minor scaring where each of
my scrapes were. My tooth is very close to being fixed, after having two root canals done on the same tooth and am close to getting it capped.
My friend was in the hospital for a week. He has no visible injuries. He was however unconscious for about twenty four hours and was out into a chemical induced coma for six hours. The only injuries that he sustained were a bruised lung, fractured skull and some brain trauma. He is now up and walking, talking, and living like nothing ever happened to him, even though every doctor that saw him told him that he should be fully paralyzed from the impact.
We have both talked about the accident and the events that led to it and the after affects a great deal of times. Both of us have come to our own conclusions about what happened. The most important thing that we agreed on is that we should both be dead.
2 comments:
hey! I'm glad that you finished your essay finally. can't wait to see you again.
Why would you post an essay?? that's way too much reading!! have fun with your "new" tooth..lol anyway, I'm looking foward to seeing ya agian...Lunchmoney this time maybe?? I kinda need the nonsense violence...
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