Seven years ago, I was hit by a
taxi traveling approximately 50 miles per hour. I'm not
dead, obviously, nor am I
crippled. My back's not exactly in perfect condition (which may be a good thing; I'd be a sure IV-F if the
draft were ever reinstated) but I am, for the most part, healthy. No
bones were broken and no internal
organs damaged in the collision; and if I hadn't been forcibly strapped to a backboard by
emergency medical personnel trying to cover their asses in case of spinal column damage that I knew (and insisted) wasn't there, even the back injury likely wouldn't have been permanent.
The trick to surviving such a potentially disastrous collision is to have something else take most of the impact for you. In my case, that something was a ten-speed Huffy bicycle. I was foolishly trying to cross a major road just beyond the crest of a hill, not realizing at the time that I couldn't see, or be seen by, oncoming traffic for more than about ten yards. Even so, if I had pedaled harder and tried to dart past the cars instead of hesitating and belatedly braking, I probably would have avoided the crash by a slim margin. The same hesitancy that made me a bitter, academically underachieving and socially inept high school student very nearly got me killed.
Maybe my title is a bit deceptive, since the taxi and my body never actually impacted. Its bumper hit the rear wheel of my bike. Nevertheless, there was enough momentum transferred to send 230 pounds of 15-year-old Anark flipping and flying through the air like a slippery salmon from the paws of a clumsy bear. I never lost consciousness. Hitting the ground on my side several yards from the cab, I rolled onto my back, managed to rise to one knee (and to think those paramedics thought I was paralyzed!) and kept trying to stand up. Hesitant and bitter though I may have been, my survival instinct was strong, and it never occurred to me to lie still and wait for help like a good victim should. Unable to see well without my missing glasses, the only thought in my adrenaline-fueled mind was to get to safety at the side of the road.
A crowd gathered. I remember looking up at strange faces, hearing voices asking me who I was, where I was, eventually telling me to put my head there and don't move, we're taking you to the emergency room. I protested. Yes, I'm hurt, but I'm not dying, give me some respect! My protest was ignored, as I was immobilized and placed in the back of an ambulance.
They stuck a needle in my arm and told me I was in shock. To hell with the shock, I thought, as the wrenched muscles of my right lower back convulsed in protest of their forced immobilization in a disadvantageous position. The pain was orders of magnitude greater than anything I'd experienced before. Even as I write this, my attention transferred temporarily to the dull ache that permanently lingers in that region, I remember vividly the agony I experienced that afternoon, exacerbated by the knee-jerk response of the paramedics who were motivated more by fear of malpractice lawsuits than alleviating the pain of the real injury.
Upon arriving at the hospital, I was determined to be out of life-threatening danger. Unfortunately, I was a minor, and without the consent of my parents, they couldn't so much as move me except to save my life. So I lay there in agony, my requests for free movement and pain relief denied by physicians to whom the almighty dollar was more important than the Hippocratic Oath.
Finally, after apparent eons, my mother arrived. I was freed from the bonds of legality, transfered to a gurney and wheeled into another room, and told to roll over onto the table to have x-rays taken. This from the same institution that, ten minutes earlier, had regarded me as "paralyzed until proven otherwise!" The pain was, unfortunately, too great for me to appreciate the irony. I somehow managed to follow their instructions, and after the procedure was sent to yet another room to wait patiently, talking wearily with my mom as the intravenous painkillers did their work.
The results were negative. My spine was fine, as were my kidneys and liver and whatever the hell else they x-rayed. There was only, as they put it, "a lot of soft tissue damage." I sat up (very painfully) and managed, stubbornly, to transfer myself to a wheelchair without assistance. Looking back, I can see that the influence of my mother's Hemingway books that I spent my childhood reading had truly risen to the occasion that day.
I went home that night, but couldn't walk right for about a week. There were no further medical services; the hospital just sent me on my merry way. The next morning, I looked in the mirror and saw that my lower back looked like an iodine-stained biological lab sample. Nearly black in places, and fringed with malevolent-looking reds and blues, it was quite swollen as well. My mom, who had medical training, advised me to put a heat pad on it, since cold wouldn't do any good this late. The discoloration gradually faded after a couple of months, and a few sessions of physical therapy restored muscle function to the point where I was able to run again (a year later, I was lifting 350-pound weights).
My back was working fine again, but the swelling refused to abate. I consulted a surgeon, who diagnosed a massive hematoma and recommended draining it and collapsing the pocket. He also told me what I had suspected before: had the injury received the proper treatment from the beginning, I probably wouldn't have had the occasion to see him. I underwent the surgery and awoke with my back nearly flat once again. It soon began to refill with fluid, though, and the surgery was repeated six months later, this time with a drain installed in my back for two weeks after the operation, and an irritant used to encourage the walls of the cavity to scar together. For the most part, it worked, though my back will never be perfectly symmetric, and will always be painful to some degree.
So, what lesson am I trying to impart with this long-winded tale? Don't be dumb. Non-motorists have to be just as careful in traffic as drivers. And if you must learn things the hard way, a bicycle to shield you from the collision's full impact certainly isn't a bad idea. It probably saved my life. Wait until you're eighteen, also, or else you'll just be fed to the beast of bureaucracy without the right to fight it.