Everybody has a story

... and this one's mine.

It feels weird talking (writing) about this. I allude to it often, because it's had such a big impact on my life; but I don't usually tell the whole story. I feel as though it was a long time ago, that I should get over it and move on. By telling people about it, I feel as though I'm holding myself back from moving on... And, really, who wants to hear about a car accident that happened 20 years ago? But I figure that I touch on it enough here that I should explain about my accident.

I learned to fly airplanes before I learned to drive a car. When you taxi a plane on the ground, you steer with four pedals in the ground... two in the front and two in the back. As a result, you sit with your seat quite far forward.

Eventually, when I started to drive, I sat in the car like you'd sit in the plane... with the steering wheel in my gut. I remember my mom commenting multiple times that it wasn't safe, but my driving instructor told me I should sit where ever it felt comfortable. Driving instructors having so much more knowledge than moms, I went with his advice.

Even though I had my license, it had been a really cold, snowy winter and my parents had been driving me to my lessons and work for a few weeks. That particular day, it was -35C outside and my parents wanted to drive me again. As I'd been doing for weeks, I gave them the excuse of 'if I can fly an airplane, shouldn't I be capable of driving a car?' That night, they gave in and let me drive; but I never made it to flight school.

I don't remember the accident, but it looks like I lost control on ice when I tried to steer around a mailbox that was overhanging the country road. The car spun, collided with a truck, spun around again and collided with the trailer that the truck was hauling. I was wearing a seat belt, but I was sitting so far forward that my head still hit the rear view mirror.

The mirror broke through my skull between my eye socket and my temple, and was pushed into the center of the brain. The crack in the skull then extended down into the jaw joint in the front, and towards the back of my head. The back of the skull shattered.

The man driving the truck that I hit was fine, physically; but he went into shock and was unable to get out of his truck to check on me. Fortunately, a good friend of mine happened to be driving home and came upon us. She ran to the nearest farm house and called the ambulance, and then came back as I stopped breathing because I was choking on blood. She turned my head (probably not so smart) so that the blood coming from my ear wouldn't flow into my mouth anymore, and then gave me mouth to mouth resuscitation until the ambulance arrived.

She saved my life. I was flown by air ambulance to the Calgary hospital, where I remained in a coma for 10 days. When I woke up, I was delusional for a few weeks (I had the mindset of a 3 year old, the potty mouth of sailor and a really great talent for escaping the hospital). When I became lucid, I was pain free.

I don't remember the accident, and I don't remember any pain from it. Actually, I didn't believe that it had happened for a long time. It was months before I was convinced that it wasn't a bad dream. After all, I was up and about; and the injuries seemed minor, compared to what you'd expect from a head injury like that.

I was incredibly lucky, and I know that. I suspect that's why I don't tell people what happened; because I feel like I'm complaining or making excuses when I do. But, some of the consequences have stayed with me. I am now legally an epileptic. I don't have seizures, just the brain waves of an epileptic... chances of me having a seizure are a fair bit higher than the average person. My jaw will never heal completely. My short term memory, impulse control and ability to concentrate are limited. My balance is awful, and I'm deaf in one ear. What I don't have - what I never really did have - is a headache.

Another side effect of the brain injury is a form of amnesia, where I forgot everything I'd previously "learned". I knew who people were, I knew the year it was and I knew the prime minister. I had forgotten all of my school knowledge, like maths and sciences, reading music or anything related to flying. What I could go over right away, like maths and sciences, I picked up again immediately. It was like being reminded of something I already knew. The longer I took to review something, though, the harder it became to remember or relearn. Something like reading music, which was delayed for a few years because I couldn't play the violin with a broken jaw, never did come back. In addition to playing the violin, I also used to play the piano & flute, and had gone as far as possible with musical theory classes. And yet, now I have a mental block when it comes to music. Regardless of how many times I sit down and try to figure it out, I cannot read music. Nor can I tune or play a violin. I can, however, play the piano fairly well by ear... probably because there was always a piano in the house; and I probably tinkered away at it as soon as I got home.

I recovered really quickly. One of the first things I said once I was lucid was that I wanted to fly again. They told me that when I was well enough to do everything else that I'd been doing before, we could talk about flying. So, I went back to school a few weeks after I got out of the hospital. I had a tutor, and I relearned enough of my classes to graduate the same year that my friends did. I went to summer school, and then I took another driving class so that I could start driving again. I went to college.

A few years later - multiple, multiple tests later - it was determined that I wouldn't be able to fly again. Whether they have seizures or not, people with brain waves like mine aren't allowed to fly. That was a hard knock. It was hard to hear that I couldn't have what I'd worked so hard for; but if I hadn't had something like that to work towards, I don't know if I'd have been able to recover so well and live such a normal life. As far as I'm concerned, the fact that I'm up and about, employed and independent is pretty darned cool.

So, that's my story. That's why I sometimes talk about things I used to do, but don't do anymore. Then again, everybody's got a story; and everybody's got things from their youth that they can't have or can't do. That's life, I think. It makes us who we are.