I left you and me hanging at the end of the previous point.  It was not intentional, but I guess it was appropriate.

Hanging upside down by the seatbelt, with my head against the roof of the car, my first thought after the car stopped moving was “call mom.”  I reached over and grabbed my cell phone and had it dialing.  A male voice started talking to me through the driver window area, which had busted out, asking if I was okay and what he could do.  I handed him my phone and said “call my mom.”  “What is the number?”  “It is dialing,” was my response.  Now, who would think that being spun around and turned upside down, that I would find my cell phone without thinking about it or feeling all over within seconds of motion stopping?  I feel that the rational side of the brain takes over when fear is involved in that case.

So my phone goes out the driver window and another guy is crawling in from the passenger side door.  He told me to turn off the engine since that was still running.  The one in the car is asking my name, how I was, the date, if I could feel my legs, along with some other basic questions.  I know that he kept asking them because he wanted to make sure I stayed alert, but at the same time I just wanted to get out of that position.  Within a few minutes, the guy in the car got out and a paramedic came inside.  Then the same questions again.   I heard my mom’s voice outside, which helped me relax a little.

The fire department’s first concern was to stabilize the car since it was setting at the top of a hill, one side going to the highway, and the other going to a city street.   Once stabilized, it was then figuring out how to get me out.  The paramedic positioned himself under me because there was growing concern about the circulation to my legs getting cut off.  He lifted up my hips with his arms, and that is the position that the newspaper cameraman caught once the door was taken off with the jaws of life.  Once the door was off, then cut the seatbelt off.  The paramedic told me to not help roll myself out because they would position me as they needed to.  That was difficult because the brain wanted to help get myself back in the upright, or at least lying, position.

I closed my eyes once they got me on the gurney, not to sleep, but because the sunshine was bright.  My mom was by me, and asked if she could ride in the ambulance with me.  They did my blood pressure, and it was 120/80 steadily.  She commented that there must not be internal bleeding because that was high for me.  The paramedic was surprised that she said that, but it made sense.

Once at the hospital, they transferred me to a hard gurney.  The back of my head was hurting and I was getting tired of laying there.  After about 1 hour, they took me for neck x-rays.  Once that came back as no issues, they sent me home with pain medication and an anti-inflammatory.

So approximately 2 3/4 hours after the accident I was at home again.  That was just the start of my new life journey.

My name is Lenora.  Twelve years ago I was a 28 year old with a full-time pharmacy job with a good grocery store company.  Heading to work on April 23, 2002 I was on the highway a few minutes from home, when my life changed.  I looked in my rearview mirror, seeing a car speeding from my lane to the left lane.  Then in my driver side mirror, I saw that same vehicle’s front end coming at my driver door.  My subconscious took over at that time and told me to hit the brakes to stop my movement since I was going into spinning two and one-half times.  At this point I was at the side of the highway, but still had momentum which sent me into a ditch with the driver front wheel.  After the front axle broke, my car flipped onto the driver side, then onto the hood of the car and slid.  I was screaming until the car stopped because it had hit a tree stump.  

My next blog I will relate what happened once the car stopped moving.