This time last year, (October 30th to be exact) I had an accident in my Jeep.  I was driving on the interstate, and it had just started to snow.  I had slowed down to about 60 mph, and as I was going over an overpass I hit a patch of black ice and the rear end started to slide.  I tried to control the skid and ended up sliding across the median, ending up facing oncoming traffic...where I got nailed head on by a semi. 

This is what my truck looked like afterwards:

I was awake and remember all but a split second of the entire accident.  I clearly recall the 'oh shit' moment when I saw the truck coming towards me and I knew it was going to hit me.  I remember thinking that the only thing i can do is hold one and hope that it doesn't hurt too bad.  I remember hearing the god-awful sound of crunching metal and breaking glass...and the next thing I know I'm in the median again, and I look down and see that my driver's air bag has deployed...and I remember thinking that I didn't know I even had an air bag.  I remember having to shove open the door, getting out and noticing that I had peed in my pants. I found my cell phone and called 911 for some help...then realized that it hurt me to breathe and that my left shoulder wasn't working too well.  I decided that I needed to call my husband in Greenland to tell him what I had done, and I remember telling him that I didn't know if I was okay but that I loved him and would always love him, but that I had to go because I didn't feel well and it hurt me to talk.  Then I hung up the phone, and felt the edges of my vision go a little grey, like I was going to faint.  I thought I was going to die.  I thought that i had punctured a lung, or had torn my aorta, and that I was going to bleed out before anyone got to me.  I thought that I would never see my husband or my children again, that I was going to die alone, in the cold, in the middle of the road in South Dakota.

As luck would have it, a team of paramedics returning from a class happened upon the accident less than 2 mins after impact, and they stopped and helped me. Some native Americans from a reservation came by and stopped and prayed over me as the paramedics were working on me. That scared me even more, hearing people ask their god to spare my life.  I got put in a collar, strapped to a back board and taken to the local hospital, where they found that I had broken and cracked numerous ribs, broken my collar bone, shoulder blade, had cardiac and pulmonary contusions and had bled into my lungs a little, fractured a knuckle on my right hand, dislocated both shoulders, nearly ruptured my bladder (that's why I peed on myself) and torn tendons in my neck.  I also had road rash all the way across my chest and a large purple bruise running across my chest and belly.  The doctors all said that if I had not had an air bag, I'd have been killed.  That if I had been driving a car, I'd have been killed.  That I was lucky, extremely lucky to be alive.  The first thing any of the staff said to me when they met me was "you're lucky". I made the news and the front page of the local paper, and I had a lady come up to me in the commissary and ask if she could touch me because she'd never met anyone as lucky as me. 

So, it's been a year.  Most of my physical injuries have healed.  My left shoulder still gives me problems, and on days when it's cold and damp the bones that I broke remind me that they got hurt. I had a lump of scar tissue the size of a hens egg removed from my left breast this spring, from where the seatbelt sheard it off.  I used to wake up crying at least once a week and have panic attacks, but those are better now.  Not gone all the way, but better.  I haven't woken up crying or felt freaked out in months.  I still get upset at some things - I was watching Trauma last weekend and saw a scenario much like mine - except that person dies from their injuries.  It just brought home to me that I had a pretty narrow escape.

I feel like somewhat of a failure.  I haven't done anything spectacular with my life since I almost lost it.  I read about people who nearly die turning their lives into legacies of some sort, and I'm slightly disappointed with myself because I haven't done that.  I'm just kind of meandering along still, raising my kids and being a wife.  I'm not out to change the world, but I would like to think that I made a difference, that I perhaps changed someone in some small way.

Maybe I have.  Maybe I've changed myself.